{mini}Printable version

English · Español · Português

5 May 2010 | |

Monopoly

Endesa denounced for monopoly control of water and electricity in Chile

Download: MP3 (1.9 Mb)

Around six thousand hectares of arable lands will be flooded in the southern region of Chile. This will happen if five hydroelectric dams are built on Baker and Pascua rivers, a controversial initiative moved forward by HydroAysen, made up by Colbun and Endesa-Chile (subsidiary of the Spanish corporation, currently owned by Italian Enel).

Chilean and Spanish organizations will submit a complaint against the European company before the Permanent Peoples´ Tribunal which will session from May 14-18.

The organizations warn that the dams will be detrimental to agriculture and cattle farms of high touristic value, in addition to the forests of one of the last virgin ecosystems standing in the world.

“The floods and works will cause the disappearance of species and will affect the world´s third largest source of freshwater in the world”, state the organizations in an executive summary.

In addition to these negative impacts in the southern region of Chile, the electric lines used to transmit energy to Santiago, the capital city of the country, will go through fourteen wild areas and 64 communities, including indigenous territories in regions such as Araucanía.

According to the organizations, deforestation, displacement of peasant populations and irreversible damage to national parks are some of the consequences of these European projects.

The role given by countries like Chile to private investment has an important part in this situation.

During the last twenty years, the party in office was Concertacion de Partidos por la Democracia, which was defeated in the elections held in January, 2010. During the past twenty years, Endesa established their operations in the country and was involved in other controversial projects, such as the dam in Alto Biobio.

Everything points out that this model will be strengthened by right wing Sebastian Piñera´s administration. However, Endesa is already responsible for a “monopoly control of the rights to water and power generation”, according to the organizations. To achieve this, the company has taken advantage of political lobby, bribes, marketing and advertising strategies.

Enel executive, Fulbio Conti, met on May 3rd with Piñera to ratify their intentions to move forward with Hidroaysen, which will receive finance by early 2011. According to Portal Minero, Conti said: “I´m here because Latin America is very important for us, since it is part of our geographical and technological diversification strategy”.

Photo: http://www.flickr.com/photos/diegomur/

(CC) 2010 Real World Radio

Messages

Who are you?
Your post

This form accepts SPIP shortcuts [->url] {{bold}} {italic} <quote> <code> and the HTML code <q> <del> <ins>. To create paragraphs, simply leave blank lines.

Close

Friend of the Earth

Real World Radio 2003 - 2018 | All the material published here is licensed under Creative Commons (Attribution Share Alike). The site is created with Spip, free software specialized in web publications. Done with love.