Multilevel Governance Gaps in the implementation of international Environmental Standards: A Legal Analysis of Chile’s 2025 NDC

15 May, 2026.

Romina Vera

CityDiplomacy.org

Introduction

“Climate change represents one of the most pressing and complex challenges” (Sharma, et al., 2025). Given its transboundary nature, no single country, regardless of its economic or political stature, can address its impact independently. The global response to this crisis reached a definitive turning point in 2015, with the adoption of the Paris Agreement. where the international community has recognized the urgent need for a legally binding international treaty to achieve the goal of holding “the increase in the global average temperature to well below 2°C above pre-industrial levels” and pursue efforts “to limit the temperature increase to 1.5°C above pre-industrial levels.” (United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change, 2021).

However, there is a consensus provided by the UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) which has indicated the need to limit global warming to 1.5°C by the end of the century. In this high-stakes environment, “international law provides the legal frameworks and mechanisms through which countries negotiate, commit to, and enforce climate actions” (Sharma et al., 2025). Central to the Paris Agreement’s architecture is the “ratchet mechanism” which requires parties to submit increasingly ambitious Nationally Determined Contributions (NDCs) every five years.

Through these NDCs, parties communicate the actions they will commit to in order to reduce their greenhouse gas emissions and to build resilience to adapt to the impacts of climate change (United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change, 2021).

For Latin America and the Caribbean, the stakes of NDC implementation are exceptionally high. The World Meteorological Organization (WMO) developed the report “State of the Climate in Latin America in the Caribbean” (2020) which provides a full scope on climate change in Latin America. According to this report, Latin America is set to be one the most impacted regions in the world. From heat waves, the declining of crop yields, forest fires and the loss of coral reefs to the extreme sea-level rise events along the Pacific Coast (Noticias ONU, 2021). The above-mentioned report paints a grim picture of a region where these events will become the “new normal”. In this context, achieving the Paris Agreement goals is the only viable path to reducing systemic risks to regional stability and human rights.

Chile has positioned itself as a “climate leader” within the regional context; some observers argue that “given its current legislative agenda and policy outcomes, there are few countries more suited to lead the world in global climate action than Chile” (Strauss, 2019). After ratifying the Paris Agreement in 2017, the country took the significant step of institutionalizing its commitments through the Climate Change Framework Law (CCFL), N°21.455, in 2022, which integrates international obligations on climate action into State policy, mandating carbon neutrality by 2050. However, a significant functional gap exists between these high-level national ambitions, such as carbon neutrality by 2050, and the local realities of Chile’s 345 municipalities (Ministerio del Medio Ambiente, 2025).

This article provides a legal analysis of this disconnection. It asks: how can Chile bridge the gap between high-level international obligations (as seen in the 2025 NDC) and the acute lack of technical and financial resources at the municipal level? By applying a Multilevel Governance (MLG) framework, this study argues that the success of Chile’s climate strategy depends not on top-down mandates, but on closing the capacity and funding gaps that currently paralyze local action.

Context and Analytical Framework

I. Normative Harmonization and the Chilean Municipal Context

In international law, the principle of pacta sunt servanda requires States to fulfill their treaty obligations in good faith. For a country like Chile, this necessitates “normative harmonization”, CCFL serves this purpose by internalizing Paris Agreement mandates.

Specifically, Article 1° establishes the goal of greenhouse gas emissions neutrality by 2050, to adapt to climate change by reducing vulnerability and increasing resilience to the adverse effects of climate change, and to fulfil the international commitments undertaken by the State of Chile in this regard (2022), which is an explicit alignment of Chile’s domestic goals with the Paris Agreement.

However, the legal weight of this mandate falls heavily on municipalities. Under the Chilean administrative structure, and Decreto con Fuerza Ley (DFL) N°1, municipalities are the basic unit of local government, “whose purpose is to meet the needs of the local community and ensure its participation in the economic, social and cultural progress of the respective commune” (2006). While they are legally autonomous and possess their own capital, they exist within a highly centralized fiscal structure. They are historically dependent on the Common Municipal Fund (FCM) and grants or transfers from the Undersecretariat of Regional Development (SUBDERE).

Under article 12°, municipalities are now legally required to develop Communal Climate Action Plans (“PACCC”). These plans are not merely advisory documents; they must include detailed vulnerability characterizations, mitigation measures and identified financing sources, with the law even imposing personal financial sanctions on mayors who fail to comply within a four-year window. This creates a structural tension where the law establishes a mandatory delegation of functions to the local level without simultaneous decentralization of resources, leading to what Valladares (2025) identifies as a critical implementation gap.

II. Multilevel Governance (“MLG”) and the “Bottom-up” logic

To understand the implementation failure, we must look at the theory of MLG. As defined by the Coopenergy Consortium (2015), MLG refers to a system of coordinated action that leads to shared responsibility across different tiers of government. The Paris Agreement itself “marked a significant shift by embracing a bottom-up approach where all parties submit nationally determined contributions (NDCs)” moving away from the top-down mandates of the Kyoto Protocol to a system where national goals are built upon local and sectoral actions (Sharma et al., 2025, 4193).

However, the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) warns, in the “Studies on Water” (2011), about the existence of “gaps” that hinder policy effectiveness. In the Chilean context, as the 2025 NDC update acknowledges, the formal decentralization of responsibility often precedes the decentralization of capacity, resulting in significant gaps particularly paralyzing:

Capacity Gap: A lack of technical knowledge and human capital to implement complex environmental policies (OECD, 2011, p. 32). For instance, 94% of the municipalities surveyed either did not respond or lack the technical capacity to update their climate planning tools. This could be due to a lack of specialists, funding, or the prioritisation of other local emergencies (Valladares, 2025, p. 50)
Funding Gap: Instability or insufficiency of financial resources to meet legal obligations. (OECD, 2011, p. 34). In Chile’s case, Municipalities face significant disparities in terms of institutional capacity, financial resources and access to technology, which limits their ability to meet the objectives set out in the CCFL (Moraga, 2023)
Administrative Gap: A mismatch between administrative boundaries and the functional areas where climate impacts occur. Climate impacts do not respect municipal boundaries. A drought in a watershed might affect ten different communes, yet each municipality is tasked with creating an individual plan, leading to fragmented and inefficient responses (OECD, 2011, p. 31).

According to Di Gregorio et al. (2021), MLG involves power shifts across three dimensions: 1) devolving authority from central to local governments; 2) increasing power-sharing between the State and civil society, and; 3) reducing State sovereignty by joining international coordination mechanisms. When Chile signs the 2025 NDC, it is essentially “volunteering” its municipalities to act as the front line of a global treaty. Without a “partnership” approach, where the Ministry of Environment and SUBDERE provide the technical platform, the municipalities will likely struggle to meet their legal and environmental obligations.

III. Analysis: The implementation gap in Chile

a. The PACCC challenge and technical constraints

The PACCC is the primary legal tool for localizing the NDC. According to United Nations Development Programme (2023), these plans must undergo a rigorous four stage process: i. Preparation and organization; ii. Diagnosis and vulnerability assessment; iii. Design of the plan and measures, and; iv. Formal approval and monitoring. Each stage requires data that many municipalities simply do not possess. For example, a “vulnerability assessment” in the process of drawing up a PACCC requires, amongst other activities, a physical, social and environmental analysis of the municipality, the development of a climate change risk profile at the local authority level, and to gather the views of local residents on the effects of climate change. (p. 47)

Research conducted by Valladares Maldonado (2025) indicates a profound territorial inequality that this mandate produces. Her study shows that while municipalities in the Metropolitan region benefit from proximity to central government technical support and a larger tax base, municipalities in the North (facing extreme desertification) and the far South (facing glacial retreat) face the highest lags in technical training and normative knowledge. This is a clear manifestation of the capacity gap, since many mayors face personal financial sanctions for failing to produce plans but lack the technical staff to draft. (p. 46-49).

The statistics are telling: Valladares’ (2025) research found that only 24% of municipal officials surveyed declared to actually acknowledge the CCFL: “The limited dissemination of regulations and the lack of technical training in certain regions highlight the need to strengthen institutional capacity to adopt legal frameworks and integrate them into local governance.”. Furthermore, 87% of municipalities reported that they do not participate in the Regional Climate Change Committees (CORECC), revealing a breakdown in the vertical coordination that MLG requires.

Furthermore, Chile’s 2025 NDC Update explicitly acknowledges these important gaps, stating that the country must ensure that every locality has the “tools, knowledge, and resources” necessary for adaptation (Ministerio del Medio Ambiente, 2025).

b. Environmental Paradiplomacy: The role of the Global Covenant of Mayors (GCoM)

To address the mentioned gaps, some Chilean municipalities have turned to “environmental Paradiplomacy”, the most prominent example is the GCoM.

The Global Covenant of Mayors for Climate & Energy, is a response to climate change from cities around the world (Global Covenant of Mayors for Climate & Energy, n.d.), aiming to “strengthen decision-making and the implementation of climate policies at the local and regional levels” (Pacto Global de Alcaldes por el Clima y la Energía – América Latina, n.d.). In Chile, the GCoM National Strategy, funded by the European Union, has become a vital gap-filler. For cities like Ancud and Punta Arenas, and the commune of Vitacura, the GCoM provides technical assistance that the central government has struggled to deliver.

This international scaffolding is essential but highlights a significant dependency: a Chilean municipality’s climate resilience should not rely on securing European Union grants (either citation or removal of quotation marks). While paradiplomacy is a powerful tool, with GCoM cities that could collectively reduce global emissions by 4.2 GtCO2 annually by 2050 , for bridging the capacity gap, it cannot be a substitute for a robust national fiscal policy (Pacto Global de Alcaldes por el Clima y la Energía – América Latina, n.d).

c. Jurisprudential Responses: The Courts as Gap-Fillers

When governance gaps leave citizens vulnerable, the judiciary often steps in. In Chile, the Courts have become increasingly active in enforcing international climate standards.

A landmark case example is the Angamos case (Supreme Court, Rol N°71.628-2021, 2022). In April 2022, the Supreme Court ruled in favor of the residents of Mejillones, who had challenged the Environmental Evaluation Service (SEA) regarding the 2007 Environmental Qualification Resolution (RCA) of the Angamos thermoelectric Plant.

The Court’s decision established a critical precedent: environmental assessments cannot remain static. It ruled that the review mechanism is applicable in cases where new variables, such as climate change, were not previously foreseen. Consequently, the Court ordered the SEA to initiate a new analysis of the “atmospheric component”, accounting for the environmental changes that have occurred since the project’s inception in 2007 (Supreme Court, Rol N°71.628-2021, 2022). This ruling aligns with Chile’s International Commitments, reinforcing the principle that reducing greenhouse gas emissions is not just a policy goal, but a legal imperative to safeguard environmental human rights. (ONG FIMA, 2022)

Similarly, in the Petorca case, the Supreme Court recognized the “Human Right to Water” in response to climate-induced drought, in the face of municipal and State failure to address this issue, by stating: “If the right to water is a fundamental human right, this is all the more true in the case of certain vulnerable groups and categories protected under international human rights law: the poor in urban and rural areas”. (Supreme Court, Rol N°131.140-2020, 2021)

These rulings suggest that the legal system is acting as a gap-filler. While the Judiciary provides a vital corrective measure, litigation remains a reactive mechanism that cannot replace proactive municipal planning and State-led resource allocation.

Discussion: Toward a just transition

The implementation of the 2025 NDC is a matter of climate justice, not merely a technical or administrative challenge. Chile’s updated NDC explicitly commits to a “just transition”, ensuring that the shift to a green economy does not leave vulnerable communities behind (Ministerio del Medio Ambiente, 2025). As the Ministerio del Medio Ambiente (2025) argues, the State must ensure in the context of climate change a “fair distribution of burdens, costs, and benefits, protecting vulnerable ecosystems and safeguarding human rights, the right to development of present and future generations, and the health and overall well-being of the population”.

The uniform imposition of PACCC mandates and penalties on all 345 municipalities, regardless of their institutional capacity, is inherently inequitable. The 2025 NDC admits that important gaps persist; bridging these gaps is the only way to ensure that the 2050 carbon neutrality goal becomes a reality on the ground, and not just a headline in an international report.

Conclusion

Chile has successfully harmonized international environmental standards into its legal hierarchy, creating one of the most robust climate laws in the developing world. However, the functional gap at the municipal level remains a critical barrier. As the Angamos case and the Valladares (2025) research demonstrate, the ‘bottom up’ logic of the Paris Agreement is currently failing because the ‘bottom’ (municipalities) lack the technical and financial foundation to stand.

Closing this gap requires a paradigm shift in Chilean governance. The State must move beyond the punitive mandates of article 12 and toward a model of climate partnership (OECD, 2011). This means, integrating international paradiplomacy (such as GCoM) into national strategy, empowering the judiciary with clear statutory guidelines and, most importantly, providing the fiscal resources necessary for every commune to plan for its future. Only then will Chile’s NDC fulfill its role as a substantive and effective contribution to the global effort.

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