EL BOSQUE, Chile - Chilean protests have been going on since 2019 and have headed on into 2020. Protesters in the streets chant, "Chile is waking up," but Chile's centrist right government has made some concessions. They now say that they want to raise the minimum wage from $396 to $460, presented by President Sebastian Pinera. However, the secretary-general and leaders of Chile's Senate and House wanted to persuade him to throw out that bill and focus instead on the government's total structural reform. It is hard to foresee precisely which direction the country will progress forward with so many different viewpoints. With December 8, 2019's non-binding consultation showing that 92.4% voters want a new constitution and 73.1% want an all-citizen convention, voters are making voices heard loudly and adamantly. Violence between police and protesters has led to 11 deaths and thousands thrown in jail.

These clashes have been the government having to declare a "State of Emergency" as businesses are looted, and buses are burned. It would seem the people are staging their own unique drama as the world watches. With the country calling for curfew in major cities such as Santiago, the government is having to act strictly with shows of military force. The last time such force was used was at the Pinochet rule's close in the 1990s. The recent novel Coronavirus issue may be causing more issues in Chile. The people of Chilies are on edge over the food shortages that came about during lock down due to the Coronavirus. It seems that the government used water cannon and tear gas to quell a protest in a poverty-stricken area, El Bosque, Chile.

The government is not getting in line with the overall message of equal treatment for all Chileans regardless of economic status. Though the government said in a statement that they distributed over 2,000 aid packages, still the entire needs of the country and El Bosque could not be met. The mayor of the district in El Bosque, Sadi Melo, declared the situation "very complex" due to the clearly seen "hunger and lack of work." What other tolls has Coronavirus taken? Since being ordered to stay at home, it looks like some are going hungry. President Pinera said that aid would go mainly to "the most vulnerable families." Following that comment Felipe Guevera, the governor of the metropolitan area, tweeted in Spanish about the ongoing crisis: "I understand the deep anguish of millions of Chileans, thousands are starving." While making these comments, Guevera subsequently dismissed the disputed comments he had made about the protests in a televised broadcast. The civil unrest witnessed in Chile can be seen in various Latin American countries, such as Colombia, where people have begun draping red cloths out-of-doors to signal hunger.

The protests in Chile have been happening since the government announced it would raise metro fares in 2019. Let us hope the government can come to terms with the people's wants and needs before unforgivable violence occurs again. While the protests first started due to the raised metro fares, there were other issues at stakes, such as the high costs of health care, unequal handling of Chile's peoples, and unsatisfactory financing of education.

There was trouble brewing in Chiles' waters for a while before Santiago's metro fares resulted in protests. Besides calling necessary attention to Chiles' problems, another good thing that has come out of the protests is incredible street art. Graphic artist Oscar Nunez, who has played a lead role in protests since they began, goes by the name Mr. Owl. Mr. Owl's art moves violence aside and allows for a peaceful conversation to occur between onlookers. Says Nunez, "I started using the imagery of a military police officer in a peaceful yoga pose. It is ironic and fresh, but my favorite part is that other graffiti artists have put their own touches to that image," he says. It seems many long-awaited and much-needed changes and beauty will come out of the pain of Chile and their sometimes peaceful, sometimes violent clashes. Hopefully, the future holds the changes they the people wish to see.

Protests In Chile (npr.com)
In Chile, unresolved economic problems may lead to new protests (nbc.com)
Chile is preparing to rewrite its constitution. Why are people still protesting? (washingtonpost.com)
For many Chileans, U.S. demonstrations spark reminders of impassioned Chile protests (latimes.com)

CHILE, South America - Recent studies have shown that large-scale efforts to plant trees in lieu of deforestation can be massively harmful without proper execution. Improper reforestation reduces the biodiversity of an ecological environment, but it also often falls short with inaccurate estimations of how much carbon the new forests can absorb.

In 2019, a scientific article claimed that we had previously underestimated the amount of space available for artificial forests, which were capable of reducing carbon emissions by 25 percent. However, many scientists refuted this article, stating that the results were "too good to be true." Countries from all parts of the world have attempted to reduce the effects of deforestation—increasing crop efficiency in the U.S., concentrating fewer areas of population in the Eastern Europe and Russia, and even a highly dictatorial regime in China—but none of these methods could be highly successful on a global level.

One of the main problems with such optimistic studies is that they neglect the prospect of time. Trees take decades to reach their full carbon-absorbing potential; however, the human production of carbon emissions is increasing rapidly every day. By the time artificial forests are viable, it will most likely be too late.

However, it seems that many countries are willing to take the risk with artificial forests, much to the chagrin of environmental scientists. One such effort is the Bonn Challenge, which was "launched by the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN), which acts as its Secretariat, and the Government of Germany in 2011." The challenge's homepage states that it "is a global effort to bring 150 million hectares of the world's degraded and deforested lands into restoration by 2020 and 350 million hectares by 2030." While around 40 nations have claimed their support, scientists have warned against the rush into such a large-scale initiative. More than ¾ of the commitments that have been made "involve planting monoculture plantations or a limited mix of trees that produce specific products such as fruit or rubber." These monoculture crops are often more profitable than the rich ecosystems they are replacing. There seems to be somewhat of a hidden agenda in the Bonn Challenge, and economic interest is a common feature in similar campaigns.

For example, a recent study was done on the Chilean government, which ran a globally acclaimed afforestation program from 1974 to 2012, where they subsidized 75% of the costs behind replanting forests. Unfortunately, since many farmers had governmental support when planting trees, they replaced native forests with cash crops to earn a sizable profit. The program largely failed to remove atmospheric carbon and even increased the loss of biodiversity. The co-author of the study, Professor Eric Lambin from Stanford University, stated that "If policies to incentivize tree plantations are poorly designed or poorly enforced, there is a high risk of not only wasting public money but also releasing more carbon and losing biodiversity." Large-scale afforestation campaigns were partially detrimental due to the lack of rules or their enforcement.

Another study was done on the intensive afforestation and dust-reduction efforts in northern China. Researchers found that while adding trees to carbon-poor soil increased the density of organic carbon, the same practice on carbon-rich soil decreased the density. They concluded that the previous studies on monocultures' organic carbon-restoring capabilities were vastly an overestimate, and additionally was an inadequate response to such a multi-level problem. "We hope that people can understand that afforestation practices are not one single thing," said Dr. Anping Chen, from Colorado State University and a lead author on the study.

Directly planting thousands of trees with no concern about the climate that they are replacing is not the solution to deforestation; instead, a multi-prong approach is necessary to combat such a complex issue. Anything less than this would be a disservice to the complex and rapidly disappearing ecosystems that grace this planet and the entire human population.