Chile Constitutional Amendment: rights of nature

Summary

In 2021, the Earth Law Center and Defensa Ambiental launched a citizens’ initiative which aimed include rights of nature among the topics that were to be discussed by Chile’s Constitutional Convention – the body in charge of drafting Chile’s new constitution. In early 2022, the initiative received enough signatures to be included in the Constitutional Convention, making it one of 77 initiatives to be analyzed as a constitutional proposal and debated in the respective commissions and plenary session of the Constitutional Convention.

Initially, the Convention Plenary rejected almost entirely the first proposal, which was an ambitious, detailed draft of 40 articles. It included nature protection rights, nature representation, historical review mandates, nature tutelage, etc. Only one article about the climate and ecological crisis was approved, and the rest returned to the Commission. After the renegotiation process, on 25 March 2022, the Plenary voted and approved the second proposal of the “Commission of Environment, Rights of Nature, Natural Commons Goods and Economic Model”, with almost all articles approved, including:

Section 297, Article 4 — recognizing the rights of nature
Section 107, Article 9 — recognizing that peoples are interdependent with nature and form, together, an inseparable whole.
Section 108, Article 9A — recognizing the Indigenous concept of Buen Vivir and promotes a relationship of harmonious balance between people, nature and the organization of society.

The final draft constitution of the new Constitution was released in May 2022, and was approved and submitted to President Gabriel Boric in July. On 4 September 2022, Chile held a national referendum on the new constitution. A majority of Chilean citizens (62%) voted to reject the proposed Constitution and the new constitution was not adopted.