Snapshot: Between October 2023 and April 2024, several Indigenous communities from the Tarapacá region in northern Chile filed lawsuits challenging the approval of a project to increase the capacity and extend the operations of the Collahuasi copper mine, citing alleged deficiencies in the Indigenous consultation process. The Environmental Court consolidated the lawsuits into a single case. In May 2026, the Court ruled in favour of some of the communities an annulled the approval of the project. The case is ongoing.

On 10 October 2023, the Asociación Indígena Wilamasi de Pescadores Mamq’uta Caleta de Chanavaya and the Asociación Indígena Aymara de Caleta Chanavaya, two Indigenous communities of the Tarapaca region in Northern Chile filed a lawsuit challenging the environmental approval granted to Compañía Minera Doña Inés de Collahuasi (a joint venture of Anglo American, Glencore and Mitsui & Co.) for a project to increase the capacity and extend the operations of its copper mine for another 20 years. In February 2024, two other Indigenous communities also filed two lawsuits against the project, and, in April 2024, seven other Indigenous communities filed a fourth lawsuit.

The project was approved by the Environmental Assessment Service (SEA) on 21 December 2021. Some communities filed administrative appeals before the SEA, while others appealed to the Committee of Ministers, a Chilean government body that reviews environmental decisions. All appeals were dismissed between August 2023 and February 2024.

The lawsuits against these resolutions were filed in two different Environmental Courts but were later consolidated in a single case by the Second Environmental Court in March 2024 and in June 2024. The claimants allege that the environmental evaluation process did not properly assess the project’s impact on all affected Indigenous communities and their livelihoods. As a result, some communities were excluded from the Indigenous consultation process conducted in 2019 in accordance with the ILO Indigenous and Tribal Peoples Convention. They ask the court to suspend the project and instruct the SEA to reopen the environmental impact assessment and carry out a new consultation process.

The SEA maintains that consultation with these communities was not required, as the project will not significantly affect them. On 10 January 2024, the company joined the proceedings as an interested third party. A court hearing took place on 30 January 2025. On 21 April 2025, the Asociación Territorial Indígena Aymara Hijos De Willq’e, who filed the third lawsuit in February 2024, withdrew it.

On 14 May 2026, the court ruled in favour of the Asociación Indígena Wilamasi de Pescadores Mamq’uta Caleta de Chanavaya and the Asociación Indígena Aymara de Caleta Chanavaya, finding that the project's impacts on these Indigenous communities had not been properly assessed, and annulled the SEA's approval of the project. The court dismissed the other communities' lawsuits.

The case is ongoing.

Court documents:

Causa R-430-2023 “Asociación Indigena Wilamasi De Pescadores Mamq´Uta, Caleta De Chanavaya y otro/Comité de Ministros del Servicio de Evaluación Ambiental” (in Spanish)