Today, the Communal Workshops are making progress in identifying the main controversies around regional development. In these consultation spaces, the proposal of the University of O’Higgins (UOH) for updating the Regional Development Strategy (ERD) is specified, which must be implemented by the Regional Government in the coming years.
As of February 2024, they have been carried out in 24 of the 33 communes. An initiative implemented in conjunction with the Municipalities of the O’Higgins Region and their links with social organizations. Daniel Jofré, sociologist and person in charge of these instances, details this process for us.
How has this process of consultation with neighbors been developed?
Until now, we have seen how the Communal Workshops have been installed as spaces for conversation about development expectations, with a specific view of the territories and others of a transversal nature in the region. This has contributed to having a framework for updating the Regional Development Strategy (ERD), providing a broad view of the region’s challenges. With this, we will advance in identifying the main controversies and how to address them, and then provide guidelines for the new regional strategy.
What have been, until now, the main controversies?
They emerge as two aspects. One related to the lack of coverage of basic public services in Housing, Education, Health and Connectivity, among others, offered by the State or the private sector, which are perceived as insufficient and are presented as a transversal demand in the region.
Other relevant controversies are of an “epochal” nature, associated with recent phenomena. The most constant is drought. Another, relevant in rural sectors, is the lack of projects for youth and how this impacts the rural world. There is also the precariousness of work, migratory processes and the need to access decent work and social benefits from the State. Just as it happens in the country, public security and drug trafficking also stand out.
Is a complex situation observed from these controversies?
Preliminarily, the most complex thing is that there is a perceived very low confidence in the institutions to advance in its resolution. For this reason, the interest of the participants in identifying these controversies so that they are socially processed and recognized as such drew attention in the communal workshops.
In this area, the methodological proposal to update the ERD has been useful to advance along this path. That is, not in reducing the intensity of the controversies, but in defining, together with the participants, the parameters of the conversations and the specificities detected by the actors in the territory. This, with the understanding that consensus will not always be established, but an instance that has allowed, at least, to think about a common perspective is promoted.
Will this generate a debate that the region has not had before?
We have set out to understand, in the best possible way, what the perceptions and visions of regional development are, as well as its most controversial aspects. Many of these controversies existed before this process began. It is not our objective to “improve” or “worse” that vision of reality that the inhabitants of the region have. Therefore, many of these debates are part of the conversations that communities have had for a long time.
The novelty of this process is how these controversies can be considered in the development of planning instruments. Considering them as an input for a better direction of public policy decisions will allow us to achieve development standards demanded by people today.
How relevant has this process been for regional planning?
As a team, we have found it relevant to contribute to innovating, from this methodological perspective, to generate planning instruments that consider controversies as one of the criteria in decision-making. Our proposal seeks to be a contribution in that line. Or, at least, we hope that it contributes to identifying these interests that are at stake, those that are legitimate. Since this will help the actors explore paths to reach common points of resolution. Or, those that are possible to achieve within that framework.
And, although the methodological proposal is not necessarily designed to generate consensus, we do hope that it makes sense to the actors linked to general development. This is relevant if we consider that one of the difficulties of regional strategies is that they are expressed in declarative terms.
What are the new phases that are coming?
In the coming months, this process will be complemented with the holding of “Hybrid Forums” to analyze these controversies. Another input will be the “Interviews with Relevant Actors”, to provide an expert view linked to planning and financing instruments, among others. Finally, this information will be compared with regional data, to have evidence that frames the recommended plans, public policy definitions and the final proposal, which must be delivered to the inhabitants of the region at the end of this year.
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