This open access book documents the critical thinking and political actions that generated one of the world’s most progressive national constitutions, presented to the Chilean public in 2022. Although that text was ultimately rejected in a national referendum, it drew on decades of diverse environmental, political, Indigenous, and community organizing and contained concepts and goals at the forefront of global efforts to create more just and equitable political systems, healthier living environments, and more resilient ecosystems. Drawing on research by faculty and students from the USA and Chile, chapters within this book address political memory, Indigenous representation, public participation, the Rights of Nature, environmental law, mining conflicts, natural commons, knowledge systems, and rural education. This book highlights important contributions from Chile’s 2022 reform efforts for diverse global responses to the erosion of democracy, environmental degradation, and climate change.

Javiera Barandiaran is Associate Professor in Global Studies at the University of California, Santa Barbara, and director of the CREW Center for Restorative Environmental Work. She is the author of Science and Environment in Chile: The Politics of Expert Advice in a Neoliberal Democracy (2018), Lo que el Estado Neoliberal no sabe (2021) and co-author of Derechos de la Naturaleza en Chile: Argumentos para su desarrollo constitucional (2022).

Tristan Partridge is Lecturer in Global Studies at the University of California, Santa Barbara, and research coordinator at the CREW Center for Restorative Environmental Work. He is the author of Burning Diagrams in Anthropology: An Inverse Museum (2024), Energy and Environmental Justice: Movements, Solidarities, and Critical Connections (Palgrave, 2022) and photographer for Mingas+Solidarity (2024).