PROJECT CHILE REGIONAL 2020, Tokyo 2006

Project Chile Regional 2020:
Participative Construction of Future Scenarios*

Heinrich von Baer[1], Ronald Cancino[2], José Manuel de Ferari[3], Jorge Petit-Breuilh[4], Erika Salazar[5]

Context: Chile’s prevailing style of development is characterized by a paradox, which severely restricts its ability to accomplish socially and territorially balanced development levels.

1. As the most centralized country in Latin America, Chile tries to competitively insert itself into both global dynamics and the knowledge society, without having previously strengthened the human, productive and institutional capacities of its sub-national, local and regional territories.

2. As of yet, Chile does not have any long-term development strategy with visions and programs transcending different government periods, much less one based on the view and proposals of citizen, civil society and development related institutions of Chile’s regions.

Alliances: To confront this, the following institutions of different specific roles but similar interests, decided to join their efforts to face a challenge that would far exceed the capacity and representativity of each of them:
Universidad Construye País, an organization with the mission of fostering social responsibility among university students and staff.
Red Sinergi@Regional, a network founded to establish and strengthen Regional Studies Centers in each region and establish a collaborative training, diploma and graduate program for local / regional development leaders, founded by AUR.
Agrupación de Universidades Regionales, AUR, Association of the 20 Chilean Regional Universities of public responsibility and vocation.
Programa Servicio País, a program dependent on the National Foundation for Overcoming Poverty, which trains and establishes young committed professionals in a large number of rural and socially vulnerable communities along the country.
Colegio de Ingenieros de Chile A.G., the association of engineers, and its regional chapters.

Purpose: To offer the current and future Chilean generations a long-term (year 2020) development project, participatively conceived and constructed in the regions, able to legitimate itself as an inspiring and orienting reference among the main regional and national development actors, to build up a socially and territorially integrated, decentralized, policentric, participative and sustainable society, with equal opportunities for all its inhabitants.

Participants: 60 prominent regional personalities from each of Chile’s 12 regions are being selected according to their wide vision and regional commitment, from the public, private, academic, social, ethnic and religious sectors, as well as members of the regional engineer association and young professionals from the “Servicio-País” program committed to overcome poverty in a large number of rural communities.

Stages: The complete project is scheduled to be developed in three sequential stages:
I. Second semester 2005: six regions of Central-South Chile: VII Maule; VIII Bío-Bío, IX Araucanía, XI Aysén, and XII Magallanes (Central-South).
II. First semester 2006: six regions of Central-North Chile: I Tarapacá; II Antofagasta; III Atacama; IV Coquimbo; V Valparaiso, and VI O´Higgins.
III. Integration, Publication and Promotion.
Methodology: The methodological design considers the following basic components:

Prospective planning: unlike traditional planning, based on a sectorial approach, a systemic territorial methodology was designed, adapting the prospective future scenario technique developed by Michel Godet, Javier Medina and others, with which the historic, present and future tendencies that approach or draw away from the ideals declared by the participants were identified, as well as the measures required to accomplish it. This is represented in the following Diagram 1.