Chile 2022 Draft Constitution

Chapter III. Nature and Environment

Article 127

1. Nature has rights. The State and society have a duty to protect and respect them.
2. The State should adopt an ecologically responsible administration and promote environmental and scientific education through lifelong learning and training processes.

Article 128

1. These are principles for the protection of nature and the environment, at least those of progressivity, precaution, prevention, environmental justice, intergenerational solidarity, responsibility and just climate action.
2. Whoever damages the environment has the duty to repair it, notwithstanding to the administrative, criminal, and civil penalties that correspond according to the Constitution and the laws.

Article 129

1. It is the duty of the State to adopt actions to prevent, adapt and mitigate the risks, vulnerabilities and effects caused by the climate and ecological crisis.
2. The State must promote dialogue, cooperation and international solidarity to adapt, mitigate and face the climate and ecological crisis and protect nature.

Article 130

The State protects biodiversity, and must preserve, conserve and restore the habitat of wild native species in the appropriate quantity and distribution to sustain the viability of their populations and ensure the conditions for their survival and non- extinction.

Article 131

1. Animals are subject to special protection. The State shall protect them, recognizing their sentience and the right to live a life free from abuse.
2. The State and its entities shall promote education based on empathy and respect for animals. 45 46

Article 132

The State, through a national system of protected areas, unique, comprehensive and of a technical nature, must guarantee the preservation, restoration and conservation of natural spaces. It must also monitor and maintain up-to-date information regarding the attributes of these areas and ensure the participation of local communities and territorial entities.

Article 133

It is the duty of the State to regulate and promote the management, reduction and recovery of waste. Natural common goods

Natural common goods

Article 134

1. Natural common goods are elements or components of nature over which the State has a special duty of custody in order to secure the rights of the nature and interest of present and future generations.
2. The territorial sea and its seabed are natural common goods; the beaches; waters, glaciers and wetlands; geothermal fields; the air and the atmosphere; the high mountains, protected areas and native forests; the subsoil, and others declared by the Constitution and the law.
3. Among these goods are non-appropriable water in all its states, the air, the territorial sea and beaches, those recognized by international law and those that the Constitution or laws declare as such.
4. In the case of natural common goods that are non-appropriable, the State must preserve, conserve and, where appropriate, restore them. It must also administer them in a democratic, solidary, participatory and equitable manner. With respect to those natural common goods that are in the private domain, the duty of custody of the State implies the power to regulate their use and enjoyment, with the purposes established in paragraph 1.
5. The State may grant administrative authorizations for the use of non-appropriable natural common property, in accordance with the law, temporarily, subject to grounds for expiration, extinction and revocation, with specific conservation obligations, justified in the public interest, the protection of nature and the collective benefit. These authorizations, whether individual or collective, do not generate property rights.
6. Any person may demand the fulfillment of the constitutional duties of custody of the natural common goods. The law shall determine the procedure and requirements of this action.

Article 135

1. The State must promote measures to conserve the atmosphere and the night sky, according to territorial needs.
2. It is the duty of the State to contribute and cooperate internationally in space research for peaceful and scientific purposes.

Article 136

The State, as custodian of wetlands, native forests and soils, will ensure the integrity of these ecosystems, their functions, processes and water connectivity.

Article 137

The State guarantees the protection of glaciers and the glacial environment, including frozen soils and their ecosystem functions.

Article 138

The State shall protect the ecological and social function of the land.

Article 139

1. Chile is an oceanic country that recognizes the existence of the maritory as a legal category that, like the territory, must have specific regulatory regulation, which incorporates its own characteristics in the social, cultural, environmental and economic fields.
2. It is the duty of the State to conserve, preserve and care for continental, island and Antarctic marine and coastal ecosystems, promoting the various vocations and uses associated with them and ensuring, in any case, their preservation, conservation and ecological restoration.
3. A statute will establish the administrative division of the maritory, its spatial planning, integrated management and the basic principles that must inform the legal bodies that materialize its institutionalization, through a differentiated, autonomous and decentralized treatment, as appropriate, on the basis of equity and justice. territorial. 48

Status of water

Article 140

1. Water is essential for life and the exercise of human and natural rights. The State must protect the waters, in all their states and phases, and their hydrological cycle.
2. The exercise of the human right to water, sanitation and ecosystem balance will always prevail. The other uses shall be determined by statute.

Article 141

The State shall promote and protect the community management of drinking water and sanitation, especially in rural and extreme areas and territories, in accordance with the law.

Article 142

The State shall ensure a reasonable use of the waters. Authorizations for the use of water shall be granted by the National Water Agency, of an inedible nature, granted on the basis of the effective availability of water, and shall oblige the holder to the use that justifies their granting.

Article 143

1. The State shall ensure a participatory and decentralized water governance system through integrated watershed management. The river basin shall be the minimum unit of management.
2. The basin councils shall be responsible for the administration of water, notwithstanding to the supervision and other powers of the National Water Agency and the powers assigned to other institutions.
3. The law shall regulate the powers, functioning and composition of the councils. These must be integrated, at least, by the holders of water use authorizations, civil society and territorial entities with a presence in the respective basin, ensuring that no actor can reach control alone.
4. Councils may coordinate and associate where appropriate. In those cases where a council is not constituted, the administration will be determined by the National Water Agency.

Article 144

1. The National Water Agency is an autonomous body, with legal personality and its own patrimony, which operates in a decentralized manner and is responsible for ensuring the sustainable use of water for present and future generations, access to the human right to water and sanitation and the conservation and preservation of its associated ecosystems. To this end, it is responsible for collecting information, coordinating, directing and supervising the actions of state bodies with competence in water matters and individuals where appropriate.
2. The National Water Agency has the following powers:
   1.  Lead and coordinate the agencies with competence in water matters.
   2. Ensure compliance with the National Water Policy established by the respective authority.
   3. Grant, review, modify, expire or revoke water use authorizations.
   4. Implement and monitor environmental management and protection instruments in water matters.
   5. Coordinate and develop a unified public information system.
   6. Promote the constitution of the basin councils. It will assist them in carrying out integrated management, participatory governance and planning of interventions in water bodies and ecosystems associated with the or the respective basins.
   7. Monitor the responsible and sustainable use of water.
   8. Impose the corresponding administrative sanctions, which may be claimed before the courts of justice.
   9. Determine the quality of health services.
   10. The others set forth by statute.
3. The law shall regulate the organization, designation, structure, functioning and other functions and powers of the National Water Agency.

Status of minerals

Article 145

1. The State has absolute, exclusive, inalienable and imprescriptible control of all mines and mineral, metallic, non-metallic substances and deposits of fossil substances and hydrocarbons existing in the territory. national, with the exception of surface clays, notwithstanding to ownership of the land on which they are situated.
2. The exploration and exploitation of these substances shall be subject to regulation that considers their finite, non-renewable nature, intergenerational public interest and environmental protection.

Article 146

Glaciers, protected areas, those established by statute and others declared by statute for reasons of hydrographic protection are excluded from all mining activity.

Article 147

1. The State must establish a policy for mining activity and its productive chain, which will consider, at least, environmental and social protection, innovation and the generation of added value.
2. The State must regulate the synergistic impacts and effects generated in the different stages of mining activity, including its productive chaining, closure or paralysis, in the manner established by statute. It is the obligation of whoever carries out the mining activity to allocate resources to repair the damages caused,the environmental liabilities and mitigate their harmful effects in the territories in which it is developed, in accordance with the law. The law shall specify how this obligation shall apply to small-scale mining and pyrquineros.
3. The State shall adopt the necessary measures to protect small-scale mining and pyrquineros, promote them and facilitate access to and use of the tools, technologies and resources for the traditional and sustainable exercise of the activity.

Nature Ombudsman’s Office

Article 148

1. An autonomous body, with legal personality and its own patrimony, called the Ombudsman’s Office of Nature, will have as its function the promotion and protection of the rights of nature and of the environmental rights guaranteed in this Constitution, in the international environmental treaties ratified and in force in Chile, against the acts or omissions of the organs of the State Administration and private entities.
2. The Nature Ombudsman’s Office will concentrate on regional ombudsmen’s offices. The law shall determine the powers, organization, functioning and procedures of the Office of the Ombudsman for Nature.

Article 149

The Office of the Ombudsman for Nature shall have the following powers:

1.  To supervise the organs of the State and private entities in the fulfillment of their obligations in terms of environmental rights and rights of nature.
2. Formulate recommendations in the matters of its competence.
3. Process and follow up on complaints about violations of environmental rights and refer where appropriate.
4. File constitutional and legal remedies when environmental and nature rights are violated.
5. Promote training and education in environmental and nature rights.
6. The others entrusted to it by the Constitution and the law.

Article 150

The direction of the Ombudsman of Nature will be in charge of a defender of nature, who will be appointed in a joint session of the Congress of Deputies and the Chamber of the Regions, by the majority of its members in office, based on a shortlist prepared by environmental organizations of civil society, in the manner determined by statute.