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Environmental Law Journal becomes part of Scielo Chile

The publication edited by the Environmental Law Center will be part of an open access collection of Chilean scientific journals in all areas of knowledge.

The Environmental Law Journal, edited by the Environmental Law Center of the Law School of the University of Chile, was admitted to be part of the SciELO - Chile Scientific Electronic Library.

SciELO - Chile is an open access collection of texts from Chilean scientific journals, from all areas of knowledge, which predominantly publish articles resulting from scientific research, and which uses peer review of the manuscripts they receive, which show a growing performance in the indicators of compliance with the indexing criteria.

"We are very pleased with this recognition, which is the result of an effort of continuous improvement of the editorial processes developed by the editorial team, which has resulted in the growing increase in the quality of the articles published over the years," said the director of the Journal, Prof. Valentina Durán Medina, adding "we are grateful for the support of the Faculty, which through its Dean, Prof. Pablo Ruiz-Tagle, and the Journals Program of the Research Department, headed by Prof. Daniel Álvarez, has provided permanent support to the work of the journal."

"Once the collaboration agreement between the Faculty of Law of the University of Chile and the National Agency for Research and Development (ANID) is signed, the full incorporation of the journal to this collection will take place, starting in 2022" explained the editor Jorge Ossandón Rosales.

This good news is in addition to the admission, in 2020, of the Environmental Law Journal to the SCOPUS database.

As a result, in 2022 the Environmental Law Journal will already be indexed in Scopus, Redib, DOAJ and Latindex, in addition to ScIELO, with the support of SISIB and the Journals Program of the Research Department of the Law School of the Universidad of Chile.

It should be noted that Issue 16 of this biannual journal will be published on December 31.

 

Public or private?: Challenges for the protection of urban and periurban wetlands in Valdivia posed by the regulation on natural watercourses

Authors

  • Felipe Guerra Universidad Austral de Chile
  • Monserrat Lara-Sutulov Universidad Austral de Chile

Abstract

The systematic intervention and destruction of urban and periurban wet-lands in Valdivia with the purpose of urban expansion is a trend that has been observed, at least, since the mid 1980’s. Such phenomenon has increased over the past 15 years. The search for instruments to protect the wetlands has driven the citizens to use various kinds of legal strategies, including complaints to different public services, seeking control, monitoring and measures. One strategy applied in cases of wetlands’s destruction has been to lodge complaints with the General Water Authority (Dirección General de Aguas) and the Directorate-General of Water Projects (Dirección de Obras Hidráulicas) due to modifica-tion of watercourses, in accordance with the competences of such services concerning wa-tercourses and water. Nevertheless, the regulation on natural watercourses has proven to be limited to protect these ecosystems, mainly because of the piecemeal approach that the legal framework promotes, which distinguishes between water and soil.

Keywords:

Urban wetlands, periurban wetlands, watercourses, water