Access to environmental informacion in Chile

All rights reserved. The article provides a review on some issues related to public access to environmental information in Chile. It begins with analyzing the notions of public information and environment, and their interpretation in the case law of the Chilean Council for Transparency and in the teachings of leading authors; in addition, it identifies the kind of information which is most frequently the subject of a complaint before the Council. Next, it deals with the bodies and organizations that are obliged to provide access to environmental information. Finally, it concludes by reviewing the cases of refusal to give access, which can be divided into two main groups: those based on the grounds of refusal mentioned in the legislation and those arising from factors other than the aforesaid causes (e.g. delay). The aim of the article is to identify the most relevant points of the national legislation and case law regarding access to environmental information, in order to draw some parallels and identify the most relevant differences that exist between the Chilean legal system and comparative or international law.