The Sistema de Evaluación de Impacto Ambiental (Environmental Impact Assessment System—SEIA) evaluates all projects potentially harmful to human health and the environment in Chile. Since its establishment, many projects approved by the SEIA have been contested by organized communities, especially in the energy sector. The question guiding our research is whether socio-environmental conflicts affect the evaluation times and the approval rates of projects under assessment. Using a novel database comprising all energy projects assessed by the SEIA, we analyzed 380 energy projects that entered the SEIA review process between 2012 and 2017 and matched these projects with protest events. Using linear and logit regression, we find no association between the occurrence of protests aimed at specific projects and the probability of project approval. We do, however, find that projects associated with the occurrence of protest events experience significantly longer review times. To assess the robustness of this finding, we compare two run-of-river plants proposed in Mapuche territory in Chile’s La Araucanía region. We discuss the broader implications of these findings for sustainable environmental decision making.

This article examines the environmental conflict that developed in Freirina, Chile, between 2011 and 2012 around Agrosuper, owner of the largest agro-industrial project ever built in the country. The stench coming from the feces distressed the residents, triggering a community uprising that attracted a great deal of national attention and even compromised some political authorities. As a result, Agrosuper decided to shut down the company by the end of 2012. The Freirina case exemplifies a “David versus Goliath” dynamic, in which a community achieves a remarkably successful outcome by stopping the operation of a huge industrial facility. To analyse this outcome, the article applies Marco Giugni's joint effects model, while integrating additional conceptual frameworks to elucidate the causal mechanisms that explain the effect of this conflict.