Wondering how we started this project? Read on below to learn about the town of Neltume, the Huilo-Huilo Biological Reserve, and where we come in.
Neltume is a town of ~3,000 people nestled in the Valdivian rainforest in the mountains of the Los Rios region of southern Chile. It is a town that sat at the heart of a vast forestry industry for over a hundred years. In the 1990s, mining baron Victor Petermann purchased a total of 100,000 hectares, larger than the entirety of New York City, and created the Huilo-Huilo Biological Reserve, a for-profit nature reserve. Petermann constructed eye-catching hotels and various outdoor attractions, abandoning the forestry industry for ecotourism.
Petermann's project brought economic development and opportunities for women, while protecting the natural beauty of the region. The Huilo-Huilo Biological Reserve went on to win numerous awards from groups like National Geographic, The Responsible Tourism Institute, and the Top 100 Sustainable Destinations. Through its success, Petermann forged new partnerships with Duke University, several national tourism boards and The Long Run Initiative. Today Huilo-Huilo employs an estimated 80% of the population of Neltume through its hotels, outdoor activities, real estate venture, museum, wildlife-viewing area, water bottling-plant, restaurants, brewery and cafe. Huilo-Huilo is considered a gold-standard of ecotourism and private conservation: a project that has managed economic development and the protection of the environment.
Samuel Pigott visited Neltume in January of 2023 while studying community relationships with various private conservation projects across Chile. He found a very different story. Residents detailed stories of worker abuse, of Petermann's monopoly on labor, of the town trapped without resources inside the reserve. A pattern of heinous environmental crimes including excavators digging canals on top of glaciers, barges dumping waste into the lakes, hydroelectric plants being constructed illegally within the reserve, and dumping grounds for trash and hazardous waste have plagued the reserve since the early 2010s. Rumors of illegal logging deep within the reserve can be heard on every street in town.
By February, Benjamin Espinoza had joined Samuel in Neltume, interviewing residents, hoping to understand how this famed, internationally-recognized business could, simply put, get away with this! What did the awarding and partnering international organizations see when they visited? Did they even visit?
After months of research, the filmmakers learned that the industries of ecotourism and private conservation have an absolute lack of accountability. An innumerable number of certification mechanisms and awards, of varying quality, exist and every single one is voluntary. We aim to delve further into the flawed nature of this system, yet a deeper thought disturbed us more. Are we concentrating land ownership in our promotion of private conservation?
What is private conservation?'
Private land conservation occurs where a private landholder manages some or all of their land for biodiversity, nature or wildlife conservation purposes. This might be an individual, a corporation, a non-profit organization, or a religious group. Private conservation initiatives are of all shapes and sizes, from turning your backyard garden into wildlife friendly habitat to protected stretches of seashore by familiar groups like the Nature Conservancy to wealthy individuals purchasing and protecting entire mountain ranges. Private conservation is an essential tool in helping combat the climate crisis.
What we are interested in is large-scale private conservation a trend that has gained in popularity for the last 3 decades, where an extremely wealthy individual or company purchases and protects vast amounts of land. We are talking about buying hundreds of miles of land, a practice that concentrates land in the hands of fewer people, making access to resources far more difficult for others. The goal of this documentary is not to criticize private conservation, it is to criticize the promotion of large-scale private conservation practices, and to encourage stringent accountability mechanisms and regulation on who is behind these projects.
Environmentalists are counting on the efforts of private individuals in the fight against the climate and biodiversity crises. People like Douglas Tompkins, and more recently, Anders Holch Povlsen, have become icons of conservation for their purchases of large amounts of land that will be protected. Organizations idolize these modern heroes of the environment as the new gold-standard for conservation. Yet, Petermann's Huilo-Huilo demonstrates just how easy it is to abuse this practice. Our investigations uncovered Petermann's legacy within the mining industry; illegal mines scattered around Chile, the employment of deceitful environmental lawyers, and most worrying of all, his connection to a network of elite businessmen behind other private conservation projects, with troubling links to the Pinochet dictatorship. Is the promotion of large-scale private conservation greenwashing the further concentration of land in one of South America's most unequal countries? In this industry without accountability, how can we hope to differentiate the good actors from the bad? How can we ensure that the practices we put in place reflect our hope for democracy and environmental justice in conservation?
These are the ideas we tackle in our film "How to Get Away With Greenwashing". We hope this story reaches as many audiences as possible, and inspires a movement for greater accountability and democracy within these industries and within communities affected in similar ways.
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