The Ministry of the Environment still holds 89% of the 43 decrees it withdrew from the Office of the Comptroller General of the Republic in March, according to La Tercera. More than 200 days have passed since the withdrawal notice, and only 11% have returned to the agency.
The Comptroller General’s Office is the autonomous body that oversees the legality of government administrative actions. For a decree to take effect, the office must review and approve it. That procedure is called legality review.
According to the breakdown published by the newspaper, five decrees were resubmitted and have completed the process. Another three remain under evaluation at the Comptroller General’s Office. 34 have not been resubmitted, and there is no information about one. That last decree appoints the members of the National Council for Sustainability and Climate Change for 2026-2027.
There has been no progress for three months. The latest known decision dates to July 27. That day, the ministry resubmitted the regulations for the Public Register of Sanctions under Law 21,600, which created the Biodiversity and Protected Areas Service, as well as the regulations for Strategic Environmental Assessment. The Comptroller General’s Office approved the first, and the second remains under review.
The pending decrees include 15 sets of regulations and eight declarations of national parks or nature reserves. Regulations are technical texts that put laws into practice. One pending decree creates the Mar de Juan Fernández II and Nazca Desventuradas II marine parks. The previous government’s Council of Ministers for Sustainability approved them one day before its term ended.
With those two parks, Chile would protect 54% of its exclusive economic zone (EEZ), meaning the stretch of sea where the country has exclusive rights to exploit resources. That percentage would put Chile in fourth place worldwide. Also pending are declarations of national parks in salt flats that the National Lithium Strategy excluded from mining, such as Las Parinas and Lagunas Bravas.
Another pending decree, dated March 8, declares the Humboldt penguin a natural monument. The species is classified as endangered in Chile, which is home to 80% of its global population. A major colony lives in the Humboldt Penguin National Reserve, 30 kilometers from the area of influence of the Dominga mining and port project.
Roxana Núñez, a Greenpeace lawyer, said the ministry had informed them that the decree remains under review and has no deadline for resubmission. According to the lawyer, the ministry is reviewing the legal relationship between the declaration and other tools, such as the Recoge Plan, and also wants to conduct a new census of the species. Núñez argued that those reasons do not explain the delay and that "other measures can coexist with this declaration".
When it withdrew the decrees, the government explained that many had been submitted at the last minute by the previous administration. In fact, 14 were submitted on March 11, the day of the presidential handover. Another four were submitted during March, and 15 in January and February 2026. However, three began the process in 2024 and six in 2025.
Maisa Rojas, the former Minister of the Environment in Gabriel Boric’s government, said in writing that it is hard to understand why more than 30 decrees have still not been resubmitted, given that the current minister has insisted on having an efficient state.
Robert Padilla, director of the consulting firm Nasp, which runs an Environmental Decree Observatory, said this delay is not normal. According to Padilla, some decrees, such as particulate matter emission standards (polluting particles suspended in the air), could be processed quickly.
Minister Francisca Toledo did not provide an official response to La Tercera. Ministry sources told the newspaper that the decrees remain under review and that there is no clarity about when they will be resubmitted.
