translated from Spanish: Academic argues that New Constitution must protect agricultural soil

The need for the new Constitution to advance in a greater protection of the environment, raised the academic of the Faculty of Agrarian Sciences of the University of Talca, Hernán Paillán, who maintained that one of the aspects to be considered in the drafting of the Magna Carta should be the care of the agricultural soil of the country.
In this regard, the researcher maintained that the environment and the natural resources that we have must be conserved, which must be established in the Constitution. “We use agricultural land as a resource to produce, and it’s good that it is. However, we have to take care of it because it is not renewable, it is becoming more and more exhausted and we live off it. It is not sufficiently protected from a legal point of view,” the teacher said.
Paillán added that although there are indications regarding environmental issues in the current Constitution, it is necessary to protect this productive resource with a focus on the country’s future generations. “For that, in this social contract that is the Constitution, this issue must be addressed,” the UTalca researcher added.
On the other hand, the academic also expressed the need for the new text to include aspects related to the protection of communities in the face of possible situations of environmental pollution. “We note with great concern the constant exposures of the industry in some areas of the country that we know, where there are permanent pollution events,” he added.
The expert indicated that, while the Constitution enshrines the right to live in an environment free of pollution, it is necessary to go further. “Apparently that’s not enough with respect to the cases discussed above,” he said.
“Just as there is in the current Constitution, and in the new one will probably also be embodied, a description of the right to property and others, there must also be the right to have a healthy environment, to protect the environment, but with clear definitions of what we are going to take care of, be it groundwater, surface water, native forest. , or the ground. Consequently, it should be made more explicit,” he stressed.

Original source in Spanish