March 12, 2024
*Lee la entrevista en español aquí.
We spoke with Macarena Martinic, Coordinator of the Empowerment and Public Participation team at Fiscalía del Medio Ambiente (ONG FIMA), to discuss the participatory action research this NGO has been conducting since 2023. In this interview, Macarena reflects on the key lessons they’ve learned and shares how they plan to turn research into tangible actions that support the territorial and environmental defence efforts of Indigenous communities and civil society organisations. She also highlights how these efforts will shape ONG FIMA’s own initiatives, as well as its policy impact.
For years, ONG FIMA has been developing legal empowerment strategies in collaboration with the Kawésqar communities who are committed to protecting the sea and with local civil society groups, all impacted by the salmon farming industry in the Magallanes region of Chile. Now, the organisation is exploring ways to replicate these strategies to address emerging challenges in the region, such as the expansion of the green hydrogen industry.
Our conversation initially centred on the participatory action research initiatives that ONG FIMA is currently developing to improve both its internal practices and the support it provides. We discussed an internal manual that systematises the legal empowerment tools the organisation has been refining over recent years, and an external manual that has helped ONG FIMA assess the impact of its territorial defence work with the Kawésqar communities and civil society organisations in the region. This external manual is currently in the process of being validated.
We then shifted to the political advocacy processes in the region that ONG FIMA has been involved in and hopes to continue in 2024. Macarena shared insights into the materials and actions that have been used to influence these processes, along with the anticipated short- and medium-term impacts. Specifically, we explored two key advocacy initiatives:
To wrap up, we asked Macarena to reflect on the overall experience of conducting a participatory action research project, the lessons learned from the process and how these insights will influence ONG FIMA’s work moving forward.
We’re in the process of systematising the legal empowerment tools we’ve developed over the past few years and evaluating their impact, with the aim of creating an internal manual. We’ve established a methodology for gathering information, which we’re just beginning to implement. This involves conducting interviews with members of ONG FIMA, a couple of which we’ve already completed. There are still more to come, including focus groups with the legal empowerment team and a full systematisation of the legal, judicial and administrative activities and other actions that we’ve implemented with the communities.
In 2023, we developed an external manual documenting our legal empowerment experience in the Magallanes region. This helps us consolidate preliminary information such as interviews with women defenders, including both female Kawésqar leaders and women from civil society organisations, as well as focus groups with Kawésqar communities. We’ve already gathered this information, and it has proven to be extremely valuable.
Well, on the one hand, we want to understand ONG FIMA’s role in the processes of legal empowerment focused on defending the territory. We want to understand the extent to which ONG FIMA contributes or doesn’t contribute and integrate this understanding into the way we work. It’s important for us to recognise our limitations, especially as we aim to incorporate this knowledge in the wat we work with communities. Therefore, identifying which approaches don’t serve us is just as useful.
We also want to pinpoint the limitations of legal approaches or legal support. Where can territorial processes benefit from other approaches or methods of work where ONG FIMA may not be directly involved? Perhaps we can contribute by building networks from the start or collaborating with other organisations.
Additionally, we’re looking to evaluate the tools we’ve used. Which ones have been the most beneficial for the communities in defending their territories, and which haven’t? We also want to explore which practices surrounding these tools have been the most successful. There’s a certain established way we teach or deliver these tools, but we need to ask ourselves: how well has this method really served the communities?
In the report (external manual), which can be downloaded here and compiles the interviews and focus groups, one of the key findings is that ONG FIMA’s work is a vital support for Kawésqar women, with effects that extend beyond the processes we support. The legal empowerment process has even benefited them on a personal level, and it has improved their interactions with state institutions. It shows that our work truly helps and is not in vain.
One of the early outcomes we are already acting on relates to citizen participation in the Environmental Impact Assessment System and strategic litigation. So, these empowerment tools are proving to be powerful mobilisers. And this is something we are currently applying through the Hydrogen Citizen Panel in Magallanes.
Another key point I’d love to have on the record is the creation of a new empowerment and public participation team within ONG FIMA, which will be shaped by this internal product [manual]. This also connects at an organisational level. We’ve become more aware of the legal aspects of our work and are now paying much closer attention to who we are engaging with, to who is actually receiving the benefits of our legal empowerment efforts.
This is a question we’ve considered multiple times in our project meetings. At this stage, we’re cautious about committing to specific dissemination plans because we’re still unsure of the results and whether we’ll be handling sensitive information. We also need to assess whether there are elements that require further development before sharing.
However, we are open to the idea of creating other types of materials from the manual. For instance, we might produce infographics highlighting key aspects of the manual to share our insights with other communities and organisations that could benefit. A note or column could also be an option. But in terms of the outcome of the manual itself, we have to wait to see the results.
On an organisational level, we plan to establish a reception methodology involving all areas of ONG FIMA. This would include using focus groups and gathering feedback on the manual. We aim to understand how each department can engage with the manual and consider a follow-up at the end of the year. We will finalise this second part in April.
Our target audience includes communities and organisations both within and beyond the region. The idea is for the manual to contribute to territorial defence efforts and support the efforts of organisations involved in these processes.
We have an event planned for May where various communities and organisations will discuss the tools they have found useful, and we hope to contribute with our manuals as well.
The report will also be shared with other communities engaged in defence processes, allowing them to benefit from this approach and these tools. Additionally, we plan to incorporate this report into future projects and share it with other communities and partners of ONG FIMA, so they can learn from our experiences and work method.
[Added in September 2024: Beyond the report, ONG FIMA also developed a podcast series called “Resistencia comunitaria frente a la salmonicultura en Magallanes” (community resistance in the face of salmon farming in Magallanes) which shares stories and perspectives of women environmental defenders in Magallanes. The podcast is in Spanish and can be accessed here.]
I anticipate two main outcomes from the internal manual. First, I hope that legal empowerment will become a cross-cutting approach across all areas of ONG FIMA. This will enable us to contribute to and strengthen the legal empowerment processes carried out by other departments, which is a goal we didn’t have when we launched the project.
In the third year of this project, we aim to test this manual with other communities facing different conflicts. I don’t know if this would involve starting a new legal empowerment process with another community, whether in another region or within Magallanes itself, and applying the methodology and tools developed in the manual. Ideally, another community would adopt this approach and begin their own legal empowerment journey, fully understanding the approach from the start.
We also hope that it will help communities to be more aware and prepared to start a legal empowerment process, and to understand that they are going to address their territorial defence process with us from this perspective. This is a new approach for us.
Additionally, it would be really positive for other organisations in Chile to adopt this working method. I don’t know whether this will happen through social media, direct inquiries, or potential mentoring from ONG FIMA. That would also be great, but it wasn’t initially part of the project.
Beyond that, if some decision-maker out there starts talking about legal empowerment, then I’m out.
But, joking aside, thinking about it isn’t so far-fetched, with the Ministry of Justice in charge of the COMJIB line, which already incorporated legal empowerment into the Ibero-American Convention on Access to Justice. So, it’s possible.
Since around 2020, Chile’s public debate on energy transition has introduced a new and little-discussed aspect: the country’s potential to become a leader in the production and export of “green hydrogen” (H2V). This type of industrial hydrogen is generated through electrolysis using exclusively renewable energy sources. The arrival of this industry has sparked a clash of narratives. While some view H2V as crucial for achieving Chile’s energy transition goals, others see it as a potential deviation from the climate and energy strategies that the country has adopted in recent years and the environmental and climate justice that these agendas demand. Locally, the news about this industry have translated into considerable uncertainty about the impact of the green hydrogen industry.
However, the narrative adopted to kick-start the industry is not the only issue. The planned scale of the industry further complicates matters. According to a study by the Ministry of Energy to calculate the wind potential of the region, Magallanes alone could potentially meet 13% of the world’s H2V demand, which would exceed by 7 times the current generation capacity of the entire national electricity grid.
ONG FIMA has been supporting legal empowerment and territorial defence processes in Magallanes since 2016. Building on this work, we are assisting both local communities that we have already worked with and new actors in the region to address the main risks associated with the rapid expansion of this industry: significant synergistic impacts from multiple projects in the same territory, each involving a complex value chain to be considered (desalination, generation, electrolysis, storage, transport and export). This is compounded by inadequate and outdated environmental regulations, limited access to information and public participation in decision-making and a lack of land-use planning instruments in the priority regions, especially in rural areas where there are plans to build infrastructure.
In this context, we are working with the Hydrogen Citizen Panel in Magallanes, an initiative formed by local citizens and civil society organisations. This coalition, while not formally structured as an organisation, aims to monitor and propose measures regarding the green hydrogen industry’s development in the region.
As ONG FIMA we are invited to participate in this panel as an advisor, providing support in both legal empowerment and direct advocacy actions. Our main job is to attend regular monthly meetings, where we offer legal advice to the panel on any issues that arise. Together, as a group, we also provide advice to others as needed.
Together with the Citizen Panel, we provided observations on the National Green Hydrogen Action plan during a public consultation phase. These comments were shared back in January of this year [2024] and were submitted to the Ministry of Energy, if I’m not mistaken, which was the body responsible for the consultation.
The aim is to ensure that the national green hydrogen policy considers the communities affected by the green hydrogen industry, land-use planning guidelines, more opportunities for public participation in shaping the industry, and Indigenous consultations concerning green hydrogen projects. We also monitored the application of the Escazú Agreement guidelines within the policy. We expect that the Agreement’s standards will be taken into consideration more. It’s worth noting that this consultation was not binding, but the authorities are required to consider the observations. We will follow up with access-to-information requests.
In our advisory role to the Citizen Panel, we are also working to provide legal tools based on the research we’ve done into what is most effective. For example, we recently conducted a workshop on how to present citizen observations on projects entering the Environmental Impact Assessment System. Our role there was to explain how these observations are made (based on our experience of submitting observations on salmon farming projects) and apply it to new hydrogen projects that are coming up, like the “Cabo Negro” project. The workshop was well-received, evidenced by how the public participation process for this project closed on 24 January with 288 comments from 42 members of civil society.
ONG FIMA has also produced an environmental policy brief that expands on our observations with the Citizen Panel on the National Green Hydrogen Action Plan, but it’s more detailed and goes deeper. It covers both the experiences of the Citizen Panel and our own policy analysis to explore, for example, whether green hydrogen is truly part of the energy transition in Magallanes or not.
The audiences for this brief is more unclear because we share them broadly through our social media channels. Nationally, they’re seen by environmental organisations, local communities, citizens. Decision-makers are involved, too. We’re also holding lobbying meetings, with the idea of using this brief in those discussions as well.
One of what we think is the most important counter-narratives we’re developing around green hydrogen challenges is whether green hydrogen is truly a step in the energy transition, as it’s often framed. In reality, it’s not that Magallanes or Chile is transitioning to cleaner energy; it’s more about productive growth. Our goal here is to use this counter-narrative to push back against the dominant energy transition and green hydrogen narrative, which is being promoted by the Ministry of Energy, the Ministry of Economy and the regional government of Magallanes.
In May, ONG FIMA will be hosting an in-person meeting to bring together different organisations to share experiences. We’ll be presenting our legal empowerment process as a tool, and the Citizen Panel will contribute with insights on how it has benefited them. We also plan to document the meeting and record interviews with the participants, which we can use to produce materials. We’d also like to use it to systematize or put together a report about the tools shared. We’d also like to come out of this meeting with an analysis of what the different industries in the Magallanes region have in common.
One of our goals is to raise awareness of our legal empowerment tool, so that other organisations dealing with different challenges in the region can adopt it, learning from our work with salmon farming. Another goal is to foster the exchange of tools and strategies between organisations facing different threats. A broader objective is to extend this analysis to identify the common ground shared by these different threats in Magallanes. Because there’s a sense that Magallanes has become a testing ground for industries being introduced to Chile, starting with livestock in the past, then coal, salmon farming, and now green hydrogen. It is about acknowledging that we are sharing these tools because we are in this territory which is the focus of the industrialisation of the region, and as citizens we are discussing how to address it.
We also want to keep the Escazú Agreement in focus. There are other organisations that have used it more. We’re working with another organisation that’s exploring the links between business and human rights. There will be a lot of knowledge sharing, but the idea is to share the core message that we’re all here in Magallanes, coming together from different places to face different threats.
The zoning process in Magallanes is about determining land use in the region, led by the regional government. They’ve already submitted a proposal, which is now under review by the Ministry of Environment as part of a strategic environmental assessment. Last year, workshops were held to define land use and compatibility. There will soon be another public consultation, where we’ll learn what the regional government has decided in response to the report on land use, and we hope to make an impact.
Meanwhile, the national policy on coastal land use is a guiding framework that provides general national guidelines on how coastal areas should be used. We submitted our observations on this policy in February, but I’m not sure when it will be finalised and shared with the public.
We’ve produced a number of materials. We published an opinion piece, worked alongside the Kawésqar communities, held workshops with the community, conducted lobbying meetings to present our requests, and submitted observations on both the national policy and the regional zoning plan.
We didn’t initially expect it, but the observations made were based on the information we collected for the external manual. Mainly, the participatory mapping and focus groups. We also used this data to submit observations on the national policy for coastal land use.
From these meetings and our work with the communities, some interesting reflections emerged. For instance, we the importance of holding an Indigenous consultation and ensuring that the proposed land uses are genuinely taken into account. During a lobbying meeting with the regional governor, it became clear that they didn’t view this process as binding.
In both cases, there’s a strong need to strengthen land-use planning as a tool to confront industrial threats. Territorial planning can help decide what can and can’t be done, which directly impacts the threats posed by salmon farming and green hydrogen projects.
What we have highlighted and continue to highlight through our materials is the lack of comprehensive land-use planning here. We need clear guidelines on which areas should be protected, where production can take place, and how it should be done. This includes reinforcing land-use rights for Indigenous communities and defining the limits in those areas. Land-use planning is central to addressing the threats facing the region, as currently there is no effective territorial strategy in place. We also hope that the realities of the Kawésqar communities will be recognised in these planning processes, ensuring that their voices are heard and that there’s space for Indigenous consultation. One of our main demands is for ECMPO (Coastal Spaces of Indigenous Peoples) to be included in the land-use planning framework.
We hope the Agreement will serve as another tool to present at the meeting in May. We’ve also been holding town meetings in Magallanes for people to provide observations on the implementation plan of the Escazú Agreement. We did this in collaboration with the National Institute of Human Rights (INDH). The idea is that these agreements may be presented at the meeting, but this is still under evaluation, since we’ve already got a lot going on.
The Escazú Agreement was especially useful when making observations to the green hydrogen plan and in outlining a roadmap for advocacy actions in general. As a product in itself, it could also be an environmental policy brief, particularly in terms of how the standards of the Agreement should be applied. It’s an opportunity to set baseline standards for communities that often bear the brunt of environmental burdens, ensuring they are considered in territorial decision-making processes.
Honestly, it’s been quite a challenge because we hadn’t previously conducted research that included communities from the start. Nor had we engaged with communities through the research process itself. Our approach with them was much easier, because we always offered a great product; free legal advice, for instance. This time, working through the research has shifted that dynamic in a positive way.
There are many precautions and considerations when working on an equal level with communities that we’ve had to address. Even when providing legal advice, however equal it may be and however equal we want it to be, the relationship is honestly never fully symmetrical because, at the end of the day, it’s us lawyers who execute the legal strategy. With research, you’re taking up their time without necessarily offering immediate results that they can project onto their territorial defence.
But this experience has been really valuable for us in terms of designing new research projects for our research area. It hasn’t been easy; honestly, I was used to working from a different perspective. The goal has been to understand what research looks like for them, with them, and how we can involve them right from the start. It’s definitely more time-consuming for them than receiving legal advice, and that’s another challenge. Because of that, I wouldn’t apply participatory action research with every community we work with. Still, this process has deepened our work in Magallanes in an incredible way. It’s allowed us to think more about where we’re heading, rather than simply reacting to urgent issues. It has deepened our efforts in the region, and for that, it’s absolutely worth it.