Chilean state found liable for environmental damage in the Atacama Desert

“A historic verdict,” reads the headline in the Chilean monthly El Ciudadano . On Monday, September 8, Chile’s first environmental tribunal (PTE) declared the Chilean state responsible for “serious environmental damage” caused by illegal dumping of “used clothing , tires, and debris” in several areas of the Atacama Desert, namely Pampa Norte, Pampa Sur, Mollecita Norte, and Mollecita, not far from the cities of Iquique and Alto Hospicio.

The environmental authority ordered the state to repair the damage, “accusing public institutions of inaction and negligence” in the affected area.

This conviction, reports Bíobío Chile , follows a complaint filed in March 2022 by lawyer Paulina Silva Herdidia against the State Defense Council and the municipality of Alto Hospicio, denouncing “the presence of landfills since 2012” . In this complaint, more detailed by the investigative media El Desconcierto , mention is made of “fires, toxic gas emissions, the presence of parasites and nauseating odors strongly affecting the surrounding populations” .

Since then, in an attempt to justify its legal decision, the court has relied on a series of technical reports and judicial inspections that have confirmed the “accumulation of tens of thousands of tons of used clothing and piles of debris present for more than ten years,” reports El Ciudadano .

Quoted by ADN Chile , the Chilean Minister of Science, Marcelo Hernández Rojas, confirmed that there was “a serious degradation of the environment, especially of the natural components of the soil and the landscape” .

As a result, and as mentioned above, the State is obliged to present an "environmental sanitation" program within the next six months in order to repair the damage, specifies Bíobío Chile .

In detail, this plan will have to include a very precise protocol, namely the application of “an initial diagnosis, the elimination and safe management of waste, the restoration of soils and the landscape, as well as the prevention of new illegal dumping” .

Furthermore, as El Desconcierto details, this reparation plan must also include citizen participation, establish a process for monitoring the measures and ensure that the deadlines established in advance are respected.