Stepping-up climate action and climate justice: Chile's path towards a new model of climate governance

Av. Santa Rosa 11315, La Pintana, RM, Chile

Almost 8 years have passed since the Paris Agreement established the current agenda of international efforts to tackle climate change. With the first Global Stocktake about to draw its conclusions in 2023, time is ripe for reflecting on experiences showing that progress is possible and the challenges we still face. In this piece we look at the case of Chile, as a middle-income and rapidly growing country from the global South with an inspired and ambitious commitment towards climate action.

Addressing climate change has acquired a central role in Chile's public policy, as expressed for example by its prompt adoption of the Paris Agreement, holding COP25 presidency, and committing to carbon neutrality by 2050. Furthermore, facing the climate and ecological crisis was acknowledged as one of the key national challenges within Chile's debate over a new Constitution.

This recognition may be just what we need if we are to answer to the overwhelming scientific evidence presented by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) in its 6th Assessment cycle: anthropogenic climate change is already happening across the whole planet, at an increasing rate, with the potential to create severe, possibly irreversible effects on ecosystems, affecting health, wellbeing, economies, livelihoods, as well as cultural values, of billions of people worldwide [1–3].

Important elements to face climate change, are to understand as one the climate crisis and loss of biodiversity, so to avoid that possible solutions to the climate crisis deepen the biodiversity crisis, and better governance: more robust institutions and forms of social coordination to design and implement evidence-based decisions pushing forward climate action. Suitable governance arrangements can allow us not only to provide effective and just answers to the climate and environmental crisis but also to promote equality, environmental conservation and sustainable development [4]. Conversely, without such arrangements, efforts to tackle these crises will likely be hindered by uncoordinated, reactive and incremental responses, inefficient or unconnected management of dynamic and globally entangled risks and controversies over beliefs and values [5, 6]. Chile's history illustrates well both the challenges and the opportunities of building climate change governance.

Chile's territory is strongly exposed to climate change, fulfilling 7 of the 9 conditions set by the UNFCCC for high-priority action areas [7]. This has had several visible manifestations: 14 years of drought in the central-south regions of Chile, with deficits of 20%–30% in precipitation and 25%–45% in streamflow, projected to further increase [8, 9]. Surface and underground waters are often already over-exploited or close to exhaustion, due to increasing and competing demands by human, industrial and agricultural uses [10, 11]. This water insecurity has addressed so far mainly through precarious and palliative measures, endangering the effective satisfaction of the human right to water. In coastal areas, storms are getting more frequent, enhanced by rising sea level, affecting people, infrastructures, tourism and productive activities [12]. Heat waves and record temperatures have also increased, with direct effects on health and wellbeing, especially in over-urbanized areas [10]. Likewise, forest fires have grown in number and severity, during a longer fire season [13], particularly affecting human settlements in peri-urban areas.

These impacts are not isolated phenomena, but closely interconnected: for instance, changes in land use influence the availability of water and fire dynamics [11]; fires in turn are not only accelerated by climate change, but also contribute both to GHG emissions and to local atmospheric pollution [13]. Air pollution, finally, affects water and soil quality, and their ability to regulate climate [14].

Unfortunately, existing institutional arrangements do not offer integrated responses to these interconnected issues: policy remains highly fragmented across multiple agencies, regulations and territorial planning instruments each operating disjointed from each other. Examples of this are the artificial separation between land tenure and water use rights; administrative limits that divide hydrological basins; the arbitrary separation between urban and rural areas (making peri-urban areas and urban-rural interface invisible to policy); duplication of functions between ministries and even units within the same ministry; and, the pluralization of institutions in charge of managing a element (e.g., over 40 different public agencies regulate drinking water, and six different agencies overseeing protected areas in Chile). This affects the efficient use of the limited resources of the State, as well as in its capacity to carry out integrated actions for a climate-sensitive management of the elements [15].

In addition to fragmentation, another key challenge is inequality. Climate change affects more profoundly groups that are already vulnerable and marginalised. Poverty, in particular, shares a mutually reinforcing relationship with climate change, with poors being more exposed, more vulnerable and less resilient to climate hazards, conversely incrementing poverty [16]. In Chile, income poverty has been significantly lowered in the last decades (8.6% in 2018), but its distribution is deeply unequal, much higher in certain regions, in rural areas, women, and in indigenous and other historically marginalised groups. Climate and environmental injustices also manifest at a territorial level, as evidenced by high levels of multifactorial pollution suffered by the so-called 'sacrifice zones' [17]; high levels of energy poverty and territorial energy vulnerability in some communities [18]; the raising concentration of ownership of the land and water use rights [11]; and, the unequal capacity of territories and their institutions to cope with and adapt to climate change [19]. Inequality is also a key driver of environmental conflicts [20] and social unrest in general, and was at the core of the social upheaval that shook the country since 2019. This compounds with the weakness of participation mechanisms, often only playing an informative or advisory role, leaving local and indigenous communities unprotected against the unequal power of large economic corporations, and reinforcing conflicts [21].

In the face of these challenges, there is an urgent need for a new model of governance, which should favour a transformative change in the way in which our society relates to nature and manages climate change and its risks. The model proposed places climate action at the basis of a new social and ecological order coherent with a carbon-neutral and resilient development, with social justice and equitable development pathways. We will call this 'climate governance of the elements': a form of governance that looks though the lens of climate change at the relationship we have as a society to all the elements of nature, embedding it in all institutions in charge of economic development, social welfare, as well as environmental management.

At the heart of this model stand four principles (see figure 1): first, and at its basis, the principle of just climate action, which requires both state and society to take incremental and transformative actions to promote climate change mitigation and adaptation, moving towards a more equitable distribution of costs and benefits, the protection of the most vulnerable groups, the conservation of ecosystems, and the protection of the interests of future generations. Second, an anticipatory approach, shifting from reacting to emergencies to favour anticipation and planning, from a preventive and precautionary perspective, operating with prudence, even in the face of scientific uncertainty. Third, a territorial and socio-ecosystem approach, promoting mitigation, adaptation and capacity building measures that are pertinent to each territory from a systemic perspective, respecting socio-ecological processes and limits, and in a coordinated manner between scales and sectors. And fourth, a good administration or 'good governance' principle: that is, an administration that is rational, objective, transparent, coordinated, efficient and effective. This requires for decisions to be based on evidence, with timely, continuous, meaningful, transparent and informed participation of communities, indigenous peoples and stakeholders, and ensuring active transparency and accountability by all authorities [15].

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Departing from these principles, we also propose new rights, obligations, and regulatory tools. The rights should include, (a) universal right to a healthy and ecologically balanced environment, so to ensure limiting global warming and other environmental changes within planetary boundaries; (b) universal right to water, food and energy security, guaranteeing that individuals, households and communities get access to sufficient, adequate, safe, and affordable water, food and energy goods and services to satisfy their needs and promote their development, while territorial conditions are put in place to ensure such provision in a sustainable and resilient manner; (c) right to reliable and accessible information on climate and environmental processes and hazards which may affect the previous rights; to effective and inclusive participation in decisions which relate to this; and to get access to justice when such rights might be deprived.

To ensure these rights, obligations must be put in place both for public institutions and private actors. Public institutions should implement fair climate actions that allow building a carbon neutral and resilient society to climate change. This implies that all state agencies must foster effective climate change mitigation and adaptation policies, with a long-term strategic view, including conservation and restoration of ecosystems and its sustainable use to meet the needs of present and future generations. Private actors should take part of this effort, first, by assuming the costs of mitigation or compensation of greenhouse gases, following the well-established 'polluter pays' principle; and second, by actively promoting the conservation and restoration of the ecosystems in which they operate.

As for the regulatory tools, these should strive, on the one hand, to advance rights and obligations described above, including: (a) integrated territorial management (e.g., at watershed level) which may allow to coordinate, incentivize, monitor and when suitable enforce actions to manage water, fires, land, air and ecosystems coherently with climate challenges; (b) effective protection of 'climate refuges' and other ecosystems and ecosystem services which are key either for climate change mitigation (e.g., native forests) or for adaptation; (c) mechanisms facilitating early detection and anticipatory management of risks and climate change impacts, and providing the necessary authority to agencies in charge of such risks. On the other hand, regulations are needed to support these actions, through: (a) the production of and access to robust knowledge and information; (b) knowledge-based decision-making in the context of deep uncertainty; (c) transparency and accountability of such decisions; and, (d) participation in these decisions and in their accountability.

We believe that through such a model it would be possible to advance towards a social and ecological regime of governance where climate change is not afterthought, but a lever to rethink the relationship we have as a society to all the elements of nature, embedding it deeply in all our institutions in charge of economic development, social welfare, as well as environmental management. Furthermore, efforts towards averting the climate crisis need better integration with those tackling the loss of biodiversity, and there is urgency that the recently adopted Global Biodiversity Framework at the Convention on Biological Diversity [22] is also included in national governance structures.

The implementation of such a governance is advancing in Chile. The new Framework Law on Climate Change provides a new and integrated institutional framework to regulate and manage the issue, and mandates the design and periodical update of mitigation and adaptation plans at national, sectoral, regional and local levels. Moreover, many regional governors have acknowledged the climate emergency and the need to act ambitiously to face it, while the current government has pledged to be the first ecological presidency in the country's history. In addition, several articles were introduced into the first draft of a new Constitution to give Chile a new and explicit mandate and regulatory tools to tackle climate change and biodiversity loss. While the draft was ultimately rejected in a public referendum, and it is not known if they will prevail in a new constitution, or whether Chile will be able to translate these principles and rights into effective laws, regulations and practices, they do mark a new kind of ambition on climate action. This goes beyond addressing mitigation and adaptation, understanding progress in climate governance as an integral part of a broader resilient development pathway. An ambition that we hope can set an example to make a step-change in both global and local commitments in this matter.

In summary, effectively addressing the climate change and biodiversity loss crisis requires a new model of governance. We propose four principles to ground such a model, suggesting how they can be translated into country-specific rights, obligations, and regulatory tools. Advancing these reforms requires a thorough understanding of the local challenges that climate change is imposing on a particular society, including geophysical impacts, as well as governance and capacity challenges. This can then help to develop an integral view of challenges that need to be addressed to secure sustainable development amid the looming ecological and social crisis.

The authors would like to thank the Center for Climate and Resilience Research (CR)2, FONDAP 15110009, and particularly its research line on Governance and Science-Policy Interface, where the underlying research supporting this paper was conducted. Similarly, Marco Billi would like to thank the Fondecyt Postdoctorado 3220447, Agencia Nacional de Investigación y Desarrollo (Chile) for supporting his work leading to this article.

No new data were created or analysed in this study.