Public Participation in Chile

The public is one of the nation's greatest resources for developing and implementing environmental laws and policies. They have better familiarity with the country's land and natural attributes more than a government ever will. Their number makes them more pervasive than the largest government agency. And because the public works, plays, and travels in the environment, each has a personal stake in its beauty, health, and permanence. The involvement of the public is crucial to the establishment and implementation of a fair and effective environmental protection regime. The opportunities for -- and the benefits from -- public involvement are many and wide-ranging.

Participation in the environmental protection process benefits the "public" because it allows individuals to have a greater impact on the environmental decision-making process. It also enables people to learn about the environmental risks to which they, their families, and their communities are exposed to and to adjust their activities accordingly. In addition, public participation also empowers citizens and helps them to feel that they can have a positive effect and influence on concrete conditions in their countries.

Significant benefits to the Government can also result from public involvement in the environmental protection process. Citizens have direct, immediate knowledge about environmental conditions in their communities. Encouraging them to share this knowledge with the government can create more informed government decisions and can reduce the likelihood that significant environmental impacts of proposed actions or policies be overlooked.

Public participation can also assist industry by increasing its knowledge of the impact of its own operations on the environment.

Although public participation makes a valuable contribution in each of these separate spheres, the overall value to society of public involvement may be even greater than the sum of these various individual benefits.

The purpose of the planning system is to guide changes through a process that respects the rights of the individual while acting in the interest of the wider community.

Chile has recovered its democracy in the last 14 years, and the country is in a condition to undertake steps for a better future. Public involvement in the planning process however is an issue which has not yet been developed in all levels of government structure. It is time to increase participation of citizens in the decision-making process.

The Chilean society face the challenge of developing and implementing effective means to redress past environmental damage and prevent future harm to public health and the ecosystem. This challenge can be met more easily if the public, in the form of individual citizens, industry, and non-governmental organizations (NGOs), is enabled and encouraged to participate in the environmental protection process.

Besides, Public Participation is an integral component of protected areas management. The shift towards greater public involvement in the decision making process of government over recent years is essentially a change in emphasis from substance (what should the government do) to process (how should choices be made).

By Cristian Fuentes Raffaele (MSc. Resource Management, University of Edinburgh)