Environmental justice at the environmental courts? Mining, socioenvironmental conflicts, and environmental litigation in northern Chile

Abstract

With the judicialization of politics and the creation of new environmental institutions, environmental litigation is now an increasingly common dimension of socioenvironmental conflicts. This study examines this pattern in the context of recently created environmental courts in Chile, focusing on lithium and copper mining litigation in the Atacama salt flats of the Antofagasta Region. I argue that while the courts are formally open to a wide variety of legal complaints, community groups face an uphill battle when using legal mobilization strategies due to the underlying political and economic power of the mining industry in northern Chile. Nevertheless, environmental litigation matters for environmental policy implementation because it reveals conflicts over environmental compliance, highlighting gaps between environmental laws on the books and actual practices. In this sense, environmental litigation activates environmental regulations and can provide communities with greater leverage to demand stronger enforcement, even as the long-term implications of judicial rulings for addressing current and past harms remain to be seen. The paper is based on documents from the Chilean environmental courts database, media sources, and twenty-two semi-structured interviews with activists and community leaders, lawyers, scientists, and government officials to better interpret and contextualize the court archival data.