Environment

LEGAL FRAMEWORK

The architecture of Chilean environmental law

The central statute is Law 19,300 on General Bases of the Environment, published on March 9, 1994 and thoroughly reformed in 2010. It sets the framework for the right to live in a pollution-free environment, environmental protection, nature preservation and conservation of environmental heritage, organizing under common principles the preexisting sectoral rules on water, air, soil or waste and creating the management instruments that structure the regulation today. Its constitutional basis is Article 19 No. 8 of the Constitution, which guarantees that right and imposes on the State the duty to protect it, backed by the Article 20 constitutional protection action before the respective Court of Appeals — a frequent route for challenging investment projects, so litigation risk does not end once permits are obtained.

Environmental institutions were born with Law 20,417, published on January 26, 2010, which created the Ministry of the Environment, the Environmental Assessment Service and the Superintendence of the Environment, and contains the Superintendence’s Organic Law (LOSMA), governing enforcement and sanctions. Two years later, Law 20,600, published on June 28, 2012, created the Environmental Courts as a specialized jurisdiction. These three laws assembled the current model, in which assessment, enforcement and judicial review sit with separate bodies.

Even so, environmental law remains scattered across numerous statutes and there is no single code, so anyone assessing a project must review Law 19,300, its regulation, the applicable quality and emission standards, sectoral permits and the industry’s regulation. That fragmentation complicates planning.

INSTITUTIONS

Environmental institutions and their role

Each body plays a different role and engages with the project holder at different stages. Creating or governing Institution Main function statute

Ministry of the Environment Law 20,417 (2010); Final Title Designs environmental policy and regulation, issues quality and (MMA) of Law 19,300 emission standards and prevention/decontamination plans, and coordinates the State’s environmental action

Environmental Assessment Service Law 20,417 (2010); Administers the Environmental Impact Assessment System, con‐ (SEA) Paragraph 6 of the Final Title ducts project assessment and standardizes technical criteria. of Law 19,300

Environmental Assessment Law 19,300, Paragraph 2 of Environmentally qualifies each project and issues the Commission / SEA Executive the Final Title Environmental Approval Resolution, regional or interregional as Director applicable

Biodiversity and Protected Areas Law 21,600 Conserves biodiversity, manages the National System of Protected Service (SBAP) Areas and inspects activities in protected areas within its competence

Environmental Courts Law 20,600 Resolve claims against environmental acts, environmental damage remediation lawsuits, and authorize certain SMA measures.

The design deliberately separates functions. The SEA assesses but does not enforce; the SMA enforces and sanctions but does not qualify projects; the Environmental Courts review both bodies’ decisions; and the Committee of Ministers acts as an administrative review body in the most sensitive matters. This prevents any single body from concentrating assessment, control and sanction.

SEIA

The Environmental Impact Assessment System

The SEIA is the country’s most important environmental management instrument and, for most investors, the first real contact with the regulation. It is governed by Law 19,300 and its regulation, Supreme Decree No. 40 of 2012, administered by the SEA. It is permeated by the preventive principle: certain projects cannot be executed without first being assessed and obtaining an Environmental Approval Resolution (RCA) authorizing them, so the SEIA is, above all, a market-entry condition.

Which projects must be filed Article 10 of Law 19,300 lists the types of projects or activities that, being capable of causing environmental impact, must be submitted to the SEIA, and Article 3 of Supreme Decree No. 40 develops them in greater technical detail, setting thresholds and conditions. These include major hydraulic infrastructure works, high-voltage electric transmission lines and their substations, generating plants above a certain capacity, nuclear reactors and facilities, transport works (airports, highways, public roads, ports and maritime terminals), urban or tourism development projects outside approved plans, industrial or real estate projects in areas declared latent or saturated, mining projects above a certain scale, oil and gas pipelines, industrial, agroindustrial, forestry, fishing and aquaculture projects above the applicable thresholds, handling of hazardous substances, waste treatment and disposal systems, and projects in national parks, protected areas or urban wetlands.

The list is exhaustive, but the thresholds and conditions of Supreme Decree No. 40 matter as much as the typology, because the same type of project may fall in or out depending on its size, location or capacity. Modifications to an already approved project are also assessed when they are significant changes, and a project holder may always voluntarily submit a project to obtain the legal certainty a favorable RCA provides.

Law 19,300 prohibits splitting projects in bad faith to change the filing instrument or avoid the SEIA. If the SMA detects this, it may open a sanctioning proceeding and, after an SEA report, require the holder to properly file the project; a project genuinely executed in stages is exempt, which the holder must be able to prove.

DIA Y EIA

Environmental Impact Statement or Study

Filing takes one of two routes, one of the earliest technical decisions of the project. The general rule is the Environmental Impact Statement (DIA); the exception, reserved for higher-impact projects, is the Environmental Impact Study (EIA). The dividing line is Article 11 of Law 19,300: if the project generates any of these effects, it must file through a Study.

Risk to public health from the quantity and quality of effluents, emissions Significant adverse effects on the quantity and quality of renewable or waste. natural resources, including soil, water and air.

Resettlement of human communities or significant alteration of the Location in or near population centers, protected areas, priority livelihoods and customs of human groups. conservation sites, protected wetlands and glaciers susceptible to being affected, and the territory’s environmental value. Significant alteration, in magnitude or duration, of an area’s scenic or Alteration of monuments or sites with anthropological, archaeological, tourism value. historical or, in general, cultural heritage value.

Criterion Environmental Impact Statement (DIA) Environmental Impact Study (EIA)

When it applies General rule. The project generates none of the Art. 11 effects of Exception. The project generates one of the Art. 11 effects of Law Law 19,300 19,300

Nature Sworn declaration by the project holder Detailed technical assessment with environmental baseline

Core content Project description, justification that it generates no Art. 11 effects, Project description, baseline, prediction and assessment of impacts, and regulatory compliance and required permits mitigation, remediation or compensation measures

Public participation May be ordered for 20 days in projects with environmental burdens Always applies, for a period of 60 business days from publication on nearby communities. The request must be filed within the statutory deadline, currently 30 days, and come from at least 10 individuals or 2 citizen organizations

Outcome Favorable or unfavorable RCA Favorable or unfavorable RCA

The difference is not minor. The Study requires a complete environmental baseline, a description of significant impacts and mitigation, remediation or compensation measures to address them. The Statement is a sworn declaration in which the holder certifies that the project complies with regulation and generates none of the Article 11 effects. The deadlines in the following table are those the law sets for qualification, not counting suspensions from requests for additional information, which usually extend the process.

P U B L I C PA R T I C I PAT I O N

Public participation and indigenous consultation

Public participation is a structural piece of the SEIA and one of those with the greatest bearing on a project’s viability. It is mandatory in Studies; in Statements it is not automatic, but may be ordered when the project generates environmental burdens on nearby communities, per the deadlines and requirements in the table above. Law 21,449 extended to 30 days the deadline to request it in Environmental Impact Statements. SEIA deadlines are counted in business days, unless stated otherwise.

The SEA must address citizen observations with reasoned grounds in the resolution qualifying the project, and failure to duly consider them is one of the defects most frequently alleged when challenging an RCA. Whoever submitted them and believes they were not properly considered has standing to appeal.

Added to this is indigenous consultation. Chile ratified ILO Convention 169, which requires consulting indigenous peoples when measures are contemplated that may directly affect them, a duty whose integration into the SEIA has been clarified mainly by the higher courts’ case law. Projects located in territories with indigenous presence must anticipate this component, because its omission or defective handling is a common cause of litigation.

PERMITS AND INSTRUMENTS

Sectoral permits and management instruments The one-stop window

The system’s great advantage is the so-called one-stop window. For the sectoral environmental permits covered by the SEIA Regulation, a favorable RCA resolves the environmental aspects assessed and certifies the corresponding requirements, so sectoral agencies cannot deny them on environmental grounds already resolved or impose new environmental requirements beyond those the RCA set, without prejudice to reviewing non-environmental requirements. Conversely, if the RCA is unfavorable, they must deny the permits.

Still, its scope should not be overstated. There are non-environmental permits — sanitary, construction, concession and others — handled independently of the SEIA, before municipalities or autonomous agencies, and the RCA does not replace them.

ENFORCEMENT

Enforcement and sanction by the SMA

Once a project is operating, the environmental relationship shifts from the SEA to the Superintendence of the Environment. The SMA enforces compliance with Environmental Approval Resolutions, prevention and decontamination plans, quality and emission standards and the other instruments. Its regime is in the LOSMA, contained in Law 20,417.

The sanctioning procedure The SMA brings charges when it detects breaches and conducts a sanctioning proceeding ending in a resolution. Infringements are classified, under Article 36 of the LOSMA, as very serious, serious and minor according to the severity of the breach and its effects, and that classification determines the sanction range.

The catalog of sanctions is in Article 38 of the LOSMA and includes written reprimand, a fine of one to 10,000 annual tax units, temporary or permanent closure, and revocation of the Environmental Approval Resolution. Article 39 assigns the ranges by severity. Minor infringements allow a reprimand or fine of up to 1,000 annual tax units; serious ones, up to 5,000; very serious ones, up to 10,000, in both latter cases with possible RCA revocation or closure. One annual tax unit equals twelve monthly tax units, so the 10,000 UTA ceiling represents, in major projects, billions of pesos.

The SMA may also adopt urgent, provisional measures to prevent imminent harm, and even suspend authorizations contained in an RCA, though the most significant ones require authorization from the competent Environmental Court.

reprimand or maximum fine possible RCA revocation or closure possible RCA revocation or closure

COMPLIANCE

Compliance program and self-reporting

The sanctioning regime does not end with the fine. The LOSMA provides two instruments that incentivize compliance and change strategy in the face of a proceeding.

The compliance program, regulated in Article 42 of the LOSMA, is a plan of actions and goals the holder submits once charges are filed to restore compliance with the infringed regulation and, where applicable, address its effects. If the SMA approves it and the holder executes it satisfactorily, the proceeding is suspended and may end with no fine; if the holder breaches the approved program’s commitments, the proceeding resumes and exposes it to a larger fine than would otherwise have applied.

Self-reporting (Art. 41 LOSMA) is the written communication in which the infringer informs the SMA that it is committing an infringement within its jurisdiction. Anyone self-reporting can obtain exemption from or reduction of the fine, provided they supply precise, truthful and verifiable information and immediately adopt measures to reduce or eliminate the negative effects. It rewards a holder who detects a problem and fixes it before the authority discovers it.

ENVIRONMENTALDAMAGE

Liability for environmental damage and crimes Environmental damage

Alongside the SMA’s administrative regime, Law 19,300 establishes a liability regime for environmental damage that operates in the courts and is independent of the administrative sanction. It provides two actions. The environmental remediation action, regulated in Article 53 et seq. of Law 19,300, seeks to have the responsible party restore, at its own cost, the damaged environment to a state similar to before, and may be brought by any individual or legal entity that suffered the damage, the local municipality and the State, through the State Defense Council. The damages action seeks economic compensation for the harm and belongs only to whoever was directly affected.

Liability for environmental damage generally requires intent or fault. Even so, the law presumes fault when the damage resulted from breach of environmental quality standards, emission standards, prevention or decontamination plans, or environmental regulation in general. That presumption reverses the burden and eases the plaintiff’s position. The environmental remediation action lapses after five years from the damage’s clear manifestation, and is heard, like claims against SEA and SMA resolutions, before the Environmental Courts.

CLIMATECHANGE

Climate change and its legal framework

Chile’s climate change framework is no longer a bill — it is law in force, with regulation underway. Law 21,455, the Climate Change Framework Law, was published on June 13, 2022 and forms the institutional basis of the country’s climate policy. This is worth clarifying because the idea persists that it remains a pending bill, and it is not.

Law 21,455 sets the goal of achieving greenhouse gas emissions neutrality — the balance between emissions and absorptions — by 2050 at the latest. To that end it structures climate change management instruments, including the Long-Term Climate Strategy, the Nationally Determined Contribution, sectoral mitigation and adaptation plans, and regional and municipal action plans, several under preparation since 2024. The law brings Chile’s commitments as a Paris Agreement party into domestic law and makes them enforceable through concrete instruments.

For investment projects, the practical consequence is that emissions management is no longer a voluntary or reputational matter, but is progressively integrated into regulation. The law provides for a certification system for greenhouse gases and water use, whose regulation has been under consultation, anticipating growing measurement and reporting requirements for large emitters.

TRENDS

Trends for investment projects

The most significant trend is the reform of “permisología” — the set of permits and authorizations a project must obtain. The underlying criticism, held for years by the productive sector, is that processing in Chile is slow and scattered. The response came through two laws. Law 21,755, published on July 11, 2025, introduced amendments on regulatory simplification and promotion of economic activity. Law 21,770, published on September 29, 2025, established a Framework Law on Sectoral Authorizations seeking to organize, digitize and set firm deadlines for sectoral permit processing through a Unified Sectoral Permits Information System. Its rollout is gradual; a February 2026 decree of the Ministry of Economy set the timeline for sectoral agencies’ obligations to take effect and for digital processing to be enabled. It is a young reform whose effect will depend on implementation.

A second trend is the institutionalization of biodiversity protection. Law 21,600 created the Biodiversity and Protected Areas Service and the National System of Protected Areas, and during 2026 decrees have been issued transferring staff from the National Forestry Corporation and the Undersecretariat of the Environment to the new service. For projects sited in or near protected areas, this adds a counterpart and a protection standard that was previously more scattered.

A third trend is the strengthening of enforcement and sanctions. The Council of Ministers for Sustainability and Climate Change approved a bill to reform the LOSMA aimed at strengthening the SMA’s powers; it is a bill, not law in force, but the direction points to more demanding environmental control, not less. Added to this is the amendment of the SEIA regulation. Supreme Decree No. 17 of 2025 of the Ministry of the Environment, published on January 21, 2026, amended Supreme Decree No. 40 of 2012, so those planning medium-term projects must review the current text before defining typologies, thresholds, admissibility and filing content, bearing in mind rules may change during development.