200px, View of Petorca in the mid-2010s.

Petorca Petorca is a Chilean town and commune located in the Petorca Province, Valparaíso Region. The commune spans an area of . Since 2010 Petorca has been affected by a long-term drought aggravated by poor water administration that have allowed limit ...

Chile Chile, officially the Republic of Chile, is a country in the western part of South America. It is the southernmost country in the world, and the closest to Antarctica, occupying a long and narrow strip of land between the Andes to the east a ...

has experienced a

drought A drought is defined as drier than normal conditions.Douville, H., K. Raghavan, J. Renwick, R.P. Allan, P.A. Arias, M. Barlow, R. Cerezo-Mota, A. Cherchi, T.Y. Gan, J. Gergis, D. Jiang, A. Khan, W. Pokam Mba, D. Rosenfeld, J. Tierney, an ...

as part of the

Chilean water crisis The Chilean water crisis is a period of extreme water scarcity and drought in Chile that began in 2010 in response to climate change, agricultural practices and the existing policies established in the early 1980s. It is the longest lasting droug ...

since 2010. It is the longest and most intense drought in the area in the last 700 years. By 2018 the Ministry of Public Works had decreed Petorca a "zone of water scarcity" for fourteen years in a row. The drought has mainly affected the lowlands and foothills while many surrounding hills maintain a healthy cover of

avocado The avocado (''Persea americana'') is a medium-sized, evergreen tree in the laurel family (Lauraceae). It is native to the Americas and was first domesticated by Mesoamerican tribes more than 5,000 years ago. Then as now it was prized for i ...

plantations. Lorena Donaire of the environmental organisation

Modatima Modatima, the “Movement for the Defense of Access to Water, Land and Environmental Protection”, is an organization formed in Chile out of the Province of Petorca. The organization was created in 2010 as a response to increased water scarcity in ...

recalls 1985 as the first year

Petorca River The Petorca River is a river of Chile. The catchment of Petorca River has been the subject of a severe drought the last decades. Lorena Donaire of the environmental organisation Modatima recalls 1985 as the first year Petorca River dried. See al ...

dried. The military dictatorship's agrarian counter-reform in the 1970s and 1980s and the Constitution of Chile of 1980 have been blamed for an increased concentration in the ownership of land around Petorca. Further, the Chilean Water Code of 1981 separated the ownership of land from that of water allowing for the ownership of water rights to be more easily concentrated. These legal changes would have allowed a few wealthy landowners to dry-out the rural inhabitants of Petorca. Rodrigo Mundaca the spokesperson of Modatima blames the establishment of

plantations in the 1990s for the drought. Avocado plantations continued to expand through the area in the 2000s. According to Lorena Donaire the situation is aggravated by the establishment of pools of water by large landowners across the basin. 70% of the cost of these pools would have been paid by the state. In the avocado plantations of Petorca there are up to three thousand trees per

hectare The hectare (; SI symbol: ha) is a non-SI metric unit of area equal to a square with 100-metre sides (1 hm2), or 10,000 m2, and is primarily used in the measurement of land. There are 100 hectares in one square kilometre. An acre is a ...

. In 2011 it was discovered that various companies engaged in regular theft of water. The owners of the enterprises Agrícola Cóndor and Agrícola Pililén have been fined for these abuses. Among these owners are the politicians

Edmundo Pérez Yoma Edmundo Jaime Pérez Yoma (born 10 January 1939 Antofagasta) is a Chilean politician from the Christian Democrat Party of Chile. He was twice the Minister of Defense during the administration of President Eduardo Frei Ruiz-Tagle, and he served as ...

and

Eduardo Cerda García Eduardo is the Spanish and Portuguese form of the male given name Edward. Another version is Duarte. It may refer to: Association football * Eduardo Bonvallet, Chilean football player and sports commentator * Eduardo Carvalho, Portuguese footba ...

References

{{reflist 2010s droughts 2020s droughts 2010s disasters in Chile 2020s disasters in Chile Agriculture in Chile Avocado Climate change in Chile Petorca Water supply and sanitation in Chile Environmental issues in Chile

See also

References