The campaign run-up to Chile’s Dec. 11 presidential election has featured energetic debate on a range of issues, including crime, unemployment and the continuing chasm here between rich and poor. But environmental questions also have gotten attention—far more, experts say, than in any presidential campaign in Chile’s history. Candidates have staked out positions on such questions as strengthening environmental enforcement, reforming the nation’s lead environmental agency and tightening the permitting process for industrial plants. They’ve also cited specific development controversies—most notably, an ongoing one involving the Celco pulp plant near Valdivia and its alleged contamination of a wetland reserve. (See Around the Region—this issue.) Green advocates say that while environmental questions did surface in previous presidential races, discussion of them this... [Log in to read more]