Abstract
This article explores the concept of port-city territory symbiosis in combination with social and environmental impacts of logistics, port handling, and the global value chains (GVC) of forestry products. Based on fieldwork and a mixed method approach, our analyses of the port-city of Coronel, its forestry hinterland, the port company PuertoCoronel, and the pulp mill MAPA, illustrate a more general pattern of uneven economic, social and spatial development. While forestry and port companies improve and modernize their processes and facilities, the city of Coronel and its territories seem to be left behind. As this case study shows, symbiosis makes an exciting contribution to the study of port-city-territories, if one expands the latter to include its connections to other territories upstream of the GVC, and conceives them as an integral part of the global economy. Additionally, our analysis challenges the concept of symbiosis by providing a critical twist to include phenomena such as environmental injustices and asymmetric relations between companies and local communities and their territories.
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1 Introduction
The development strategy implemented in Chile over the past 40 years is based on the global capacity of a handful of export-oriented activities, such as mining, forestry, agribusiness, fishing, and salmon farming which have competitive advantages in the global economy. Port cities have been essential in facilitating territories' insertion into the world economy and the opening up Chilean trade (CNID 2015; OECD 2016).
This article uses the concept of port-city-territory symbiosis as a heuristic device to explore the relations between GVCs and uneven development. The latter results from the combined social and environmental impacts on sourcing territories of export-oriented forestry activities, logistics, port handling and maritime transport.Footnote 1 The port-city of Coronel and its forestry hinterland constitute a case of uneven economic, social and spatial development. As will be shown, while forestry, port and logistics companies improve and modernize, the city of Coronel and its hinterland seems to be left behind and degraded.
The city of Coronel, located in the bay of Coronel in the Central South of Chile, was founded in 1849. In its origin, the city was strongly linked to coal mining activity. In the following decades, Coronel gained some notoriety as a supply location for vessels, developing important global trade routes, and as an export point of coal (USS 2019). During the twentieth century, coal mining steadily decreased in the area, and by the mid-1990s, most mines closed down due to their long-lasting decline in productivity and competitiveness. The immediate effect of this was a deep unemployment crisis. As a response, several governments encouraged private investment and new industrial projects in the area, ensuring their coherence with the territories' productive reality and competitive advantages. Since then, the two most successful and salient economic sectors in Coronel and its hinterland territories have been forestry and port operations. Consequently, Coronel has changed its character from a mining town to a port-city that provides logistics services to the forestry sector. Because forestry extractive operations are primarily for export, companies have established permanent and systemic connections with local logistics, port handling, and shipping organizations, all of which are integral parts of the GVCs of forest products.
Forestry-based port activity expanded drastically in Coronel since the mid-1990s. The city’s key terminal, PuertoCoronelFootnote 2 was established in 1996, taking advantage of the growing relevance and maturity of the forestry sector and its diversification (wood raw materials, sawn wood, wood-based panels, paper, paperboard and wood pulp). Surprisingly, only a few academics in Chile have paid attention to the establishment of PuertoCoronel as part of the productive restructuring of the territories from coal mining to a forestry extractive economy (cf. Alarcón et al. 2021; USS 2019). In particular, PuertoCoronel became a crucial part of the wood pulp GVC dominated upstream by the forestry holding Arauco.Footnote 3
Port development has improved the lives of residents in many ways, who saw their decaying mining town revitalised with new investments and dockworker jobs. The common conception of symbiosis is prescriptive and therefore runs the risk of becoming positively biased or one-sided concerning its application to port cities and territories. Indeed, symbiosis frequently assumes symmetrical and positive interactions between the city, local communities, the port, economic sectors, and hinterland territories. Our field research in the port-city-territories of Coronel calls for further reflection on symbiosis, especially in the light of the negative externalities and big-scale impacts, export-oriented forestry operations and their connections to logistics, cargo-handling and shipping.
Consequently, we operationalise symbiosis differently; that is, as a “sensitising concept” (Blumer 1954; Charmaz 2006) to widen its range and suggest new avenues of inquiry, rather than as a prescriptive concept. Consequently, we became more aware of the negative externalities of export-oriented forestry and its connection to local logistics, port handling and maritime transport operations. This dark side of symbiosis becomes clear when acknowledging the unevenness of the international division of labour. While in mainstream economic approaches, the division of labour is conceived as beneficial for all specialised participants in the economy, critical approaches stress that the international division of labour produces structured hierarchies, inequalities and uneven development (Smith 2008; Svampa 2015). Research in GVCs has described a similar pattern of uneven development. The so-called "smile curve" model illustrates that the most added value is generated in the design, marketing and sales phases of the product life-cycle (Fernandez-Stark and Gereffi 2019).
In contrast, territories where sourcing and production activities take place contribute the least to the product value (Baldwin 2013; Fernandez-Stark and Gereffi 2019). In line with this general pattern of uneven development, several studies have demonstrated that the forestry sector offers low-quality jobs, degrades the environment, and negatively impacts the quality of life of local communities (Julian and Alister 2018; Mora-Motta et al. 2020; Valenzuela-Fuentes et al. 2021). Our approach emphasises the analysis of relationships between the production of forest products, such as wood pulp, labour, territories, local communities, logistics, port handling and shipping.
This conceptual contribution is based on our empirical fieldwork in the port-city of Coronel and its forestry hinterland. The latter comprises hundreds of thousands of hectares of eucalyptus and pine tree plantations and many manufacturing plants producing composite panels, premium plywood and millwork, sawmills, and pulp mills. The most salient of these industrial facilities are the Arauco pulp mill, the so-called "MAPA" plant from its Spanish acronym, meaning "modernisation and expansion of the old Arauco Plant".
Through field research, we have examined the socio-environmental impacts of the extractive, productive and logistical activities of export-oriented forestry in the Central South of Chile. As will be seen, the transformation of Coronel from a coal mining town to a forestry port-city has been fostered by the consolidation of the forestry sector.
This article's structure is as follows. Section 2 reconceptualizes the idea of symbiosis from the combined perspectives of global value chains, critical political economy and Latin American political ecology, in the context of maritime economics and logistics. This allows us to emphasise concrete power relations, structures, and processes that shape local territories, and their uneven development, as integral to the formation of global value chains (GVCs). Section 3 briefly presents the methodology of our study. Sections 4 to 6 describe and analyse the region's economic, social, and territorial restructuring since the 1970s. Due to this productive restructuring, the old mining town of Coronel was transformed into a port-city serving the forestry sector. Next, Sect. 7 analyses the social and environmental impacts of forestry, pulp production, and the logistics affecting Coronel. Section 8 discusses the previous analyses and shows the need to conceptualise symbiosis as an ambivalent concept; that is, a phenomenon with positive and negative aspects. Finally, in Sect. 9, we conclude that symbiosis can make an essential contribution to the study of the connections between ports, cities, and territories insofar as those connections are first perceived as an integral part of the world division of labour and the global economy. Finally, we emphasise the impact of asymmetric relations and patterns of uneven development created by global flows and logistics of wooden raw materials on sourcing territories of the central south of Chile. The article reports and analyses the negative impacts of forestry in the region and the growing social resistance it has triggered in the territories. This has had a spill-over effect on its GVC, including forestry-related logistical and port operations, which also face increasing local opposition. The above suggests the need to develop a more comprehensive perspective on symbiosis to address uneven development and environmental injustices with credible, inclusive, and collaborative local governance structures. Such a perspective on port-city-territories symbiosis should not rule out an equally possible and legitimate alternative: the refusal of local actors to participate and to disarticulate from what they might perceive as uneven GVC relations. In the next section, we present our perspective on port-city-territories symbiosis.
2 Conceptualising and studying Port-city-territories symbiosis
The term symbiosis derives from the Greek word ‘συμβίωσις’, which means “living together”.Footnote 4 Symbiosis “can be applied to port cities in the sense that ports, cities, and the regions flourish not just because of their [mutual] proximity but also due to the exchange of resources, which can either nourish or deteriorate human activities and functions in the ecosystem”.Footnote 5 What are, however, the limitations of this concept of symbiosis?
This section aims to reconceptualise symbiosis in port-city territories in four directions. First, we reconstruct symbiosis through conceptualisation and empirical observation to avoid falling into sterile, abstract discussions. The methodological strategy consists of deploying symbiosis as a sensitising concept to provide a "general sense of reference and guidance in approaching empirical instances" and "suggest directions along which to look" rather than as a definitive and prescriptive concept (Blumer 1954, p. 7). In other words, we use symbiosis as a way of understanding port-city-territories. This allowed us to highlight relevant social problems in the forestry GVC and related port logistics and thus avoid the reduction of symbiosis to yet another public policy concept that stresses social collaboration at the expense of becoming conflict-blind.
The second way we reconceptualise symbiosis is through its expansion and observation of its ambivalence. Observing port-city-territories from this perspective involves making a distinction that indicates positive aspects, such as co-habitation, mutual benefits, dialogue, and win–win relations between port authorities, logistical companies, cities, and local communities. However, this distinction is incomplete and biased. Furthermore, it obscures the darker latent dimension of symbiosis that is constitutive of its meaning structure.Footnote 6 Observing this latent structure that makes up symbiosis allows us to identify some negative aspects, such as asymmetrical relations, exploitation, extraction of natural resources, uneven development, environmental injustices and problems of economic, social and environmental upgrading (Barrientos et al. 2011; Campling and Havice 2019; Fernández-Stark and Gereffi 2019; Werner and Bair 2019).Footnote 7 Observing symbiosis in this biased way carries the implicit representation of the “problem” underlying port-city-territory symbiosis as a particular sort of problem: a poor articulation of spaces. This problem representation addresses the issue from a problem-solving perspective, focusing on improving local governance to enhance global coordination of maritime transport, port logistics and forestry activities. This way of looking at symbiosis rules out other conceivable alternatives we encountered in the field, such as: resisting logistics and forestry activities, and disarticulating from the forestry GVC altogether.
The positive and negative aspects of symbiosis—its ambivalence- become evident in uneven development processes. GVCs empirical analyses (a.o. Baldwin 2013) show that the value added at the pre-production stage, involving research and development, captures more profit than in production stages, such as extraction, fabrication and distribution. Similarly, post-production intangible activities, such as marketing and post-production services, add more value than production. Similarly, critical literature on economic, social and environmental upgrading demonstrates that developed countries usually concentrate on high value-added activities while developing countries of the periphery produce lower value-added activities (Fernández-Stark and Gereffi 2019). As a consequence, trade systematically disfavors sourcing territories, such as Coronel, and favours central economies, thus creating conditions for a new dependence (Svampa 2015).
Third, we need to expand the scale of our analysis of symbiotic processes. To properly examine port-city-territories and their respective roles in the global economy, we need to perceive them as integral parts of the GVCs. A GVC comprises all activities “that firms and workers perform to bring a product from its conception to end use and beyond” (Fernandez-Stark and Gereffi 2019, p. 55), connecting extraction sites, production facilities, and consumer markets dispersed around the world. The international division of labour dictates the role and international insertion of each economic sector, territory and port-city in the GVCs. The specialisation of territories of the central south of Chile in forest products, especially in cellulose, has encouraged public and private investment in port infrastructure and logistics, to move products more efficiently and cost-effectively to global markets. Improvements in port infrastructure, transport, IT and communication technologies made this possible. However, exporting wood as raw material and commodities such as cellulose and forest products with little added value suggests the reproduction of a persistent pattern of uneven development in the territories. An expanded concept of symbiosis allows us to explore the downside of global asymmetrical interdependence, uneven development, social and ecological injustices, and environmental degradation in the territories at the periphery of the global economy (Bustos et al. 2017; Foster et al. 2010; Smith 2008).Hence, we aim to contribute to the ongoing conceptualisation of symbiosis in port-city-territories, conceived as a heuristic device for observing forms of social and territorial inequality upstream GVCs, specifically those of forest products.
Fourth, symbiosis is embedded in history and geography. Therefore, it has to be seen as a dynamic process that takes place over time and space. Each symbiotic formation has its history, continuities, and path-dependent processes, as well as its crises, critical junctures, and inflexion points (cf. Hein and Schubert 2021).
As will be seen below in more detail, the massive scale and extractive character of the export-oriented forestry operation in the central south of Chile determines the magnitude of the harm in sourcing territories. Typically, ecological problems such as water scarcity, sea and air pollution, and soil degradation are seen as negative externalities of forestry and port activities. The concept of negative externality is based on the premise that the productive process—conceived as "the internal"—may (or may not) have adverse effects on external factors, such as the ecosystem. This is understood as collateral damage and unintended consequence. However, water, sea and soil are critical factors and inputs of export-oriented forestry operations, logistics and maritime transport. Therefore, they should not be considered external factors of the productive process.
Secondly, one key point of identifying negative externalities in economic theory has to do with mitigating, preventing, reducing or controlling adverse environmental effects of economic activity; or making the responsible party morally, politically or legally imputable for the harm caused, especially when activities damage the interests or property of a third party. In the case of water and air, they can be considered common goods with more abstract and undefined property titles, subject to the tragedy of the commons. Therefore, we believe it is more accurate to refer to negative externalities and negative impacts of economic activities. Any genuine attempt at combining inclusive development with sustainability should be global and transgenerational. Therefore, the social and ecological harms at origin, upstream of the chain, call for global responsibility. The coming section briefly presents the methodology of our field research.
3 Methodology
Based on secondary sources, this article presents a sociohistorical analysis of the decline and transformation of Coronel and its surroundings as a coal mining region and the formation of PuertoCoronel as an emerging forestry port hub in the 1990s. As will be shown, this productive restructuring—from coal mining to forestry- also meant a change in GVCs and a transformation of the city's character. Hence, the emerging port-city-territories symbiosis is deeply related to the productive restructuring of the region. This is one of the few cases of port expansion in the Central South of Chile.
We have collected primary and secondary information on the more recent evolution of Coronel and the impacts of the forestry sector on the territory. The latter includes sociological and historical literature, public policy documents, and statistical databases of population and demography, employment, forestry exports and cargo evolution, among others. Information was gathered to examine the productive restructuring process over time.
Second, ethnographic field research was carried out in Coronel and its hinterland territories on the impacts of forestry, logistics and maritime transport on space. Unlike hypothetico-deductive research on similar cases (Arboleda 2020), our interpretive and ethnographic perspective uses fieldwork and concepts as sensitising devices to produce an interpretation base on an in-depth understanding of stakeholders' situations (cf. Hammersley 2008). Different maps were created using the ArcMap software, showing the coverage of port logistics, such as main roads and railroads, and the regional forestry plantations, pulp mills, and Mapuche ancestral lands (Fig. 1). In addition, participatory mapping in two community workshops was conducted to elaborate a map of people’s spatial experiences and to understand the impacts of logistics and extractivism on the territory (Fig. 5). Based on the knowledge gained in those instances, 30 in-depth interviews with civil servants, dockworkers, forestry and port company representatives, community leaders, and activists were held. These were analysed through grounded theory's thematic coding to organize the information (Charmaz 2006) and to show the impact of the logistical chain on the portcityscape (Hein 2019).
Biobío Region (1), Coronel bay (2), and MAPA-PuertoCoronel route (3)
Overall, we use secondary and primary evidence to conceptualise and reconstruct a more complex account of symbiosis and its ambivalences and uneven ways of functioning in the territories of the Central South of Chile. In the following three sections, we present our case study. As mentioned earlier, our case study comprises the complex relations between the historical antecedents of the port-city of Coronel and its vast interior territories marked by extensive and intensive forestry plantations and their related industrial facilities. Our focus is on the relationships between Arauco's MAPA wood pulp plant, PuertoCoronel, Coronel's main forestry port, and the logistical infrastructures that connect them.
4 The commune of Coronel: its recent history and transformations
Coronel's urban identity is related to its coal mining past. Mining activity began in 1849 thanks to the vast coal reserves in the so-called coal basin. This allowed urban development in Coronel in the mid-nineteenth century, as well as a buoyant mining bourgeoisie (Mora and Cofré 2016). With this, Coronel became a populous town with active shopping centres and a social life. However, its history was also marked by labour conflict and inequality. Coronel was a relevant site in the formation of the workers' movement that pushed for transformations to reverse the unsanitary, overcrowded, and exploitative conditions that characterised the growing process of urbanisation and transition from a rural to urban society in the region (Ortega 1992; USS 2019).
Later, during the import substitution industrialisation period (1930s–1970s), the state redirected local coal production toward domestic demand and fostered a class compromise (Salazar and Pinto. 2014). In 1970, under the socialist government of Salvador Allende, mining companies were nationalised, forming the Empresa Nacional del Carbón S.A. (ENACAR). Nevertheless, the steady decline of coal mining in the Colonel area persisted due to the replacement of coal with petrol. The decaying mining activity barely survived the 17 years of Pinochet’s dictatorship (Benedetti 2019). Under the impetus of market-oriented economic policies, the more productive coal deposits were privatised, while others were closed down. The end of the area's mining activity meant a massive crisis with impacts beyond the economic, also generating a labour restructuring with severe effects on local culture and social life (Moyano and Viveros 2013). Over the next few years, the service sector, manufacturing industry, and trade became predominant activities in Coronel. Currently, 1% of the working-age population is engaged in mining work (INE 2018), and the former miners had enormous difficulties getting work again (Moyano and Viveros 2013).
Consequently, Coronel became one of the poorest towns in the country (Table 1). This suggests that the labour retraining policies implemented after the coal mine closures, the primary source of jobs in the territory until the 1990s, have been ineffective. As a result, Coronel has been among the communes with the highest unemployment nationwide over the last two decades.
Against the backdrop of the decaying coal mining industry, the region was the scenery of a productive restructuring based on the symbiosis between a private port founded in 1996 in Coronel and its hinterland, including forestry plantations and wooden products facilities, and pulp mills. Furthermore, through this economic and spatial restructuring, other industrial facilities, such as fishing enterprises, and two thermoelectric power plants, were established in Coronel. Due to this economic restructuring, Coronel became the second-fastest-growing commune of the Biobío Region, with 116,262 inhabitants (the region's fourth most-populated town, Table 2).
The port-city of Coronel changed over time: from a coal mining port to a forestry-based port. However, its geographical position in the periphery of the global economy and its relative subordinate position in a global value chain remains. Its case is illustrative of the problems of social and economic upgrading in the GVCs, and sheds light on the process of uneven development as a pervasive and persistent characteristic of developing economies.
In the coming section, we describe and analyse the relevance of the so-called MAPA wood pulp plant in the context of the recent evolution of the export-oriented forestry sector and its interconnectedness with logistics activities.
5 The forestry hinterland of Coronel: Arauco and its MAPA project
The advantageous natural conditions of Chile's Central South for producing biomass have favoured the extraction of wood and the production of wood-based semi-processed products, such as wood pulp, for export on a large scale, thus creating a logistics chain. Based on the general concept of extractivism (Gudynas 2015), we define forestry extractivism (in short: forestry) as a complex of forestry and wood-based economic activities of exploitation of natural resources -water, soil, minerals, nutrients, biomass-in large volumes and with high intensity, to export commodities such as cellulose, or intermediate or final products with relatively little added value, such as composite wood panels. The export strategy of the forestry sector benefited from the exceptionally high international prices of commodities between 2002 and 2008 (cf. Svampa 2015).
Although there are significant historical antecedents of forestry in Chile, its dramatic expansion dates back to the mid-1970s, when Pinochet’s dictatorship introduced a state-led reforestation policy (cf. Klubock 2014). The 701 Law Decree of 1974 encouraged forest plantations through a state-financed subsidy that covered 75% of the value of the reforestation and its management, with the explicit intention of fighting soil erosion and alleviating local communities’ high poverty rates (Bustos et al. 2017). This subsidy scheme's natural effect was that extensive land areas were privatised and dispossessed from peasants and the Mapuche indigenous people, beginning a large-scale process of land use changes from native forest and peasant-owned farms, to big-scale forestry plantations (Skewes 2019; Torres et al. 2016). The resulting extractivist landscape of pines and eucalyptus became dominant in the Central South of Chile and the Mapuche ancestral territory (Fig. 1). This policy also favoured businesses' change of focus from the domestic market to the supply of the global markets (Fig. 2).
Source National Forestry Institute (INFOR) (2020)
Forestry exports by main country of destiny.
Consequently, Chilean forestry became a thriving export sector and an international player. In 2018, the sector peaked, exporting US $6.838MM, representing 9.1% of Chile's total exports in that year (Fig. 3). That same year, forestry was the fourth-largest export sector behind mining, manufacturing, and agriculture. Its share of GDP in 2020 was US $2.799MM, corresponding to 1.9% of total GDP (INFOR 2020).
Source National Forestry Institute (INFOR) (2020)
Evolution of forestry exports, 2015–2021 (in millions of USD).
Among Chilean forestry companies, Forestal Arauco is the most relevant forestry holding and is one of the world's leading wood pulp producers. Arauco also manufactures various forestry products, such as composite panels, including MDF, particleboard and HDF, premium plywood, and millwork (see Table 3).
The MAPA project is Arauco's most prominent investment program, amounting to US $2.5 bn. The project aims to modernise the facilities and increase the production capacity of the old Arauco plant. Its goal is to increase cellulose production from 700,000 to 2,100,000 tons of paper pulp per year. MAPA will also generate energy, based on biomass, for its normal functioning plus 166 MW to supply the National Electric System (SEN). During the construction period, it will create between 5000 and 8000 jobs, and after completion, it will offer 1000 new direct and indirect jobs. Together with this, it includes an up-to-date effluent treatment plant.
These forestry operations require sophisticated logistics and efficient and secure shipping. Port logistics and shipping at the origin constitute a critical phase in the forestry GVC. One of Arauco’s primary economic goals in the territory is to secure commercial continuity and avoid choke points caused by labour disruptions and commercial disputes. In our view, this explains the company’s drive for vertical integration and its investment in PuertoCoronel. Port and logistics operations thus constitute the prerequisite of export-oriented forestry extractivism.
6 Port policy and the emerging port-city of Coronel
A recent government report describes Chile’s port system as a heterogeneous framework, lacking a national port agency and regulatory body and a shared strategic vision for long-term development. This system comprises publicly owned ports, the majority of which have terminals operated by private concessionaires, and a growing number of private ports that operate based on concessions by the state (CNID 2015).
Port policy in Chile has sought to promote free trade, deregulation, private investment, and competition among actors. Indeed, competition has been the key mechanism for introducing economic efficiency in the sector over the last four decades. These trends in port policy coincided with the widespread diffusion of containerisation. This logistical revolution has led to a dramatic change in the logistics model of the region under study (Budrovich and Cuevas. 2018, see also Wang et al. 2007).
As stated above, during the coal crisis of the 1990s, the local community of Coronel was in a desperate situation. In this context—and as a way to revitalise the local economy—the construction of PuertoCoronel was allowed. Construction work began in 1995 (see Fig. 4). PuertoCoronel is a multipurpose port that mobilises, loads, and unloads many products, including cellulose, sawn timber, fertilisers and fishmeal, and fresh agricultural products in their traditional packaging, containers, and reefers. Recently, the port has become the most modern port in the Biobío region, transferring 6.97 million tons of cargo in 2017, solidifying its place as the region's most important port, accounting for 35% of port movements. In 2019, the port transferred 9.20 million tons, becoming the third port terminal in the country (Alarcón et al. 2021).
Source Own elaboration
PuertoCoronel and its location within the city.
It should be noted that the holding Arauco, MAPA's owner, also controls PuertoCoronel. The holding’s vertical integration assures it the commercial security necessary for its continuous forestry operation. The port-city of Coronel, its vast interior territories, marked by extensive and intensive forestry plantations and related industrial facilities, are connected through logistics infrastructures. Port logistics and forestry activities are integral components of the forestry products' GVCs.
Since 2019, new investment has taken place in PuertoCoronel in accord with MAPA’s expansion plan. According to its former CEO, PuertoCoronel’s plan is to provide shipping services for 100% of MAPA production, 80% of which is expected to be shipped in containers. Containerized cargo will grow steadily in the future. Therefore, PuertoCoronel will require yards for bulk cargo and container handling (Tables 4 and 5 below). Consequently, its operation is becoming more land-demanding, more technology-intensive, and less labour-intensive. This means that pressure for land in the city of Coronel, to establish more yards for container handling, will increase, particularly in neighbouring communities.
Similarly, we can expect significant pressure on labour processes to adapt to new technologies and up-to-date logistics, a greater intensity at work, and lower workforce demand. Consequently, the critical distance between the local communities of Coronel and the port can also increase. This, regardless of the company’s mission: to contribute to national development by providing a service of “efficient, safe, responsive and committed port operation, generating shareholder value, welfare for employees and progress to the Coronel commune.”
Given the global importance of containerised transport and its steady growth, it is interesting to note the increase in freight transfer in TEUS in the three main terminals of the Biobío region (Table 4).
More than 70% of cargo transferred in the Biobío region’s ports, including PuertoCoronel, is forestry-related freight: wood manufactured products, paper, and wood pulp (CORMA 2021). Furthermore, the wood pulp load is expected to increase significantly from 2022, when the Arauco MAPA Project becomes fully operational. MAPA is located in the commune of Arauco, 40 kms south of Coronel (Fig. 1). This will increase wood pulp from 700,000 to 2.1 million tons per year beginning in 2022. Most of this production will be exported to global markets from PuertoCoronel, putting even more pressure on a city already acknowledged as a sacrifice zone. Of course, this neglects the possibility for a positive symbiosis between activities and territories to evolve.
PuertoCoronel faces several challenges. Because local communities perceive the port as an integral part of the forestry operation, PuertoCoronel’s forestry-related cargo projects onto it the stigma and bad reputation of forestry extractivist activities (Cuevas and Grosser 2022; Torres et al. 2016). Second, trends towards containerization and land-intensive and extensive logistical operations, put pressure on scarce urban space. Finally, the port’s location within a highly polluted urban space may also limit its development and growth. The aforementioned also bring unsustainable pathways. This articulated extractive, productive and logistical global chain of wood-based products is somehow evocative of a symbiotic relationship between territories and activities that complement one another in their purely economic dimension. However, as we will see, this is only part of the story. The following section reviews some socio-environmental and territorial conflicts affecting Coronel, its hinterland and interior territories.
7 Socio-environmental consequences of forest extractivism and toxic industry in the port-city-territories of Coronel
In this section, we analyse the interconnections between territories, port, logistical circuits, and urban spaces in Coronel to understand the impacts of logistics on the territory. As will be shown, Coronel was the scene of a series of socio-environmental degradation processes and conflicts triggered by the high concentration of extractivist and toxic industry investments in the city. Local territories, ecosystems, and even their communities have been exposed to hazardous pollution and environmental degradation in the name of modernisation, macroeconomic growth or national development. Local communities and social movements have raised their voice to make these conditions publicly visible as a “sacrifice zone”, which we understand as a place where inhabitants experience health problems and environmental harms caused by "pollution hotspots" of large-scale economic activities (Scott and Smith 2017).
Since 2017, the Chilean state has acknowledged its responsibility in this local condition, thus naming Coronel one of the few communes in Chile where a social and environmental recovery plan programme is being implemented (CRAS 2018). Nevertheless, local communities and socio-environmental activists complain about the heavy environmental burdens they are still exposed to and demand more active state responses to address their problems (Valenzuela-Fuentes et al. 2021).
Coronel's living conditions remain far from ideal, with pollution and fast-growing urbanisation, including slums and poorer households (see Tables 1 and 2). The photograph below (Plate 1) shows the Bocamina II thermoelectric power plant in the middle of the city. The plant is supposed to close in 2023 to comply with the 2015 Paris Agreement on climate change.
Coronel, slums, and the Bocamina thermoelectric power plant. Photograph by Robinson Torres
The photograph in Plate 2 highlights the typical forestry landscape of intensive and extensive exotic tree plantations surrounding Coronel. The photograph also shows the reduced wetlands of Calabozo (Dungeon), heavily damaged by the construction of logistical circuits and motorways connecting the pulp mills to the port (Plate 2).
Forestry plantations and wetlands in the outskirts of Coronel, crossed by Route 160. Photograph by Robinson Torres
After 15 to 20 years of growth, trees are harvested to produce a variety of wood-based commodities on a large scale, especially wood pulp and other intermediate and final goods. Therefore, from a political ecology perspective, monoculture plantations of exotic trees, such as eucalyptus and pine, cannot be reduced to a simple operation of extracting raw materials. The trees have been genetically modified to adapt to changing local ecologies and satisfy the high-quality standards of global markets. To match this demand, Arauco, Chile's leading Forestry Corporation, evolved into a sophisticated extractor/producer, including genome laboratories, tree nurseries, extensive forestry plantations, lumber mills, and manufacturing factories for millwork and varieties of composite panel and pulp mills.
All these processes use enormous amounts of soil, water, and minerals, at the cost of degrading the land for current and future generations (Plate 3). This intensive and extensive territorial exploitation in the Central South of Chile produces an ecological subsidy that favours other areas of the world that demand wood-based products but are incapable of producing them to meet their demand. This form of symbiosis reveals an asymmetrical exchange between exploited territories in the periphery that offer natural resources and commodities, such as Coronel and its hinterland, and benefited territories in the developed centre downstream of the GVC.
Photograph of a pine tree plantation harvested in the region under study. Photograph by Hernán Cuevas
Arauco is interested in avoiding negative social and environmental externalities from its forestry and industrial activities in the area, to ensure its social license and business continuity. In this respect, the company has redefined its mission, moving from its focus on profit to discursively articulate this with the creation of shared value and sustainable development, all of which is in line with a positive symbiosis between territories (Cuevas and Grosser 2022).
Despite Arauco’s new philosophy, diversification of products and growth over the past decades, local territories did not benefit substantively. Numerous local conflicts have arisen that bear the socio-environmental consequences of extractive operations, many of them taking place in the ancestral territories of the Mapuche (Skewes 2019; Torres et al. 2016). Arauco’s intensive occupation of the territory disrupts and destroys the landscape, produces soil degradation, replaces native forest with plantations of monoculture, reduces biodiversity, affects water quantity and quality negatively, pollutes land and water with chemicals and fertilisers, and displaces ancestral communities, peasants, and traditional crops. These problems, present in the degraded rural territories, combined with the fast modernisation and expansion of PuertoCoronel, put a heavy burden on the city of Coronel and its territories (Alarcón et al. 2021; Valenzuela-Fuentes et al. 2021).
One of the most notorious problems in Coronel is the blocked access to the shore by a wall that separates the port from the old city, making the coastline inaccessible to residents (Fig. 5). Different categories of people, such as civil servants, dockworkers, and community representatives, mentioned this problem during interviews and workshops. This seems particularly damaging to the quality of life of the elderly that live in the southern part of the old city, who miss access to the ocean. Due to the port area's length, the separation of local people from direct access to the sea extends between the south of the city, where the PuertoCoronel terminal is located, to the north end of the bay at the city’s other end, where the fishermen cove Caleta Lo Rojas is located. Concerning the problem of inaccessibility to the sea, one community leader says:
I only live one block away from the railway track. To go to the beach, I didn't take a towel or anything with me … when I finished bathing, I used to run back home immediately. That's the way it was before. But now, everything is closed. There is no free access to the beach, and you must take a very long walk. Furthermore, the port pollutes [the sea] ... [now] everything is different.
Source Own elaboration based on interviews and workshop, March–June 2018
Localisation of socio-environmental problems and conflicts identified in Coronel.
According to our interviewees, Caleta Lo Rojas, one of the few remaining passages to the sea, is also threatened by the port development plan. This plan aims at expanding PuertoCoronel to connect it to MAPA. These new infrastructures will intensify logistical work, accelerate transport, and segregate space with its accompanying urban tensions and territorial conflicts. Additionally, environmental problems have arisen, such as air, water, and noise pollution (Fig. 5).
There have been several marine water pollution outbreaks in Coronel bay (Fig. 5), mainly due to submarine emissions discharged into the port area. A contamination source in the port's general loading dock (hatched pattern circle) is particularly noteworthy.
Another socio-environmental problem experienced by the local community in Coronel is noise. Port and shipping noise affect the community, especially older people who live in front of the port facilities in the old city. According to several interviewees, port noise occurs mainly at night and is produced by cranes handling containers and other cargo. Regarding the latter, one community leader stated: “I sued the port for annoying noise … the demand was accepted by the Superintendence of Environment. PuertoCoronel was charged and had to pay around US 27,000 dollars for this lawsuit […] I told them, to let me sleep. Let my people sleep. Let people sleep because they have to go to work every day. There are, for instance, bus drivers who are annoyed every night by this port noise in their ears.” According to this interviewee, PuertoCoronel prefers to pay the low fines established by law rather than invest in noise reduction. Additionally, there is the permanent noise of circulating trucks. Figure 5 shows the area of noise, a line parallel to the wall separating the port from Coronel Viejo. The circles in Fig. 5 also show where noise is most strongly heard.
The old city of Coronel is also experiencing real estate pressure on urban space. New gated community projects and gentrification have caused significant changes in land use, transforming the old town into a modern city. Real estate pressure, land use and property transformation, and population displacement from historic neighbourhoods, are occurring, as we write, hand in hand with the modernisation of the port and its influence on the city. As one community leader explained:
… people who lived around Playas Negras [Black Beach] lost their beach. Because they were uneducated, [the port company] took advantage of them and took over their land, paying discretionally very little money for it. The port was established at that time [he refers to the closing down of the coal mines] to provide new and better jobs, new opportunities [in life]. … [now] here we live enclosed. You cannot imagine. The port has locked us up completely. In the case of an emergency, such as a tsunami or an earthquake, … can you imagine? There is no clear evacuation exit.
There is also the risk of floods (Fig. 5) in two areas currently experiencing social housing pressure near the port and next to Route 160, close to the San José de Coronel Hospital.
Interviewees also complained about the potential arrival of hazardous activities associated with toxic industries, such as fish processing facilities and coal-fired thermoelectric power plants. These would be located at the city's southern end, just north of the Colbún thermoelectric power plant—in operation since 2012—and close to the flooding areas. Such investment requires modifying current land use regulations, which local residents say would be approved in the new Metropolitan Regulatory Plan. These interviewees raised severe objections against those modifications that will only add more pollution and exposure to environmental degradation in the community, aggravating social and environmental injustices (Cuevas and Grosser 2022).
Port and industrial investments are displacing residents in the city. People living on or nearby the coastline of the historic city have been displaced to the periphery and relocated to the north. Bocamina II, a thermoelectric power plant, also displaced people from the Aroldo Figueroa shantytown and the Rosa Medel School area. These cases reflect a pressing need for housing, causing illegal occupation of land near the O-852 route (Fig. 5). Besides their poor conditions, illegal occupants are exposed to the impacts of intensive freight transport by truck and the risk of being run over (Fig. 5). Can we account for these social and environmental injustices and their interconnections to port, logistical circuits, and urban spaces?
8 Discussion
This article presented the restructuring of the coal mining town of Coronel, which evolved into an industrial port-city, in the light of the spatial and social imprint of export, logistics, and maritime transport. Coronel's productive and socioeconomic restructuring reoriented it to provide logistical, shipping, and export services to the forestry sector, fisheries, and energy production based on fossil sources. This transformation resulted from the changing roles played by territories and their insertion into the global economy during the last four to five decades.
Export-oriented forestry needs investment in logistics and port infrastructure. Without the latter, the former is impossible. Therefore, investment in logistics, port infrastructure and cargo-handling facilities are integral components of GVCs.
Also, from a socioeconomic restructuring and urban renewal perspective, Coronel's case is at odds with port cities experiencing deindustrialisation and regeneration of waterfronts. A consistent body of literature shows that old port cities favour the development of the so-called orange economy, cultural activities, tourism and other service sectors at the expense of traditional port functions, transport, fisheries, shipbuilding and repair (Giovinazzi and Moretti 2009; Hein (ed.). 2011; Mah 2014; van der Laar 2020). In contrast, Coronel has fostered several industrial activities. Furthermore, since its foundation in 1996, PuertoCoronel has been steadily expanding, becoming the third largest port terminal in Chile and first in wood and pulp export. The expansion of the region's forestry extractivism, especially the modernisation of the nearby pulp mill MAPA, are the causes behind PuertoCoronel’s expansion plan. Additionally, Arauco’s vertical integration of the region's forestry, industrial, and port logistical operations can be considered a relevant factor for PuertoCoronel’s expansion. The interconnectedness of forestry and logistics activities also shows the region's territorial and socioeconomic control exercised by forestry extractivism.
Our field research also shows the rise of socio-environmental conflicts and increasing resistance of local communities to forestry, logistics, transport and shipping operations in its hinterland. Export activities, maritime transport and port logistics are also inextricably related to the negative externalities and impacts of forestry extractive activity taking place at sourcing territories. The relevance of transport, port logistics and maritime transport have been clear for the forestry sector's managers. What is though recent is the increasing social awareness of their negative imprint in the territories. Indeed, local communities, social organisations, and activists perceive their port-city-territory as a sacrifice zone and, therefore, aim to resist further plans for port and pulp mill expansion. The multiple rural–urban socioecological disequilibria and socio-environmental injustices experienced by communities in Coronel have damaged its residents’ quality of life. People think of their experience as an undeserved sacrifice for the sake of the forestry sector’s development, port expansion, the growth of the national economy, and an abstract notion of progress that has nothing to do with their polluted environments. Decision makers should reflect more on the negative externalities and spatial imprint of extractive activities, commodity flows and logistics.
The demand for ancestral land and the direct-action politics of the Mapuche Autonomist Movement against forestry and logistics operations are threatening the sustainability of the latter. In the coming years, this situation will affect the forestry GVC, both upstream and downstream, and its logistics and shipping operations. Further research has to be conducted on the negative externalities of the forestry products’ GVCs and those sectors’ actions to foster social and economic upgrades. Forestry’s and port’s social legitimacy (social license) among national and local communities, urban and rural social movements, social organisations, scholars, politicians, and public agents is crucial for reaching a more harmonious local and urban–rural development in the region. This includes the need to promote applied research, and more participatory and collaborative urban and territorial planning.
In short, industrial and urban development in Coronel, with their correlates of housing pressure, population displacement, marginalisation, and socio-environmental injustices, show uneven development. On the one hand, investment and economic development are occurring at the port; on the other hand, communities are experiencing socio-environmental risks and hazards, territorial displacement, and toxic exposure to substances. These negative aspects are only aggravated by the negative impacts of the logistical chain in the territories.
There is potential with the concept of symbiosis, but from the social, economic and environmental upgrading perspective, this concept should also be prevalent in the regional and local ecologies and territories. Observing port-city-territories such as Coronel may provide a more comprehensive and critical conceptualisation of symbiosis and development, and a completely different perspective on territories' global uneven and interdependent development. This suggests that symbiosis between territories, ports, and cities must be conceived as constitutively ambivalent, having both positive and negative consequences.
In a more positive line of thought, our findings suggest the need to develop collaborative and inclusive governance of port-city-territories. Furthermore, they may eventually serve as elements for land planning in both the port-city of Coronel and the regional context marked by forestry activities. For instance, Coronel communities have requested that one of this paper's co-authors develops local knowledge between communities and academia—the idea being to produce knowledge to negotiate with relevant companies in the current context of decarbonisation and State programs oriented to make Coronel more sustainable. This may lead to implementing economic activities that are socially and environmentally more sustainable.
9 Conclusion
Large extractivist and logistical operations foster investments and create new jobs, but they also negatively impact the environment and local communities. This uneven development pattern calls for further research to reconceptualise the idea of symbiosis and to emphasise the power relations, processes, and structures that shape local territories and their history and transformation.
Symbiosis aids us in exploring the interdependent global interconnections between territories, ports, logistical circuits, and urban spaces. Our perspective on symbiosis entails questioning the common practice of positively observing port-city-territories to reveal what must remain latent (and unseen) in such everyday observations. This reconceptualisation of symbiosis highlights the role of less powerful actors and left-behind territories, and the social suffering exerted on them by uneven and exploitative GVC relations. This allowed us to observe that interconnections can nourish or degrade territories simultaneously on both sides of a global value chain. In the case of Coronel, using the lens of uneven development helps to explore the concept of port-city-territory development.
This article unveils symbiosis's critical edge, including uneven development and environmental injustices. We claim that the concept of symbiosis can make a significant contribution to the study of logistics and port-city-territories if one expands it to include both positive win–win relations and asymmetric and negative ones. Hence, in our perspective, symbiosis is an ambivalent concept, in the sense that really existing processes present positive and negative aspects that coexist. On its positive side, it aids us in exploring the collaborative interdependent global interconnections between territories, ports, logistical circuits, and urban spaces. On its downside, it reveals environmental injustices and uneven development. Symbiosis is also contingent, in the sense that it is historical and undetermined. Hence, the symbiotic interconnections can, at the same time, nourish and degrade territories, make some communities prosper and others decay, and construct landscapes and destroy others.
In sum, we conclude that the concept of symbiosis can make an interesting contribution to the study of the connections between ports, cities, and territories. This, insofar as, first, those connections are perceived as integral to the world division of labour and the global economy second, symbiosis analysis must also consider asymmetric relations and patterns of unequal development between territories to raise social and political awareness of GVCs' socioenvironmental impacts. This is a necessary step toward constructing a more sustainable and just development in the port-city-territories.
Notes
Carola Hein introduced the hyphenated term “port-city-region” to stress the systemic unity between port-city and region. See https://www.portcityfutures.nl/home. Following some insights from our previous work (Cuevas et al. 2021), as well as recent personal communications with Carola Hein, we here use the term ‘port-city-territories’ instead, to avoid confusion with the subnational administration of the state. Also, this emphasises that the interconnected reproduction of nature, life and society needs space.
The name of the leading port company in Coronel. See: https://www.puertocoronel.cl/.
The holding Arauco defines itself as a “diversified global company (…) present in the forestry, pulp, timber, panels and renewable energy businesses.” https://www.arauco.cl/en/este_es_arauco/ (28/0872022).
History and Etymology for symbiosis, https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/symbiosis.
Taken from the editors’ CITY-PORT SYMBIOSIS call for papers. https://www.palgrave.com/gp/journal/41278/authors/call-for-papers (28/08/2022).
Niklas Luhmann (1998) uses the term meaning structure to refer to distinctions based on related terms or concepts, typically binary oppositions, which function as fundamental organisers of social activity and social systems.
We thank Maurice Jansen for his comments on this second aspect of the GVC discourse.
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This research was partly funded by ANID Fomento a la Vinculación Internacional para Instituciones de Investigación Regionales FOVI210070 and ANID/FONDAP/15130015.
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Cuevas Valenzuela, H., Torres-Salinas, R., Grosser, G. et al. Port-city symbiosis and uneven development: a critical essay on forestry exports and maritime trade from Coronel, Chile. Marit Econ Logist 25, 381–405 (2023). https://doi.org/10.1057/s41278-022-00246-6
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1057/s41278-022-00246-6