An association of salmon farmers in Chile’s southern region of Magallanes has alleged impropriety against Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, U.S.A.-based nonprofit The Pew Charitable Trusts, claiming the nonprofit’s efforts to help formulate a conservation management plan within southern Chile’s Kawésqar National Reserve represent a conflict of interest.
The salmon-farming association has accused Pew of providing financing that may have unduly influenced Chile’s national forest service, Conaf, when it came to defining forestry plans in the region.
To address this issue, the association has filed a complaint to Chile’s comptroller to “investigate and determine the existence of a possible conflict of interest and/or possible infractions of the principles of administrative probity, impartiality, and service” of Conaf.
What the complaint specifically references is framework agreements signed from 2018 to 2020 between Pew, Conaf, and the Universidad Austral de Chile (UACH) to define the management of protected areas in Chilean Patagonia/. Within the agreements, Pew supplied more than CLP 1.9 billion (USD 1.9 million, EUR 1.8 million) in funding to the UACH, according to Carlos Odebret, the president of the Association of Magallanes Salmon Farmers.
The funding “may have been transferred to Conaf in an amount that we still do not know and we hope will be clarified in the investigation,” Odebret said in a release.
“These monies were used to hire personnel to work on the development of the management plan for the Kawésqar National Reserve and to carry out the technical studies that support it," he said. "In other words, Pew, an NGO that has expressed interest in preventing the development of salmon farming, financed Conaf through a network of agreements for the development of a public policy with significant effects on third parties.”
The association went on to explain in the complaint that a contractual triangle could be drawn between Conaf, Pew, and the UACH that aimed to influence the management of protected areas in Chilean Patagonia.
“Each party is linked to the remaining two in agreements with the same objectives and similar wording. Such similarity is evident when reviewing the lines of work that the Conaf-Pew and Conaf-UACH agreements incorporate,” the complaint said. “The conflict is evident and departs from impartiality not only in the case of the professionals who were directly remunerated by Pew but also in the public function carried out by Conaf. Pew illegitimately influenced Conaf, affecting its ability to make impartial and objective decisions, which impacts the integrity of the public decision-making process and the equity with which the State must act toward citizens.”
When contacted by SeafoodSource regarding the claim, The Pew Charitable Trusts said that the complaint was simply a ploy to ensure aquaculture continues expanding in the region.
“What the claims against Conaf aim to achieve is to halt the development of management plans for unique ecosystems that currently lack regulatory frameworks so that salmon-farming projects – non-native species to Chile – by transnational corporations can intensify in the national reserves of the Magallanes region,” Pew said. “Regarding salmon farming, what we have stated is what international recommendations from specialized entities suggest: Industrial activities should not exist within protected areas, as they are incompatible with their creation objectives.”
It added that Chile is one of 10 countries that invest the least in its ecosystems, among 14 countries that have the fewest park rangers per hectare worldwide, and needs to invest somewhere between CLP 44 billion (USD 44.8 million, EUR 41.3 million) to CLP 57 billion (USD 58 million, EUR 53.6 million) a year for its protected areas to implement appropriate management.
As such, the nonprofit explained that to alleviate some of the issues this gap in funding has created, the Pew Chilean Patagonia project has collaborated over the past eight years with the UACH’s Austral Patagonia Program (ProAP) to enhance the standards of protected areas in Chilean Patagonia.
“ProAP has assisted Conaf in improving processes, capacities, staff training, and tools for the effective management of terrestrial and marine protected areas in Patagonia, in line with Chile's commitment to the Convention on Biological Diversity,” Pew said. “These collaboration agreements do not establish control obligations or decision-making authority over the management of protected areas, a role that legally falls under Conaf.”
In turn, UACH said it has collaborated with Conaf for decades, making available its scientists and technical capabilities to solve multiple issues related to nature conservation, protected area management, ecosystem services, forest production, fire control, and public policies.
“The Pew-funded UACH Austral Patagonia Program has collaborated in generating and transferring new knowledge with the goal of strengthening and improving the management of Patagonia's wildlife protected areas,” the university said. “Technically managing vast extensions of new and existing protected territory … is a huge challenge for the country, and the UACH has targeted its scientific and technical capabilities to meet this challenge.”
The land in Kawésqar is already considered a national park and extends over 2.8 million hectares, making it the second-largest park in Chile. However, the coastal areas in the park are considered a national reserve – a designation that involves less protection than a national park. The Kawésqar National Reserve hosts 67 salmon-farming concessions, with an additional 80 concession requests currently pending, Odebret confirmed to SeafoodSource.
In 2022, National Geographic released a documentary advocating for the protection of the reserve's coastline from further commercial salmon-farming development. The creators of the film called for the reserve to be classified as a national park, which would effectively halt salmon farming in the area.
