It is an agency of the Ministry of Environment, Energy and Telecommunications (MINAET - Ministerio de Ambiente, Energía y Telecomunicaciones), set up by Article 22 of 1998 Biodiversity Law No. 7788.
SINAC has instrumental legal authority, and exercises its functions as a management and institutional coordination, decentralized and participatory, integrating skills in forestry, wildlife, protected areas and the protection and conservation of the use of river basins and water systems in order to dictate policy, plan and implement processes aimed at achieving sustainability in the management of natural resources.
SINAC is a concept of integral conservation, which offers the possibility of developing a responsible governance, involving the State, civil society, private enterprise, and every individual of the country concerned and committed to building a healthy environment and ecologically balanced.
Territorially, SINAC is divided into eleven conservation areas, where both public and state activities are interrelated and joint solutions are sought, oriented by conservation strategies and sustainable development of natural resources.