One of the concerns of the environmental world is greenwashing, which is when a person or institution camouflages sustainability or conservationism to wash the image of an activity that is the opposite. And when this washing occurs at the discretion of the State, the problem of light brown to dark brown.
An example of this is the emblematic election of Mauricio Moreno Sagredo as a member of the Regional Advisory Council of the Environment of the Metropolitan Region for the period 2022 – 2024, in circumstances where he is a real estate entrepreneur, whose main business is parcels, or lots, some of them precisely in areas of ecological preservation.
A few weeks ago, the 2022 balance of Terram Foundation awarded Moreno Sagredo in the category of Green Wash, as “the main reference of real estate entrepreneurs whose projects of ‘ecological neighborhoods’ fragment ecosystems under an advertising cloak of green, creating extra-urban nuclei outside all territorial planning”.
The Regional Advisory Council of the Environment of the Metropolitan Region was constituted last August with the real estate entrepreneur participating as a representative of non-governmental non-profit organizations “whose purpose is the protection or study of the environment“.
His green camouflage is the “Foundation for the Recovery and Promotion of Chilean Palm and Native Forest”, created by himself in 1997. Although its annual reports do not indicate conservation activities, they have also helped it to enter other civil society councils, such as those of Conaf and the Ministries of Agriculture and the Environment.
However, in his role as a real estate entrepreneur, two of his subdivision projects, the “Oasis de La Campana Ecological Reserve” and “Lafquén Private Neighborhood”, located next to La Campana National Park, have complaints received by the Superintendence of the Environment for circumvention of the Environmental Impact Assessment System (SEIA).
Among the environmental irregularities that have affected the first include the deregulated expansion of the subdivision (more than 2,100 plots projected) growing in recent years towards areas originally planned as a reserve or conservation park. Cuts of hills and an extensive network of roads that crosses slopes, ravines and alters water channels, today are part of the landscape. In its construction they have destroyed native trees that are part of the Chilean palm protection forest, cataloged since 2020 as an endangered species.
In 2016, a court ruling had endorsed the decision of CONAF Valparaíso to totally reject the Management Plan presented by Oasis de La Campana Real Estate to parcel out new sectors. The argument was that “the habitat of a Native Preservation Forest, of the Chilean Palm Forest Type” was intervened.
Although the forest continues to have the same category, in 2019 CONAF Quillota reversed the resolution and authorized it to intervene. Coincidentally, Mauricio Moreno and his brother and partner Francisco —representing the environmental organizations “Fundación Palma Chilena y Bosque Nativo” and “Así Conserva Chile”— were members of the 2018-2019 CONAF Civil Society Council.
A bill that seeks to prevent and punish “Green Washing” was introduced in May 2022 and is currently being processed in the Environment Commission of the Chamber of Deputies. We must prevent companies or foundations with ecological facades from deceiving the authorities, betraying public faith or perverting the necessary role of the State in these matters. It is everyone’s task to take care that the green of the State does not fade.
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