Abstract

The regulatory conditions present regarding anthropogenic pollution of two large Chilean Northern Patagonian lakes, Llanquihue and Villarrica, are analyzed. Taking the risk-based approach (RBA) as a reference framework, the study addresses three relevant dimensions of the socio-environmental risks present in the regulatory regimes of each ecosystem: (1) the reflexive components of the institutions involved, (2) the deployment of organizational processes regarding regulatory norms, and (3) the modalities for addressing change and complexity in the regulatory field. Developing a qualitative multiple-case study with criterion-oriented maximum variation sampling, 40 individual interviews conducted with participants who perform tasks in both cases are analyzed, examining their regulatory configurations according to the investigated dimensions. The most important findings account for: (1) an institutional attenuation that bureaucratically minimizes socio-environmental risks, hindering the transition towards preventive approaches marked by a political culture that prioritizes formal compliance over territorial management; (2) a profound institutional fragmentation and centralization of regulation that dilutes responsibility, operating under logics of minimal efforts that prevent the watershed perspective from achieving normative legitimacy; and (3) a regulatory field overwhelmed by wide-ranging phenomena of difficult regulatory management, where the binary classification of saturation proves insufficient to address diffuse pollution and risks of difficult reversibility. It is concluded that strengthening the regulatory capacities of emerging nations regarding the socio-environmental protection of large lakes requires gradually integrating risk as an organizing criterion and prospecting watershed governance based on multiple regimes complementary to the regulatory effort of the already atomized and centralized normative instruments available.