The aim of this article is to show that the modernization of Chile’s environmental institutions (called Nueva Institucionalidad Ambiental, introduced in 2009/2010) consolidates the informal networks that have traditionally linked its main actors (investors, State and experts). Consequently, it is a public policy that despite the incorporation of governance standards marked by accountability, transparency and public participation does not contribute to the formation of citizenship and public agenda around models of development and use of natural resources, but limited to assess/ mitigate/legitimize pre-established agendas, introduced by productive, extractive or infrastructure investment projects. In our view, this is due to the tendency to oligarchization of the Chilean political system and of the domination of elites in general and the persistence of an accumulation model based on the extraction of natural resources. Both serve as a structural lock that bolts any substantive change of environmental policy in a more democratic direction