Peru MINEM proposes Declaración Jurada Ambiental (DJA) to fast-track environmental permitting for small-scale mining exploration

Mechanism

The draft decree creates a second, lighter environmental-permitting track for the smallest tier of mining exploration (≤10 drilling platforms, <5 ha of surface disturbance) that meets environmental/territorial screening conditions. Instead of submitting a project to SEIA's standard evaluation queue, the titular files a DJA — a sworn declaration — and DGAAM must issue an automatic-approval certificate within 5 business days. Citizen-participation mechanisms (workshops or equivalent) remain available, and OEFA's supervisory/enforcement mandate is explicitly preserved regardless of which instrument a project used to get its certificate. The proposal was published for public comment on 29 September 2026, with a 15-calendar-day window for stakeholder submissions to DGAAM before MINEM can finalize the decree.

Downstream implications

• Juniors and small operators running early-stage drilling campaigns in Peru — one

of the world's top copper and silver producers — get a materially faster, lower-cost path to a legally valid environmental certificate, which should pull forward exploration spending and drilling activity if adopted as drafted.

• Because the instrument is scoped by platform count and hectarage rather than by

commodity, it is not material-specific: any exploration target (copper, gold, silver, polymetallic) under the threshold qualifies.

• OEFA's unchanged supervisory role means the measure is procedural/front-loading

relief, not a reduction in substantive environmental standards or post-approval oversight.

Open questions

• Whether the 15-day comment period produces changes to the platform/hectare

thresholds or the automatic-approval timeline before the decree is signed.

• The date of enactment and in-force effective date, which will supersede this

stage: proposed filing once MINEM publishes the final decreto supremo.