Three researchers from the Centro de Ciencia del Clima y la Resiliencia (CR2, the Center for Climate and Resilience Research) asked the government to reconsider the 59% reduction in the budget of the Subsecretaría del Medio Ambiente (Undersecretariat of the Environment), according to radio.uchile.cl. The outlet published an opinion column signed by the academics. In it, they argue that the cut undermines the country's climate change mitigation and adaptation goals.
The authors are Rodolfo Sapiains, an academic in the Department of Psychology at the Universidad de Chile; Eugenia Gayo, an academic in the Department of Geography at the same university and deputy director of CR2; and Martín Jacques, an academic in the Department of Geophysics at the Universidad de Concepción. CR2 is a research center dedicated to the study of climate.
The column links the announcement to recent weather events. In the same week as the announcement, the Región Metropolitana (the Santiago metropolitan region) recorded rainfall the authors describe as historic, along with a mudslide in San Carlos de Apoquindo. A week later, there were floods and hailstorms in various parts of the country.
The researchers distinguish between two factors. They state that extreme events tend to be more frequent and intense under El Niño conditions, the periodic warming of the Pacific Ocean. They add that this scenario worsens when combined with the signal of human-caused climate change. That link is the authors' own; the column does not cite a specific study on these episodes.
To gauge public concern, they cite the twelfth edition of the Termómetro de la Salud Mental ACHS-UC (a mental health survey). According to that survey, 54% of people report feeling stress associated with the effects of climate change, 14 percentage points more than in the previous survey. The column does not specify when the data were collected.
They also mention the Encuesta PAIS 2025 by DESUC (the Universidad Católica's survey office), in which 69% of Chileans expect climate change to have a negative impact on their quality of life. A 2024 survey by the Instituto Nacional de la Juventud (INJUV, the National Youth Institute) found that 67% of those who do not want to have children, or more children, cited that concern as a factor.
The authors argue that there is a persistent gap between the country's climate commitments and the resources allocated to meet them. They say the problem is not limited to one government: under the previous administration there were also cuts to funding for climate change research. The column does not detail the amounts of those cuts.
The decision now rests with the ongoing budget debate. The researchers are calling to reverse the 59% cut and secure stable funding for climate research. The text does not report any response from the Ministerio del Medio Ambiente (Ministry of the Environment) or the government.
