Chile - The environmental fight starts in your neighborhood

A working-class neighborhood on the outskirts of the capital, which stood united against the dictatorship of General Augusto Pinochet in the 1970s and 1980s and today is doing so against climate change, is launching the country's first "ecobarrio" project. "An ecobarrio (eco-neighborhood) is a place where people voluntarily join forces to revamp human relations and take ownership of public space in order to improve the environment and quality of life," explained Luis Márquez, president of the Ceibo Cultural, Social and Environmental Center, in the Villa Cuatro Álamos neighborhood, located in the municipality of Maipú. Maipú, Chile's second most populous municipality, is situated on the west side of Santiago. In 2003, the Villa Cuatro Álamos neighborhood began a process of ecological transformation. Three years later, when a landscaping student approached the community as part of her graduate thesis, it took on the guise of an "ecobarrio". "We are in the process of creating the first ecobarrio in Chile," Márquez told this reporter. The project is constantly evolving and is borrowing some ideas from similar efforts in Europe.