Abstract
The Sistema de Evaluación de Impacto Ambiental (Environmental Impact Assessment System—SEIA) evaluates all projects potentially harmful to human health and the environment in Chile. Since its establishment, many projects approved by the SEIA have been contested by organized communities, especially in the energy sector. The question guiding our research is whether socio-environmental conflicts affect the evaluation times and the approval rates of projects under assessment. Using a novel database comprising all energy projects assessed by the SEIA, we analyzed 380 energy projects that entered the SEIA review process between 2012 and 2017 and matched these projects with protest events. Using linear and logit regression, we find no association between the occurrence of protests aimed at specific projects and the probability of project approval. We do, however, find that projects associated with the occurrence of protest events experience significantly longer review times. To assess the robustness of this finding, we compare two run-of-river plants proposed in Mapuche territory in Chile’s La Araucanía region. We discuss the broader implications of these findings for sustainable environmental decision making.
Highlights
The Environmental Impact Assessment (EIA) is a common regulation around the world
Focusing on two specific variables related to the impact assessment process—time delays and approval rates—we show a statistical relation between opposition and the evaluation of energy projects
Do conflicts matter for the environmental assessment of energy projects? Using a novel dataset of 380 energy projects that entered the SEIA between 2012 and 2017, the analysis shows a statistically significant positive relationship between the occurrence of protest events and proposal review duration
Summary
The Environmental Impact Assessment (EIA) is a common regulation around the world. The EIA process consists of evidence accumulation of the potential environmental, economic or social impacts of projects, comparing them to the baseline conditions of the area. EIA mechanisms have been widely adopted by Latin American countries, with a considerable variation of their procedural quality [2]. With a medium degree of procedural effectiveness, transparency, consultation and technical capacity, the Chilean EIA (Sistema de Evaluación de Impacto Ambiental—SEIA) is a typical case in the. Latin American context [2]. The Chilean model of development, far from being an “oasis”, echoes many of the other trends in South America. This model is based on natural resource extraction and fits
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