Civil Society and Environmental Law in Chile, Ecuador and Peru

During the 1990s Latin America experienced an expansion of extractive industries while developing its environmental law framework. However, the geographical and legal distances between the countries capital cities and the rural areas where natural resources are extracted challenged society and required citizens to activate the legal system. The areas of the cases studied share the presence of indigenous peoples, biodiversity and energy resources. The detailed cases studied shed light into the significance of citizen participation in public policy. The cases are an opportunity to draw some general conclusions about the political and legal context, the relevance of the legal and institutional design, the difficulties of regulating extractive industries and the opportunities for further policy development around environmental and indigenous people’s issues. The book is a significant contribution to understanding the tensions between the development of the environmental law and its concrete enforcement in individual cases. The findings and lessons portray the complexities of policy development and its implementation, particularly in multiethnic environments.