The Challenge is to Stay Mobilized for Water Rights and the Protection of Nature and Communities

Original article: El desafío es seguir movilizados por el agua y los derechos de la naturaleza y de los pueblos

This Wednesday, March 11, 2026, we enter a new political phase with implications for the rights of peoples and Nature, in response to which, as a movement uniting socio-environmental organizations across the country, we declare:

We are facing an ecological and climate crisis worldwide, exacerbated by wars that currently even threaten people’s security. In Chile, we have witnessed this with the wildfires, which have left 21,800 people affected in the Biobío region alone this year. This is a systematic problem of a production and consumption model that prioritizes the profits of a few over Nature and people.

Despite the worsening climate crisis, capitalism and imperialist powers intensify plunder and violence to secure profits, while abandoning climate commitments and international law.

In Chile, privatization persists, with owners of water draining territories; extractivism is intensifying, and companies are given a ‘free pass’ to destroy without facing consequences.

Moreover, Chilean legislation has been weakened over the past four years by the outgoing government of Gabriel Boric, which pushed regressive laws allowing polluting projects to go unchecked in their impact assessments.

Now we face an incoming far-right government that promotes climate denialism, demonizes environmentalism, and fosters divisions between communities and workers to hand over the country to businessmen, who present themselves as ‘the great promoters of progress’.

However, in reality, that ‘progress’ translates to the destruction of Nature, local economies, and deteriorating public health.

In response, the challenge is to continue the ecological defense more united and organized than ever, learn from the solutions to the crisis that emerge from local territories, and strengthen the historical power of the Chilean social and environmental movement.

Defending the de-privatization of natural common goods and their community management; food and energy sovereignty; the rights of Nature and animals; as well as ecological economies, are collective tasks.

For this reason, it is essential to mobilize this Sunday, March 22, World Water Day, across all territories, so that we may raise one voice for Nature and the rights of peoples.

¡Resistance is built in community!

Movement for Water and Territories (MAT)