Bachelet’s new pro-dam energy minister has environmentalists on edge

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Santiago Times - While environmentalists and indigenous groups seemingly warmed to the appointment of incoming Environment Minister Pablo Badenier, President-elect Michelle Bachelet failed to escape criticism with her choice of business magnate and hydroelectric power advocate Máximo Pacheco Matte as energy minister Friday.
 
An economist and businessman, Pacheco’s resumé — scattered with stints in the oil and forestry industries — has sparked concern among environmentalists worried strong industry ties might compromise the statesman’s political integrity.
 
“Maximo Pacheco is an oil man — he’s worked for oil companies, for big forestry companies, for businesses that are damaging to the environment,” director of the environmental organization Acción Ecologico Luis Mariano Rendón told The Santiago Times.Rendón is among those concerned with Pacheco’s close familial ties to one of the nation’s wealthiest families, the Matte group, which has a large controlling interest in the highly controversial HidroAysén dam project which proposes to build a massive dam circuit in the Aysén Region of Chilean Patagonia.
 
“He’s connected with the very people spearheading the HidroAsyén dam project,” Rendón said. “It seems to me a tremendously dangerous sign that he is affiliated with controlling interests at HidroAysén.”
 
The Matte group is the largest shareholder — with 34.97 percent ownership — of the major electricity company Colbún S.A., currently controlling 15 percent of the nation’s electricity sector. Colbún has a 49 percent stake in HidroAysén.
 
Due to years of resistance from environmental and indigenous groups, concerned the project will destroy the area’s natural resources and impede on indigenous land holdings, the project is currently on hold, at least temporarily.
 
Sergio Millaman, leader of social activist group the Working Group for the Collective Rights of the Mapuche People, expressed his concern that Pacheco’s personal connection with private sector parties who stand to gain from HidroAysén might re-open the door for the currently stalled project.
 
“Pacheco is the son of a former minister who was closely linked to human rights,” he told The Santiago Times, referencing Máximo Pacheco Gómez, former education minister under President Eduardo Frei and co-founder of the Chilean Commission for Human Rights. “But we don’t know how closely linked he will be with the Matte group, which is behind HidroAysén. By looking at his resumé as a business manager, we can see that there is the potential for an executive business interest, promoting investment projects solely to promote business and investment in energy, at any cost.”
 
In the same line, Stephen Hall — director of Sustainable Energy Ltd., a Chilean-based consulting firm specializing in energy efficiency and renewable energy and blogger for The Santiago Times — said that Pacheco’s close business and family ties with proponents of the conventional energy sector could suggest “sector sympathies” that may stand in the way of non-conventional renewable energy projects.  Read more..
 
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