Carolina Schmidt grew up spending summers with her family on a farm in central Chile—a country she says is “so gifted with nature that you grow up feeling part of it. The rivers, volcanoes, mountains, and sea were all part of my childhood. For me, nature and joy are intertwined.”
As a child, she believed that nature was “immortal—I thought that nothing could stop nature because it seemed so powerful.” The climate crisis changed all of that.
The green fields of Schmidt’s childhood in the central coastal zone of Chile have dried up after 14 years of drought. The beaches of her childhood are disappearing due to erosion, and the glaciers and eternal snows on mountains are melting. “Climate change made me realize how fragile nature is,” she says. “It’s heartbreaking, and it’s happening all over the world.”
As an adult, Schmidt had a successful career in business, and then pivoted to politics. She served as minister-director of Chile’s National Women’s Service in 2010 and as minister of education from 2013 to 2014. In 2018, former President Sebastián Piñera appointed her minister of the environment, a position she held until 2021. “I’m not an expert in the environment but I’m good at understanding problems and making things happen, and the transition to sustainability requires the drive for major changes in the way we live and develop,” she says.
Schmidt believes strongly that government has a vital role to play in the protection of a country’s natural resources and in the promotion of sustainable development—and her track record as minister of the environment is a testament to that belief. During her tenure, for example, 40 new protected areas were created; single-use plastics were banned; Chile committed to carbon neutrality by 2050; Fondo Naturaleza Chile, the country’s first environmental fund, was created to mobilize and manage resources for large-scale conservation projects; and the country’s philanthropy guidelines were updated to make it easier for donors to support conservation causes.
