Chile

report 2012

Many promises, little commitment

The country’s development model is tied to resource extraction and the Government is still prioritizing energy sources such as coal that have serious negative ecological effects. Chile has made a series of international commitments to adopt environmental-protection policies, but very little has actually been done in terms of effective legislation or concrete action. The country urgently needs to develop or strengthen institutions to handle environmental threats, a new energy policy, regulations to govern biodiversity, to change its electricity generating profile and also to bring civil society organizations into the debate about sustainable development.

BCI & GEI 2011
news
Presentation of the demand before
the OIT. (Photo: Chilean parliament)

Sources: CENDA, Radio Universidad de Chile.

This week Chilean unions and social organizations made a report to the International Labour Organization (ILO) office in Santiago denouncing private sector pension funds for discrimination against women, a practice that had been documented in a study by the Centro de Estudios Nacionales de Desarrollo Alternativo (CENDA, the focal point of Social Watch in Chile).

Chilean legislators meet with CENDA's
experts. (Photo: Congress of Chile)

Sources
Cámara de Diputados de Chile
Cenda 

Men who retire under the new Chilean pension system – exhibited as a model throughout Latin America – obtain now an income 33 per cent higher than women who have saved the same funds, informed researchers Manuel Riesco and Mireya Baltra, of the Centre for National Studies on Alternative Development (CENDA, national focal point of Social Watch) to the Chamber of Deputies of that country.

Sara Larraín. (Photo: Partido Ecologista)

Sources: Enlazando Alternativas, IPS News Agency

The government of president Sebastián Piñera dropped the charges of “disturbances” against Sara Larraín, director of the environmental NGO “Chile Sustentable” after a judge determined that her arrest was illegal.