The interest in environmental flows in Chile significantly grew over the last 15 years, paralleling the interest in and development of environmental flows globally. This can be explained by growing concerns for conservation and restoration of healthy river ecosystems in Chile, due to extensive ecological degradation and loss of biological diversity resulting from high levels of water extraction for consumptive as well as non-consumptive uses. The first steps to establish some values for minimal ecological flows (MEFs) in the Chilean water rights (WR) granting process, where given during the 80s. Later on, the 1994 Environmental Law, allowed to incorporate environmental flows (EFs) into the environmental impact assessment process. However, the 2005 reform of the 1981 Water Code could be considered as a turning point since it assumes the environment as a special water-using sector incorporating explicitly the concept of minimum ecological flows (MEFs). These requirements have been applied in the last decades, establishing MEFs values when new water rights (WR) or EFs are granted in environmental licenses. In spite of these advances, Chile has not been able to revert the deterioration of aquatic ecosystems in its main basins yet.