Reform of the Chilean water code in 2022

Shift from a neoliberal model to a more public interest model

Bibliographic Data

ID21697096
AuthorsTatiana Celume (0000-0003-2004-963X, San Sebastián University), Guillermo Donoso (0000-0001-9958-4787, Pontificia Universidad Católica de Chile, corresponding author), R Llabrés Fuster (Universidad de Los Andes, Chile), Rodrigo Fuster (0000-0002-5804-3324, University of Chile), Andrea Müller (0000-0003-4701-7902, University of Amsterdam)
Year2026
Volume28
Issue3
Pages393-412
Publication date2026-03-01
Peer ReviewedYes
Open AccessYes
TypeARTICLE
VenueWater Policy (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 1366-7017 • E-ISSN: 1996-9759
PublisherIWA Publishing (PUBLISHER • GB)
DOI10.2166/wp.2026.347
OpenAlexW7134124263
LanguageEN
References cited55

Chile's 1,981 Water Code (CA81) established a market-oriented allocation model based on private, perpetual, and tradable water rights, sharply limiting the state's regulatory role. Over time, water scarcity, socio-environmental conflicts, and sustained academic and policy critiques revealed governance gaps regarding human needs, ecosystem protection, hoarding and non-use, state authority, and climate adaptation. This article examines Law No. 21,435 (CA22), enacted in 2022, asking whether it fundamentally transforms Chilean water law or incrementally adjusts CA81. It combines a systematic review of 63 studies on CA81 with a detailed legal and policy analysis of CA22, structured around eight critique clusters that encompass regime design, state capacity, distributional outcomes, environmental safeguards, conflict and judicialization, hoarding, and maladaptation. The findings show that CA22 recognizes access to drinking water and sanitation as an essential, inalienable human right, strengthens ecosystem protection, converts new water rights into temporary and conditional concessions, and expands the powers of the Dirección General de Aguas to intervene in allocation and scarcity management. Yet persistent institutional fragmentation, information deficits, uneven water markets, and over-allocation under climate stress mean that the reform yields a hybrid governance regime that reorients the neoliberal model

Climate change · Climate governance · Corporate governance · Environmental governance · Sanitation · Scarcity · Water scarcity · Water trading · Environmental and Cultural Studies in Latin America and Beyond · Environmental law and policy · Water Governance and Infrastructure

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