The return of clusters in Chile: The unsustainability of the salmon cluster in Chiloé

Abstract

Government policy includes the development of clusters for competitiveness and innovation. Clusters are successful in developed countries like Australia, New Zealand or Finland, where governance and the synergy of the system are achieved by practices that are consistent with ethical codes, such as Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) and standards involving transparency and binding dialogue between the stakeholders involved in the production process of the main companies located in one or another region, with the State monitoring for sustainability. Chile maintains a strategy based on the export of natural resources for economic growth. Some authors call it Extractivism, resulting in accumulation by dispossession in which multinational corporations benefit from the capital gains of surplus, taking over common lands, new territories and profitable future markets in Latin America. In the relationship between the private Sector and the State, it is the latter that contributes with large sums to R&D and absorbs the negative externalities of social and environmental impacts, while having no means for coercion or auditing. Because there is no governance in synergy, local societies disintegrate. In clusters without transparency among the actors, financial capital is accumulated but there is no sustainable local development. This analysis is based on the author’s research on the salmon cluster in southern Chile.