📋 Tender Overview
The legislators reviewed the writings approved in the first and second process, as well as a proposal by the Executive. After that - majority - they determined that the current CONAF has the technical competences to evaluate the soils. To the lower house room, the report of the mixed commission in charge of settling the discrepancies between parliamentarians regarding the project that creates the National Forest Service (Sernafor) is directed. This after, in the last session, its members would reach an agreement. It should be remembered that the new institutionality will have a decentralized character, will have its own legal personality and heritage, and will be subject to the supervigilance of the President of the Republic, through the Ministry of Agriculture. In practice it will be the continuator and successor of the National Forest Corporation (CONAF). The SERNAFOR will have as its purpose the protection, promotion, conservation, preservation, recovery, restoration and management and regulation of sustainable use of forests and other vegetational formations of the country and the components of nature associated with these, as well as the development of new forests and other formations in preferably forestry aptitude soils. Mixed in the Mixed Commission, the Senators and Deputies agreed to maintain the wording of the Senate, that is, ensure that the new service has the attribution of issuing previous and binding reports when it comes to declaring an area as a degraded one, a threatened ecosystem and dictating ecological restoration management plans, such as other functions in terms of conservation. In the lower house that point was rejected and in this third procedure, the Executive proposed to deliver to the Biodiversity and Protected Areas (SBAP) said supervigilance. In the March 25 session, the Minister of Agriculture, Esteban Valenzuela and the Subrogant Minister of Environment, Maximiliano Proano detailed a new alternative to literal g) of article 4: It will correspond to the service: issue prior report for the declaration of degraded areas and binding report for the elaboration of management plans for the preservation of threatened ecosystems when the exercise of said attributions falls on matters service competition . This wording was rejected with 7 votes against and 2 in favor; While it was approved with 7 votes in favor and 2 against, the text of the Senate that indicates: It will be up to the service: to issue a previous report for the declaration of degraded areas, as well as for the declaration of management areas for the conservation of threatened ecosystems and ecological restoration, when the exercise of said competencies falls on matters that are subject to the service, which will be binding. If this wording is approved in the rooms of both chambers, the project is in a position to be promulgated as a law, which, with a favorable report of the Sernafor, a land may be declared degraded. This is justified in the fact that CONAF has the technical competences to evaluate the soils, so its opinion should be decisive in decision making. Arguments When arguing the vote, Senator Carmen Gloria Aravena raised her fear that the proposal of the Executive, ends up transforming the Ministry of Environment into a supraservice while Senator Jose Miguel Durana commented that I do not agree that the service is governed by the SBAP (...) In addition, I see that the expertise of the workers of the CONAF was not thought of. Along the same lines, Senator Alejandra Sepulveda showed that the regulation of this law will have to be very thorough. When defining an area as degraded, we will have the Ministries of Agriculture, Environment and Economy, and I think you have to give attributions to which the expertise really has. Meanwhile, Senators Gaston Saavedra and Rafael Prohens agreed that what should be discussed in the previous session that is nothing more than support the writing of the Senate.
