Environmental Assessment and Climate Change: Criteria for their proper determination in the framework of projects or activities submitted to the Environmental Impact Assessment System

Abstract

The objective of this article is to address the incorporation of climate change as a variable in the environmental assessment of projects in the framework of the Environmental Assessment System, both for projects that are under environmental assessment and projects that have already been assessed. The foregoing, bearing in mind that Chilean Law includes the concept of climate change, providing a definition and granting to the Ministry of Environment attributions linked to climate change. However, our laws fail to provide criteria allowing to include this global variable when a particular project or activity is assessed in the Environmental Impact Assessment System. In the absence of such legal framework, this article aims to provide a series of criteria that allow the incorporation of climate change when assessing a project or when it’s under construction or operation, analyzing, besides, how the Chilean Courts have ruled regarding how climate change must be taken into account under this tool of assessment.