Juan Sebastián Montes Porcile
Professor at Boston College, United States
Mountaineer, Member of the Attack Team on the First Chilean Climbing Expedition to Mount Everest, 1992.
National parks (NP) are very valued by visitors, though quite little by our institutionality, which has underrated and relegated them to an insignifficant unit of the State without funding and focus for managing this environmental heritage.
What would be needed then to have a National Park Service up to a 21st century context? Here come a few ideas:
The obvious thing: A well-shaped segment. CONAF’s original sin was beginning as a public-private spawn, where it also included the worst from public services (bureaucracy, lack of funding, being part of another ministry and a division whose focus was more on forestry than the care and development of national parks) and no benefit from private business. This service should be autonomous, public, with decentralised management inside the State, a professional team in charge of its management and its own budget.
What is not so obvious: power. A new National Park Service should have a clear purpose (conservation) and the capability to apply the necessary power to meet its objectives. It should also be able to establish its own purposes and clear standards for each park, with zoning according to the expected use for each area, in a continuity ranging from complete preservation up to high impact zones (roads, visitor centres and hotels).
This zoning must rely on principles and protection measures for biodiversity and load research supporting the sustainability of resources, all updated through time. Today, this doesn’t exist.
We also need ‘enforcement’ to watch over the appropriate behaviour by any visitor or user. It can’t be up to park rangers to call the police each time something inappropriate happens into the park. They should be given the power to watch over security and good operation of the protect area, the possibility to charge fines or also arresting a person to be subject to authorities with the respective charge. This has existed for more than 100 years in the United States, but this hasn’t been considered in Chile.
What is really new: science, tourism and sustainability. In the 21st century we should see our national parks as the biodiversity reserves in the country, with history, landscapes and climates sometimes unique in the world.
That’s why we should preserve, care and develop these sites along with research, but today they don’t have focus and funding to play a key role in science, education or even tourism.
We have museums spread all across the country and national parks are rarely mentioned in there. In school books, they’re not studied as part of the curriculum, and universities rarely have partnerships or permanent projects with their managers.
Tourism makes an intensive use of national parks, but there are no policies for hotels, visitor centres, licenced areas, international dissemination, transport policy and attraction of scientific tourism.
All this potential should exist but, while there’s no autonomous institution, with funding and power, appointed to the preservation and development of national parks and protected areas in Chile, all this will remain a part of the excuses of why we aren’t a developed country in environmental issues.