Environmental organizations praised the adoption of a law to create special environmental courts in Chile, which grants the Superintendency of the Environment the power to prosecute environmental violations. “The environmental courts can be an important contribution as long as they are implemented satisfactorily,” Flavia Liberona, executive director of the Terram Foundation, told Tierramérica.

However, she added, to a certain extent, these new institutions “lessen the force of rulings or penalties issued by the Superintendency of the Environment, since these can now be appealed in the environmental courts,” whose jurisdiction is “rather limited.”

The law was published in the country’s official gazette on Jun. 28 and the courts are expected to enter into operation in six months. From that point forward, environment-related legal cases will no longer fall under the jurisdiction of the Supreme Court of Justice.