A site that works today can be a critical constraint in ten years.
We analyse how assets, territory, regulation and time interact, and answer the question nobody else does: how many years the decision you are about to sign will hold.
Technical direction: Mauricio Andrés González Pacheco, geographer, PhD in Geography and Territorial Planning (Universitat de Barcelona). Fourteen years in territory; the last four in territorial asset management, land management and closure planning in large-scale copper mining.
The space was available. The territory was not.
A concentrator, a solar plant, a camp, a waste facility, a substation, a haul corridor: each needs a location, and engineering teams are good at finding technically viable ones.
The question rarely answered is a different one: will that location still be available in five, ten or twenty years? The territory is already committed to things that cannot yet be seen — pit advance, dump growth, an easement someone will still have to negotiate, a hazard area that the next climate scenario will widen.
Anyone can overlay layers. Almost no one projects them through time.
And the competition for that space is no longer between mines. Antofagasta concentrates the country's largest volume of onerous-use concessions for renewable energy, with 117 active projects on public land, and Chile's Ministry of National Assets will tender more than 21,000 further hectares in the northern macro-zone during 2026. Mining has stopped competing only with itself for territory.
Onerous-use concessions and public-land tender: Ministerio de Bienes Nacionales, 2026.
More than half of the Antofagasta Region sits under granted mining concessions.
Not an estimate. 27,869 active concessions covering 6,453,801 hectares — 51.2 % of the regional surface — composed over the elevation model of the terrain. The shape of the region is drawn by its own cadastre.
That is the point: land the drawing shows as free already has its subsurface committed in more than half of cases. And this is a single layer, the simplest of them all.
Four dimensions that must be analysed together
Assets
Concessions, mining titles, easements, water rights and infrastructure: a portfolio with expiry dates and obligations, not a folder of documents.
Territory
What already happens in that space: land uses, constraints, communities, natural hazards and third-party projects.
Regulation
The framework that defines what can be done, when and at what cost. Anticipated rather than endured.
Time
The dimension almost no one analyses. A site that works today can be a critical constraint in ten years.
Four stages of an asset's life
Territorial intelligence and GIS
Asset inventory, corporate GIS, technical cartography, satellite monitoring and decision dashboards.
Territorial interference and compatibility
Site alternatives assessed against present and future constraints, with a declared territorial window for each option.
Mining property, easements and land management
Title and concession registers, easement routes, surface-subsurface conflicts, permitting and community engagement.
Closure planning and long-term variables
Closure plans under Chilean Law 20.551, cost estimation and financial guarantees, water and energy balances, decarbonisation.
Three ways of working together
Organisations do not all need the same thing. Some know exactly what has to be done and lack someone to do it; others need judgement they do not hold in-house; others simply need the speciality available when the question arises.
Capacity for a defined assignment
You know what has to be done and have no one to assign it to.
A bounded deliverable with fixed scope and deadline: updating a mining property register, preparing a filing for the regulator, establishing and regularising easements, building an operational geospatial base, producing the cartography for a study.
Speciality the internal team does not hold
The work requires judgement that does not exist inside the organisation.
Progressive, temporary or full closure under Chilean Law 20.551 and DS 41; projection of territorial interference across the asset horizon; territorial compatibility analysis for siting decisions; territorial balances and valuation of assets and liabilities on the ground.
Ongoing support
Steady availability for queries, reviews and second opinions.
A monthly block of hours to review decisions before they are signed, resolve mining property and territorial questions, review third-party reports and accompany filings in progress. The organisation keeps control; the speciality is there when needed.
Territorial Initial Assessment
Know what lies beneath your assets and what is coming toward them. Three to four weeks, fixed fee agreed before we start.
Specialisation, not volume
Cota Terrarum is a consulting firm based in Antofagasta, Chile, specialising in territorial management, assets and regulatory compliance for mining, infrastructure and the public sector.
The firm brings together more than fourteen years of practice in territory, assets and regulation, including direct experience in large-scale copper mining across territorial asset management, land management and closure planning. Technical direction is held by a PhD in Geography, Territorial Planning and Environmental Management (Universitat de Barcelona).
Engagements requiring complementary specialities are delivered with a network of professionals trained to the same standard — hydrodynamic modelling, natural hazards, advanced geomatics, water and energy balances, decarbonisation. One accountable lead per engagement.
We work across northern Chile: Arica y Parinacota, Tarapacá and Antofagasta. Working languages: Spanish and English.