The Youth Charter of Responsibilities on the Environment - Chile

The Charter of Responsibilities of the Children of Chile to the Environment and Climate Change has been finalized, drafted from the logs of the National Conference of Children of Chile "Let’s Take Care of Chile" carried out in Santiago de Chile this past December 16 (International Confint Brasilia 2010).

For a detailed report on all the CONFINT Chile process toward the international CONFINT Brasilia 2010, see our blog.

by Ricardo Jiménez, National Organizing Committee - CON

The Charter

CHARTER OF RESPONSIBILITIES OF THE CHILDREN OF CHILE
RESPECT TO THE ENVIRONMENT AND THE CLIMATIC CHANGE

We, children of Chile, between twelve and fifteen years of age, representatives of the diverse regions of the country, who we have realized the Conference Children Chile: Responsibilities respect to the climatic change, living the environmental responsibility in the school.

After having debated on the environment and the climatic change in our schools all over the country, and of we has elected a responsibility, an action and a representative.

Together with the adults who accompany us: teachers; friends of the National Commission of the Environment - CONAMA of the Government of Chile; and friends of the civil society.

We are in Santiago of Chile, the capital city, to exchange and to debate, under the slogan: "We are going to take care of Chile". And to make come to all the children and adults of Chile and the world, our feelings, ideas and words.

WE MAKE OURSELVES RESPONSIBLES OF CHANGING MENTALITY TO SEE MORE

The care of the environment demands a change of mentality, another way of thinking, of looking and doing the things. Not only of saying. For example, in the commune of Graneros, in the center of Chile, his slogan is a "Cradle of tradition and culture". We, now we say: "Cradle of tradition and culture of the environment".

To change the mentality makes us freer because we see more. Before when we were looking at a tree only we saw it, if we were looking at a bee only we saw a simple insect. Now, on having looked at a plant, we see his function, see all a contribution that forms a part of the chain of the life of wich we also are a part.

Our responsibility is to be able to see increasingly and do that the adults listen to us in order that they also see more.

WE MAKE OURSELVES RESPONSIBLES OF SPEAKING TO WHOM THEY HAVE MORE POWER IN ORDER THAT THEY LISTEN US AND SEE MORE

Those that they govern, in order that the environment has rights and is defended those who for ignorance and ambition damage it. In order that they teach us to see more in the schools, in order that they help our teachers to teach ourselves to see more, in all the levels of the school.

To the owners of the industries in order that they look for manners of not damaging the planet in his business. To the owners of the mass media in order that they teach to see more and not less. That waste and badly use of the things is not "growth" nor "wealth", but an aggression against all us themselves, specially to us the children.

WE MAKE OURSELVES RESPONSIBLES OF MAKING UNDERSTAND

Many people continue believing that is not a problem the climatic change, that the climatic change is going to exist anyway. That the planet is infinite and they can extract of it everything what they want. It is our responsibility to make them see more in order that all we can survive.

We make ourselves responsibles of making understand that the human beings we are accelerated increasingly the climatic change generating big dangers. That the planet ends its resources and we us will finish with them. For example, a great part of the bees of the world is disappearing, and with them a great part of our food, because they are the bees those that sow the pollen of flowers and plants to reproduce them.

Many people worry about the climatic change only because it affects his consumption and his life. But we know that we do not have right to attack to the planet, taking what gives us the desire. We must learn to not waste and badly to use the things.

Fight for the planet is love. The environmental education is love. Love to the planet, love to the children, love to all the persons. The environment is alive, feels, has rights, must be loved.

WE MAKE OURSELVES RESPONSIBLES OF LOOKING FOR BALANCES AND TO ADAPT

To the excesses of heat and of cold, to the allergies that now come in other epochs, to the changes of agricultural products, and of the traditions of work in the field and the regions. The vineyards of grapes are changing from the north in the southern of the country. It changes the color and flavor of the fruit. The greenhouses are constructed before or after what they were done always.

WE MAKE OURSELVES RESPONSIBLES OF A NEW CULTURE OF THE WATER

The Chilean sea diminishes for excessive evaporation every year, increases its percentage of salt killing or making emigrate to many fish as the Horse mackerel. In Macul’s gully, near Santiago, the water is every year visibly scantier. In the south of Chile, in the lagoon of the Laja there was no snow in August like always, if not in November.

More in the southern part, the glaciers of ice that are the water reserves, are increasingly far, melt, they move back thirty meters each year. This way it happens in Balmaceda and Serrano in Magallanes, and in everything the Antarctic. In Punta Arenas, the temperature reached the double in eight years and reaches thirty centigrade degrees. Before there was great snow, the children of before had the tradition of doing dolls with it, there were contests; today scarcely covers us the sole of the shoes.

We say new culture of the water because it is not enough to say only that it is necessary to take care of the water. In the chain of the life where everything is joined, it is necessary to take care of everything to take care of the water. For example, a kilo of meat needs fifteen thousand liters of water to be produced, that is like to leave a shower of warm opened water four hours. And Chile consumes increasingly meat. For that reason, we assume the responsibility of doing campaigns to eat less meat, though it is two days a week.

We do campaigns in order that the whole community checks, detect and end with the water filterings in houses and schools.

We develop a system that by means of height differences takes advantage of the gravit force to re-use the water already occupied in the wash basins, now also in the waterclosets. And channels and special reservoirs that gather the water rain for re- use in baths and in the irrigation of gardens, proposing that they should be included in the housings and schools that are constructed in the future.

WE MAKE OURSELVES RESPONSIBLES OF NEW NOT POLLUTANT ENERGIES

In Chile, fifty percent of energy is produced burning oil or coal, which highly pollutant gases liberate. While there are failed to take advantage fountains of not pollutant energies. For that reason, we realize campaigns to install systems that store the solar light to generate night light, doing that " the Sun us illuminates by night" as in Alto Hospicio in the north of Chile. And in order that into all the houses and schools the current spotlights change for others of high efficiency and energetic saving.

WE MAKE OURSELVES RESPONSIBLES OF CLEANING AND PRESERVING OF THE AIR AND LAND

Planting the plant of the Quillay, which avoids the erosion and enriches the land, on the south zone of the Bío Bío. Planting trees for the whole Peñalolén’s commune on Santiago. Realizing a campaign in order that there are burned neither the dry leaves of the trees nor the garbage. And to implement in Graneros, to the center of the country, the sologan:"Three R": to re-use, to reduce and to recycle, delivering in addition the resources obtained from the recycling to institutions of social help, to attack at the same time the inequality.