Monserrat Madariaga Gómez de Cuenca, a Chilean environmental lawyer, has been watching her country reinvent itself. Over the past year, more than 150 elected representatives, including a microbiologist and several Indigenous leaders, had been hard at it nutting out a new constitution for their country — the most progressive constitution to be drafted in the midst of the climate emergency.
Nearly 80% of Chileans voted in October 2020 to reimagine their country’s governing principles after massive protests erupted a year earlier, denouncing deep social and economic inequities in the country.
Increasing water scarcity was also the product of the country’s extractive-mining-led economy, and Chileans had finally realised “we are damaging the environment for the benefit of very few”, said Madariaga, now at
