Prominent private sector executives, former government authorities, leaders of environmental organizations, salmon industry experts, and the three leading Chilean presidential candidates recently gathered for this year’s Chilean Salmon Summit to determine how best to develop policies and strategies that ensure both economic productivity and environmental protection in the nation’s salmon-farming industry.
The summit, held on 22 July in Frutillar in the southern Los Lagos region of Chile, brought together the three leading Chilean presidential candidates – José Antonio Kast of the hard-right Partido Republicano, Jeanette Jara of the Communist Party, and Evelyn Matthei of the traditional right-wing coalition Chile Vamos – and it marked the first time the candidates have come together to debate one another in the lead-up to the country’s November elections.
Though national politics drew heavy media attention, the summit aimed to provide targeted solutions on several issues facing Chile’s aquaculture sector, including how to harmonize fish farming and environmental stewardship in pristine areas such as the Chilean Patagonia.
To that end, economist and former Undersecretary of Finance María Olivia Recart recognized there was governmental overregulation owing to an overall sense of mistrust.
“The state today is going too far with the regulations because it does not believe that companies can do things well. That is a loss of confidence that we have to restore. The public-private sector has to work again,” she said.
Recart, therefore, called for a long-term vision for the sector, as other salmon-producing nations have developed.
“We have great marine biology and oceanography, [but] we don’t have a projection for our oceans for the next 50 years. We’re late,” she said.
Francisco Solís, director of the Chilean Patagonia project at The Pew Charitable Trusts, said the industry needs to take a longer-term outlook, but emphasized that salmon farming has to remain in harmony with environmental protection.
“Without the Patagonia, there is no salmon, and without conservation and healthy protected areas, there is no Patagonia that we know today,” he said. “The challenge is not to look at 30 years; I think [we need to look] at 100 years and hopefully that will … drive the debates that follow.”
Preserving the unique ecosystems of the Chilean Patagonia needs to be taken into consideration when developing fish-farming activities, Solís said, adding that his organization works transversally with the entire political spectrum to provide scientific evidence that informs better public policies.
Confederation of Business and Production Associations (CPC) President Susana Jiménez agreed that any regulations put forth need to weigh environmental issues in their crafting but that they also need to include plans for growing the sector.
“This industry, which is a pioneer in the world, has to be a source of pride for our country because it generates employment, innovation, and has quality standards as high as those of [other top nations],” she said, explaining that regulations need to appropriately consider economic, social, and environmental issues and establish goals for industry growth, “not stagnate as we have been in the last 10 years.”
Arturo Clément, the president of industry association SalmonChile, said political will was needed to fuel sector growth.
“We can grow here and now, but there has to be political will,” he said, highlighting the untapped potential of Chilean salmon farming while calling for officials to work on a state policy that strengthens the competitiveness of the industry and enhances its role in the country’s economic development.
Clément, like Jiménez, said the sector has been frustrated over years of stagnation while other competing countries detail plans to exponentially grow production. He said that instead of focusing on growth the industry's efforts have been wasted on “not disappearing and just holding on."
“As a productive sector, we constantly ask ourselves, ‘Is all this normal? Do we want to become a world aquaculture power, or do we prefer to miss that opportunity?’” Clément asked.
Because speakers like Clément and Jiménez highlighted that political will is so essential, industry executives celebrated the fact the first presidential debate between leading candidates took place during the Salmon Summit, as it demonstrated that presidential hopefuls are willing to consider industry development as a driver of economic growth in the country.
In his speech at the summit, José Antonio Kast criticized previous state bureaucracy affecting the sector and proposed a “substantial deregulation” of the sector. He presented a series of proposals aimed at strengthening the salmon industry, highlighting the need to eliminate obstacles and generate a more favorable environment for productive growth without compromising environmental standards.
“In a decade, 210 [salmon farm] relocation requests were filed. Guess how many have been approved in a decade. One. A shame. That is not regulation; that is institutional sabotage,” he said. “Changes were already urgent. Today, they are absolutely necessary with the issue of U.S. tariffs. Chile needs to be competitive again.”
Jeannette Jara proposed a new pact for Chilean salmon farming, with a plan to promote the salmon sector as an engine of regional development while balancing environmental and social considerations.
She highlighted the need to decentralize decision-making processes, streamline permits, and promote innovation as strategic axes for the sector, saying that excessive centralization and the multiplicity of permits have slowed key processes and are the main obstacles to industry growth.
“I want to propose that we relocate, or rather, that we decentralize the relocation of concessions at the regional level,” Jara said. “I believe that this can be done through the transfer of powers to regional governments [outside of Santiago] and putting together a regional aquaculture working group.”
Evelyn Matthei emphasized the economic importance of an industry that generates “4,000 SMEs, 86,000 jobs, [and] more than USD 6.4 billion [EUR 5.6 billion] in exports.”
She called on industry-related decisions to be made based on science, with local participation, and also criticized the factors playing into salmon farming’s stagnation in the country.
“Concessions that wait more than 10 years to be relocated, projects that have faced 27 years of processing … overlapping regulations, duplication of procedures, institutions that do not communicate with one another [epitomize] a total indifference from authorities,” she said while also alluding to her participation in a 50-year plan to help drive sector development that is currently being led by salmon-farming stakeholders.
According to local pollster Plaza Pública Cadem, Kast is the frontrunner for the first-round elections, drawing the preferences of 30 percent of those polled, followed by Jara at 27 percent and finally Matthei at 14 percent. Presidential elections in Chile will be held on 16 November. If no one candidate wins more than 50 percent of the vote, a runoff election will be held on 14 December.
