Coastal conflicts and community governance in southern Chile

Summary

In the territory I study, particularly Reloncaví Sound, the inland sea of Chiloé and the fjords and channels of northern Patagonia, the most significant transformation has been the growing intensification and overlap of uses of marine and coastal space.

What are currently the most significant changes in the relationships between the ocean, natural environments and societies in the territory you study? Which seem most consequential in the medium and long term?

In the territory I study, particularly Reloncaví Sound, the inland sea of Chiloé and the fjords and channels of northern Patagonia, the most significant transformation has been the growing intensification and overlap of uses of marine and coastal space. Expanding industrial salmon farming is one of the most consequential processes. This industry does not operate in isolation, however, but is connected with mussel farming, artisanal fishing, maritime transport, tourism, port infrastructure, conservation, property development and, more recently, various energy and connectivity projects.

This process began more than four decades ago, when southern Chile's coastal economies shifted from a structure based mainly on artisanal fishing, seaweed and shellfish gathering, family farming and livestock raising, and forestry extraction, towards a model dominated by industrial aquaculture, particularly salmon farming. This reconfiguration has altered territorial relationships, labour markets and the social structures of coastal communities, creating new economic dependencies and greater exposure to disease, environmental and climate crises. The coast ceased to be understood as a space of mobility, subsistence, exchange and cultural reproduction, progressively becoming a platform for intensive production, regulated through concessions and connected to global export chains.

Salmon farming, for example, does not merely occupy marine space through aquaculture concessions. It also changes landscapes, navigation routes, labour relationships, ways of life and the criteria by which territory is valued. In a forthcoming study, we identified the main coastal conflicts in the Los Lagos Region over the past twenty years, 2005-2025: salmon farming is involved, directly or alongside other sectors, in 10 of the 17 cases analysed. It is therefore an activity that generates controversy in southern Chile's coastal territories.

Regarding the most consequential medium- and long-term transformations, I identify at least five processes. First, the consolidation of a coastal economy dependent on extractive and export-oriented activities. Second, the accumulation of impacts on fragile social-ecological systems. Third, institutional fragmentation in governance, resulting from the coexistence of different regulatory instruments and sectoral bodies that do not always coordinate. Fourth, growing exposure to climate change, expressed through water scarcity, erosion, flooding and impacts on fishing and aquaculture. Fifth, a dimension I consider fundamental: the emergence of new forms of organisation, participation and knowledge production within coastal communities.

The coast's future is therefore not determined solely by the expansion of maritime industries. It is also contested through territorial memories, community sensibilities, Indigenous rights, sustainable artisanal fishing, conservation initiatives and proposals for productive diversification.

How do these changes redistribute vulnerabilities, resources and land uses? Which groups, activities or ecosystems benefit, which become more exposed, and what trade-offs or conflicts result?

These transformations redistribute resources, vulnerabilities and decision-making capacity over coastal territories unequally. It is no surprise that larger companies have financial capital, technical capabilities, legal teams and privileged access to institutional arenas. Local communities, by contrast, possess territorial legitimacy, ecological knowledge and mobilisation capacity, but face greater constraints on influencing public decisions consistently.

Maritime industrial activities can generate jobs, infrastructure and economic dynamism, but benefits do not necessarily remain in the territories where they are produced. Several coastal communities feel they bear the development model's social and environmental costs without always capturing added value or translating the wealth produced into better services, education, connectivity or local well-being.

The most exposed groups are therefore artisanal fishing communities, Indigenous peoples in southern Chile, rural and island communities, shoreline gatherers, workers in vulnerable productive activities and residents of territories where infrastructure and pollution sources accumulate. For groups directly dependent on the "good health" of the coastal ecosystem, such as artisanal fishers, changes in water quality, restrictions on navigation, occupation of fishing grounds or deteriorating landscapes affect more than income or working conditions at sea: they alter ways and practices of life.

Major recent crises in southern Chile, such as the ISA virus crisis of 2007-2009 and the Mayo Chilote protests of 2016, clearly show that coastal social-ecological vulnerability involves more than large-scale job losses and harm to local productive sectors. These crises also express a loss of trust in institutions and a sense of injustice about the distribution of environmental burdens and state decisions. They reveal that communities are exposed not only to environmental impacts but also to the disease-related and economic volatility of an export model.

Ecosystems are consequently exposed to cumulative impacts. Some highly industrialised parts of Reloncaví Sound, such as San José in Calbuco and Chinquihue in Puerto Montt, have been analysed as potential "sacrifice zones" because of the scale and concentration of impacts on health, landscape and quality of life. Another example is Comau Fjord, where several studies record problems involving organic matter, hypoxia, harmful algal blooms and marine wildlife mortality. These events should not be understood exclusively as isolated accidents. In some contexts, they may express the foreseeable consequences of a model that intensifies production without sufficient consideration of carrying capacity in fragile and/or vulnerable ecosystems.

The resulting conflicts are distributive, but also cultural and political. They concern who can use space, who defines acceptable risks, which activities should take priority and whose knowledge is considered valid. Tensions between coastal communities in general and aquaculture, for example, cannot be reduced to competition for a few more or fewer square metres of sea. They involve different ways of valuing the ocean: as a space for intensive production, a commons, an ancestral territory, a fragile ecosystem, or a place of memory and social reproduction.

Drawing on your fieldwork and research, which idea or experience that remains insufficiently heard should, in your view, contribute more to international debates and public action on the ocean, nature and societies?

One insufficiently heard idea is that coastal territories are not merely places where resources, economic activities or vulnerable ecosystems are located. In confronting the problems and conflicts affecting them, their communities defend ways of life, memories, relationships of care and modes of inhabiting that cannot be fully translated into the language of concessions, productivity or economic growth.

In one study, we proposed the notion of territorial sensibilities to understand this dimension. It refers to the set of social and emotional meanings, valuations, perceptions and representations through which communities interpret territory and the conflicts affecting it. This category helps explain that mobilisation does not arise solely from rational calculations of costs and benefits. We must also ask why infrastructure, a concession or an access restriction can trigger collective reaction even before conclusive technical evidence of harm exists.

A second idea that should contribute more to international debates is that coastal conflict must be analysed as a struggle over access to, control over and the meaning of the maritorio. This concept overcomes the rigid separation between land and sea, since coastal communities do not experience the ocean as independent of terrestrial territory. Conflict is therefore neither solely environmental nor exclusively distributive. It also concerns what territory exists, who can define it, whose knowledge is legitimate and what future is desirable. In the conflicts we have documented in southern Chile, rights related to territory and natural resources, biodiversity, a pollution-free environment, health, water, participation, public information, cultural identity and decent working conditions are affected. An ocean policy limited to protecting ecosystems without addressing rights, work, participation and cultural recognition will therefore be incomplete.

Finally, co-producing knowledge with social actors in coastal territories should have a more prominent place in international debates. Participation must not be limited to requesting local information to complete assessments already prepared by experts. Communities should help define problems, interpret information, develop alternatives and discuss how results are used.

Although knowledge co-production offers valuable experience, it must be understood critically. For example, participatory mapping exercises within a citizen science project for Reloncaví Sound revealed differences between institutional and territorial rationalities. Municipal officials tended to represent a productive space that could be regulated, while social actors included watersheds, navigation routes, memories, heritage sites, wetlands and ways of life. The value of these processes lies not in producing artificial consensus, but in making visible differences that governance often conceals.

How do fishing communities in southern Chile define coastal territory, and where does their definition differ from that used by the state or economic actors?

Fishing communities in southern Chile define the coast as a relational territory connecting land and sea. They do not experience it as a dividing line between two surfaces, but as an ecological, economic, cultural and emotional continuum. Reloncaví Sound and the inland sea of Chiloé, for example, support a shoreline economic culture combining fishing, shoreline gathering, family agriculture, animal husbandry, handicrafts, navigation and exchange. These practices depend on tides, weather and seasonal resources, and have historically sustained household food provision and economies.

This community understanding of coastal territory therefore differs from the state's perspective, which tends to fragment space through administrative boundaries, concessions, sectoral categories and management units. The state may distinguish aquaculture areas, fishing coves, management areas, conservation spaces, port zones and Indigenous territories. Each category serves a legal or administrative function necessary to regulate this space, but their sum does not always represent the territorial experience of coastal inhabitants.

Economic actors, in turn, tend to understand the coast as a productive or logistical location, or a site available for concession. The sea appears as an investment surface, a support for infrastructure or a production space. From this rationality, activities can be assessed through indicators of profitability, employment, exports and efficiency.

Ultimately, for fishing communities, the maritorio includes everything that makes coastal life possible. Water quality depends on watersheds; fishing on connected ecosystems; mobility on maritime and terrestrial routes; and identity on continuity between places. Governance that considers only a delimited maritime space will therefore always be insufficient.

What conflicts arise when artisanal fishing, aquaculture, conservation and other productive uses coexist in the same coastal space?

When artisanal fishing, aquaculture, conservation and other productive uses share a space, conflicts do not arise only from physical overlap. They also emerge because each activity represents a different understanding of territory, development and the relationship between society and nature.

Artisanal fishing involves relatively mobile and flexible use of marine space, based on situated knowledge and historical practices. Industrial aquaculture, by contrast, requires permanent installations, concessions, infrastructure, transport routes and stable regulatory conditions. Conservation introduces other protection criteria, use limits and ecological priorities. Tourism and energy projects add new demands on landscapes, beaches, roads, ports and services. When all these activities concentrate in particular coastal spaces, coexistence is not automatic.

The coastal conflict study I mentioned documents 17 cases in six categories: major conflicts; disasters associated with aquaculture activities; fisheries conflicts; environmental pollution; megaprojects and infrastructure; and disputes over the use of and access to coastal and marine space. This demonstrates that coastal conflicts in southern Chile cannot be reduced to a single opposition between artisanal fishing and salmon farming, or, more recently, between Indigenous communities and salmon companies over applications for Espacios Costeros Marinos para Pueblos Originarios (ECMPO), Coastal Marine Spaces for Indigenous Peoples. There is a system of interconnected conflicts involving productive activities, infrastructure, territorial rights, conservation and work.

Salmon farming is nevertheless the main focus of tension. Documented cases involve salmon escapes, mass mortality, spills, sunken pontoons, seabed pollution, bad odours, landscape impacts and expanding farming sites. These impacts overlap with fishing, navigation, gathering, tourism and conservation areas.

ECMPOs add another dimension. These spaces recognise customary uses and Indigenous territorial rights, but their implementation can create tensions with artisanal fishers, aquaculture companies, municipalities and public agencies. Here, the debate extends beyond making activities compatible: it concerns who has the legitimacy to define uses of the sea, which relationships with territory should be recognised and how authority is distributed.

Conservation is not neutral either. A protection policy designed without participation can restrict traditional practices and reinforce a sense of dispossession. But conservation built from communities can strengthen territorial defence. When conservation grows from community self-assessment, dialogue and recognition of local knowledge, it can strengthen organisations' territorial capacity.

Conflicts also occur within communities. Dependence on salmon-farming jobs, expectations of employment, generational differences and the arrival of new residents can produce divergent positions. "The community" should therefore not be represented as a homogeneous actor. There are moderate sensibilities that accept the activity under strict conditions, more critical positions questioning its impacts, and positions rejecting the extractive model altogether.

These conflicts must consequently be understood through three inseparable dimensions: environmental, labour-related, and identity and culture. Ecosystem degradation can affect an economic activity; the loss of an activity can affect an identity; and employment dependence can limit the capacity to question an industry. These dimensions reinforce one another.

To what extent do current participation mechanisms allow fishers' perceptions and knowledge to genuinely influence decisions?

Current mechanisms allow fishers and coastal communities more generally to participate formally in decisions, but still do not guarantee substantive and binding influence. Many conflicts we have analysed relate precisely to information deficits, tokenistic forms of participation and a lack of institutional coordination.

In many cases, participation occurs after projects have already been designed and major decisions set in motion. Communities can submit observations, but cannot necessarily help define the problem, select alternatives or shape the final decision. An important problem, then, is that participation is often understood as information provision rather than a redistribution of power.

The asymmetry becomes evident when actors' capacities are compared. Large companies can hire lawyers, consultants, environmental specialists and communications teams. Communities possess local knowledge and territorial legitimacy, but often have to learn as they go how to read files, interpret regulations, file complaints, request information and go to court. In many cases studied, communities had to develop their own capacities to participate on more equal terms. This shows that participation is not spontaneous: it requires time, resources and organisational learning.

Litigation has become a common avenue for participation and defence. It has secured some favourable outcomes, but its effects are uneven. In some cases, courts have suspended projects or upheld sanctions; in others, proceedings are lengthy and do not change structural decisions. Litigation therefore often channels or cushions conflict rather than providing a path to profound transformation.

We consequently need to distinguish between consultative participation, participation that influences decisions, and binding participation. The first allows opinions to be expressed. The second requires those opinions to be considered and their acceptance or rejection justified. Binding participation requires communities to have effective capacity to influence decisions and project conditions. Consultative mechanisms or those with weak influence still predominate along Chile's coast. The challenge is to move towards procedures in which fishing and community knowledge is treated as relevant evidence and the way it has been integrated is made explicit.

What experiences of negotiation or local governance have reduced conflicts without obscuring power asymmetries between actors?

I would not speak of fully resolved conflicts, but of experiences that have increased the visibility of problems, strengthened community capacities and created more balanced conditions for deliberation. Metri provides a relevant example. The participatory work developed with Agrupación Monte Mar did not begin from the idea that all actors had equal power or that consensus was the natural outcome of dialogue. Rather, it began by recognising divergent interests, unequal capacities and different interpretations of the coast's future.

Other conflicts studied, such as Codihué, Lenca-Metri and Huelmo, show different forms of negotiation and action. In Codihué, an environmentalist position emerged that did not necessarily reject all salmon farming, but questioned business practices considered abusive or insufficiently transparent. This position can open space for negotiation if enforcement and compliance are guaranteed. In Huelmo, continuity in neighbourhood organisation sustained a prolonged defence of the territory, combining institutional complaints, clean-up activities, meetings, marches and signature campaigns.

In Lenca-Metri, coordination was broader and more confrontational. The Carretera Austral Sin Salmoneras network brought together organisations and individuals from different places, established working groups and promoted alliances with environmental organisations. This coordination increased pressure, made the conflict visible and helped trigger institutional action. At the same time, the experience showed the difficulty of sustaining a broad platform when internal inequalities, different leaderships and divergent goals and strategies exist.

The Mayo Chilote crisis offers another lesson. Mobilisation brought together unions, fishers, workers, communities and political actors. Its repertoire included blockades, work stoppages, port occupations, assemblies, community kitchens and supply networks. Self-management sustained the protest and expressed a community capacity that did not depend entirely on the state.

The BlueHUB Reloncaví platform, developed within a citizen science project, can complement these processes by facilitating access to territorial and socio-environmental information. A data platform, however, does not replace political deliberation or automatically redistribute power. Its potential depends on communities being able to use and interpret information and turn it into arguments for influencing decisions.

These experiences show that legitimate negotiation requires at least five conditions: explicitly recognising asymmetries; guaranteeing accessible, independent information; allowing adequate time for deliberation; enabling communities to develop their own proposals; and establishing monitoring mechanisms so agreements do not remain ineffective declarations.

Local governance must not be confused with delegating state responsibilities to communities. Local organisations can produce knowledge, monitoring and proposals, but the state must guarantee rights, enforcement and institutional conditions. Collaborative governance is democratic only when participation is not used to offload public obligations or legitimise decisions already made.

What institutional changes will be needed to advance towards coastal governance that is differentiated by territory and socially legitimate?

The first necessary change is to move from fragmented, sectoral regulation towards integrated coastal governance. The coast's different interests and impacts cannot be managed as separate matters. The absence of a comprehensive coastal planning instrument encourages overlapping uses and recurring conflicts. The state distributes responsibilities among different bodies, but effective mechanisms for coordination, prioritisation and joint response are not always in place. When salmon escape, a spill occurs or an environmental crisis develops, institutions often react through inspections, complaints and fines without necessarily reviewing the structural conditions that made the event possible.

Second, the maritime and aquaculture concession system needs reform. Allocating space cannot depend exclusively on sectoral, economic or technical-administrative criteria. Ecosystem carrying capacity, cumulative impacts, customary uses, Indigenous rights, artisanal fishing, heritage sites and communities' visions of development must be incorporated. In territories already concentrating multiple impacts, a precautionary principle should apply: further pressures should not be added until comprehensive assessments are available.

Third, public participation must occur early, influence decisions and, in some cases, be binding. Communities must be involved before projects are defined. They also need funding for independent technical advice, understandable information, legal support and the material conditions required to participate. Participation must include feedback processes and follow-up mechanisms.

Fourth, recognising the plurality of knowledge is fundamental. Knowledge held by fishers, shoreline gatherers, Indigenous communities and coastal inhabitants should not appear only as testimony supplementing scientific information. It should be integrated as knowledge relevant to identifying environmental changes, risks, valued places and historical trajectories. This requires protocols for knowledge co-production, sharing results back with participants, open access to information and protection against forms of epistemic extractivism.

Fifth, institutions must strengthen local capacities. Coastal municipalities need sufficient technical teams, resources, information and powers to participate in governing the maritorio. Communities likewise need support to sustain organisation, environmental monitoring and legal defence. Without this redistribution of capacities, decentralisation may become merely a transfer of responsibilities without effective power.

Finally, policies for a just transition are needed in territories dependent on extractive activities. Demanding productive transformation without considering family employment and income is unrealistic. But maintaining present dependence as the only option is equally unsustainable. Diversification should include technical and vocational education connected with the sea, stronger local economies, sustainable artisanal fishing, community-based tourism, conservation, ecological restoration and recognition of cultural heritage.

Ultimately, socially legitimate coastal governance must answer four questions: who defines the territory, whose knowledge is considered valid, how benefits and risks are distributed, and what effective capacity communities have to decide. Southern Chile's coast is neither homogeneous nor simply a support for investment. It is a plural maritorio, historically inhabited, ecologically vulnerable and politically contested. Recognising this condition is the starting point for building fairer, more sustainable and more democratic ocean policies.

Bibliographic information

Type

Article

Date

14 October 2026

Author

Nelson Alejandro Retamal Maldonado

Study Centre

ONS

Original language

English

Original document

PDF, 7 pages

Full text

Transcription of the original document

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