Strategic context
Early-stage mining exploration is capital-light but permitting-sensitive: a multi-month or multi-year environmental-impact queue is often the binding constraint on how fast juniors can drill, well before any resource-nationalism or fiscal question arises. Jurisdictions competing for exploration capital are starting to carve out a second, threshold-gated permitting track — a sworn declaration plus automatic approval — for the smallest projects (by platform count / surface disturbance), while leaving full EIA review and post-approval enforcement untouched for everything above the threshold.
Key policy instruments
- Peru — Declaración Jurada Ambiental (DJA), proposed 29 Sep 2026: ≤10
drilling platforms / <5 ha, automatic DGAAM approval within 5 business days, OEFA supervision unchanged.
What to watch
- Whether Peru's draft decree is adopted as proposed after its 15-day comment
window, and whether the thresholds move.
- Whether other major exploration jurisdictions (Chile, Mexico, DRC,
Indonesia) introduce comparable fast-track instruments — if so, add them here rather than starting a per-country theme.