The standard story arc for documentary films follows a 3-act structure: Set Up, Conflict, and Resolution. We use this structure in "How to Get Away With Greenwashing" to effectively tell the tale of Huilo-Huilo, the relevancy of the story on an international scale, and the hopeful alternatives that couple environmental protections with social justice. Some important contextual information cannot be included here but can be found in our Background Information page. Read on below to see how we envision structuring this complex story.
Act 1 - The Huilo-Huilo Biological Reserve
The Huilo-Huilo Biological Reserve established in 1999 is an award-winning for-profit private nature reserve, owned by Chilean businessman and mining mogul Victor Petermann. The reserve has won awards from National Geographic, the Responsible Tourism Institute and Top 100 Sustainable Destinations, and is a longtime partner of Duke University. Neltume and Puerto Fuy are small mountain towns of approximately 4,000 residents enveloped within the reserve.
Interviews with community members including museum curators, a local geologist and tour operators reveal Huilo-Huilo’s numerous environmental violations, including the diversion of glacial runoff from the Mocho-Choshuenco glacier with an excavator (2021), the illegal construction of a hydroelectric plant (2013), and the improper disposal of sewage and waste within the reserve (2019, personal discovery 2023). Community leaders voice their grievances over the reserve’s self-seeking abuse of the region’s water. Residents detail how this abuse of water affects the communities, diving into limitations on development and the towns’ reliance on a single water source. The filmmakers intersperse these interviews with a tour of Huilo-Huilo’s water-bottling plant and brewery inside the reserve. Objections to the privatized system of water affecting Neltume and Puerto Fuy expand into discussions criticizing the high concentration of land ownership. Interviewees detail how Petermann’s concentration of land has led to a monopoly on labor, evictions from within the reserve and the restriction of access to land and resources. Complaints over access to land are expounded upon as residents share the lack of available land for housing, the inability for the towns to grow, or to construct a cemetery. The filmmakers juxtapose these accounts of exclusion with a tour of Petermann’s luxury real estate project within the reserve that highlighting the lack of external regulation. Residents explain how Petermann’s monopoly on labor has led to pitiful wages and negligent maintenance resulting in unsafe working conditions. Two residents describe the labor conditions of the reserve. Karen, a former waitress in one of Huilo-Huilo’s hotels describes the unsafe working conditions that led to harmful liquids damaging her hands. The company denies responsibility for the accident, and the filmmakers follow Karen in her effort to organize a collective action case against the company. Antonio, a young entrepreneur and chef living in Neltume worked as an assistant chef at events for Huilo-Huilo to earn enough money to open his own restaurant. However, Huilo-Huilo took 7 months to pay Antonio for the events he worked, leaving him unable to pay his debts during this time. He explains how this is a common reality among workers.
Act 2 - This is not an isolated event
The reality of the reserve questions accountability and regulation in international ecotourism and private conservation. The filmmakers pick apart the methodologies behind awards and certifications through interviews with industry leaders, hoping to understand how the crimes of the reserve went unpenalized by its international supporters. Meanwhile, residents, supplemented by interviews with historians and international experts, tell the history of Neltume as a hotbed of political activity, starting around the early 20th century and the history of the forestry industry that once dominated the region. This history provides the necessary context to understand how Pinochet’s 1973-1990 dictatorship led to the concentration and privatization of land, detailing the concerning levels of influence beneficiaries of the dictatorship continue to wield today. The filmmakers investigates claims from residents that Petermann helped fund Pinochet, and the circumstances surrounding the purchase of what is now Huilo-Huilo come under greater inspection. The filmmakers use property records to piece together the true story, uncovering distressing connections between Petermann and figures from the dictatorship.
The filmmakers lay out the current state of the ecotourism and private conservation industries: unregulated, unmonitored, and unreported, yet with a vast amount of public and private investment funneling in. Under these conditions, the filmmakers posit that in a country with highly concentrated patterns of land ownership and inequality, like Chile, it is only logical that the practice of large-scale private conservation results in the concentration of land and the abuse of communities and the environment. This theory flies in the face of the ongoing promotion of large-scale private conservation practices by international conservation organizations. The filmmakers point to the story of Douglas Tompkins (see background information) not as a tale of success to be repeated but as an unlikely exception.
The filmmakers uncover a web of private nature reserves in Chile under the ownership of figures similar to Petermann, individuals whose fortunes came from their connection to extractive industries and the Pinochet dictatorship. These findings support their hypothesis that these practices have been hijacked and are being used to greenwash and control economic activity.
These findings prompt the filmmakers to contact journalists in other countries with similar conditions to Chile: high levels of land inequality, histories of land-concentrating events (such as far-right dictatorships), and an increasing popularity of ecotourism and private conservation. The story pushes to international relevancy as claims similar to Huilo-Huilo in Brazil, Scotland, Indonesia and the United States are investigated. This aspect of this film is still in development as we have identified and are actively investigating several private reserves around the world.
Act 3 - A new vision for conservation
The filmmakers’ investigation into the private conservation industry has yielded disheartening results. However, the filmmakers find inspiration in models of community ownership of land. The filmmakers point to several examples in Chile and around the world. They highlight the movement of community land buyouts in Scotland, the communal conservancy system in Namibia and the Mapuche struggle for traditional lands in Chile, among others, as examples of an alternative to the fevered trend of privatized conservation.
The exposé of Huilo-Huilo’s crimes and connections to the dictatorship serves as a vehicle to communicate the rampant Greenwashing and severe lack of accountability in ecotourism and private conservation. The film concludes with a message of hope: a new vision that empowers local communities by giving them control and ownership of their land and natural resources. The film presents a model that embeds human rights, democracy, and environmental justice in conservation, while calling for further inspection of the methods and people behind conservation efforts today.
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