(Bloomberg) — At 36, Gabriel Boric is Chile’s youngest ever president and the most left-wing in half a century. He also aspires to be one of the world’s greenest heads of state.
Boric is in the vanguard of a new awareness across Latin America of climate change and its link to inequality, whether through access to clean water, the rainforest’s destruction, indigenous rights or sharing the benefits from mining.
In Colombia, Gustavo Petro is the frontrunner for the presidency on a ticket of environmentalism. Honduras President Xiomara Castro is moving to curb mining six weeks after taking office. And in Brazil, Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva sounds serious about tackling the burning of the Amazon as he bids to unseat Jair Bolsonaro later this year.
“Climate change, dear compatriots, is not an invention,” Boric said in his acceptance speech on election night back in December. “We cannot look the other way when our farmers and peasants, when entire localities are deprived of water or when unique ecosystems are destroyed.”
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