New LGEEPA Initiative: Proposal to Issue a New General Environmental Law

New LGEEPA Initiative: Proposal to Issue a New General Environmental Law

1. Scope of the Initiative

On May 14, 2026, the presidential initiative with draft decree to issue a new General Law of Ecological Balance and Environmental Protection (hereinafter, the “Initiative”) was published on the Plataforma Integral de Gobernanza Regulatoria (Comprehensive Regulatory Governance Platform). Unlike a specific amendment, the Initiative proposes to repeal the current General Law of Ecological Balance and Environmental Protection (hereinafter, the “LGEEPA”, for its acronym in Spanish) and replace it with a new federal environmental regulatory framework. Therefore, its effects must be analyzed as potential and subject to the corresponding legislative process. The proposal anticipates relevant changes for projects, permits, inspections, sanctions, compliance audits, and operations subject to federal environmental regulation.

The Initiative proposes a comprehensive restructuring of the Mexican environmental legal system. Its scope is not limited to reorganizing existing provisions, but incorporates new principles, concepts, regulatory instruments, and environmental liability mechanisms. The proposal also strengthens environmental governance, incorporates a reinforced approach to biodiversity, restoration, and environmental justice, and expands inspection, investigation, and sanctioning powers.

The current LGEEPA was published in the Official Gazette of the Federation on January 28, 1988, and its current text reports its latest amendment as published on January 19, 2026. Article 1 provides that the law regulates the constitutional provisions relating to the preservation and restoration of ecological balance and environmental protection, and that its bases include, among others, guaranteeing the right to a healthy environment, defining environmental policy principles, preserving biodiversity, regulating the sustainable use of natural resources, preventing and controlling pollution, and establishing control, safety, and sanctioning measures.

The constitutional basis for this matter is found in Article 4 of the Political Constitution of the United Mexican States, which recognizes every person’s right to a healthy environment and provides that environmental damage and deterioration give rise to liability for the party that causes them, under the terms established by law.

2. New Environmental Policy Concepts and Instruments

The Initiative proposes to expand the catalogue of environmental concepts that would serve as the basis for interpreting regulatory obligations, administrative acts, and liability mechanisms. The identified concepts include adaptation, environmental compensation, fine substitution, economic valuation, and strategic environmental assessment.

The incorporation of these concepts may modify the way authorities assess projects, determine conditions, value environmental damage, and interpret regulatory obligations. Environmental compensation would allow impacts that cannot be fully avoided or mitigated to be addressed; fine substitution would allow fines to be replaced with projects or investments that generate environmental benefits, in accordance with the applicable requirements; and economic valuation would allow environmental impacts and damage to be quantified for purposes of liability, remediation, or equivalent measures.

Strategic environmental assessment would be one of the most relevant instruments. The Initiative presents it as an environmental planning and management tool for national infrastructure plans, programs, and projects of public interest and great importance for development. Unlike ordinary environmental impact assessment, which focuses on specific works or activities, this instrument would seek to identify and assess significant, cumulative, synergistic, and residual impacts from early planning stages.

The Initiative also incorporates an environmental recognition seal for individuals or legal entities that prove environmental benefits derived from prevention and improvement measures in goods, products, services, or processes.

3. Environmental Impact Assessment and Regularization of Works

Environmental impact assessment is one of the pillars that the Initiative preserves, but with a broader scope. Under the current regime, Article 28 of the LGEEPA provides that environmental impact assessment is the procedure through which the Ministry of Environment and Natural Resources (hereinafter, “SEMARNAT”, for its acronym in Spanish) establishes conditions for works or activities that may cause ecological imbalance or exceed environmental limits, in order to avoid or minimize their negative effects.

Article 30 of the LGEEPA provides that, to obtain environmental impact authorization, interested parties must submit an environmental impact statement. Such statement must include, at a minimum, a description of the possible effects on the affected ecosystems and the preventive, mitigation, and other measures necessary to avoid or minimize negative effects; in the case of highly hazardous activities, the corresponding risk study must be included.

The Initiative preserves the general environmental impact assessment framework, but substantially expands its scope through the express incorporation of significant, cumulative, synergistic, and residual impacts, as well as environmental prevention, mitigation, compensation, and restoration measures. It also provides for new exemption cases, new procedural rules, and specific mechanisms to regularize works and activities carried out without environmental authorization.

The regularization of works or activities carried out without environmental authorization should be understood as a possible subsequent legal regularization mechanism, not as automatic authorization or as an elimination of liability. This point may affect projects that have initiated, continued, expanded, or modified works without sufficient environmental authorization, as well as operations that must review the consistency between their actual activities, their authorizations, and their conditions.

Article 35 of the current LGEEPA provides that, once the environmental impact statement has been assessed, SEMARNAT may authorize the work or activity, authorize it subject to conditions, or deny the authorization, considering the possible effects on the ecosystem and not only the resources that would be subject to use or impact.

4. Biodiversity, Natural Resources, and Protected Natural Areas

The Initiative strengthens the biodiversity component through new instruments and institutional structures. Its main elements include the incorporation of the National Biodiversity Strategy as the guiding public policy instrument for conservation, restoration, and sustainable use; the express regulation of the National Commission for the Knowledge and Use of Biodiversity (“CONABIO”, for its acronym in Spanish) as a decentralized public entity; the establishment of a National System of Protected Natural Areas; and specific rules for the sustainable use of natural elements and resources under broader environmental criteria.

This component is linked to Article 1 of the current LGEEPA, which already includes bases for the preservation and protection of biodiversity, the establishment and administration of protected natural areas, and the sustainable use of soil, water, and other natural resources.

For projects located in coastal ecosystems, wetlands, forest areas, protected natural areas, bodies of water, arid zones, tropical forests, or regions with protected species, the proposed approach may translate into greater scrutiny of ecosystem impacts, environmental services, restoration, compensation, and sustainable use.

The incorporation of broader environmental criteria may also affect real estate, tourism, industrial, logistics, mining, energy, and infrastructure projects subject to federal permits or environmental assessment.

5. Highly Hazardous Activities

The Initiative incorporates a new mechanism to determine highly hazardous activities through criteria related to degree of hazard, potential impacts, and associated risks. This change may generate adjustments compared to the current regulatory frameworks.

Under the current regime, Article 30 of the LGEEPA provides that, when an activity is considered highly hazardous, the environmental impact statement must include the corresponding risk study.

Operationally, the new approach may affect industrial, chemical, energy, storage, transportation, or hazardous substance handling activities. For these sectors, documentary and technical preparation should consider substances handled, accident scenarios, containment infrastructure, prevention measures, response protocols, insurance, internal controls, and evidence of compliance with environmental conditions.

6. Inspection, Investigation, and Sanctions

The Initiative proposes to strengthen inspection, investigation, and sanctioning procedures. The identified changes include the Environmental Offenders Registry, specific procedures for investigating violations, voluntary acknowledgment of facts, alternative dispute resolution mechanisms, mechanisms to determine environmental damage, preemptive measures to prevent potential risks or damage, expansion of safety measures, substitution of fines through projects or investments with environmental benefits, and mechanisms to determine and economically quantify environmental impacts and damage caused to the environment.

The current LGEEPA already provides for safety measures. Article 170 authorizes SEMARNAT to order, through a duly grounded and reasoned decision, measures such as temporary, partial, or total closure; precautionary seizure; and neutralization or equivalent actions when there is an imminent risk of ecological imbalance, serious damage or deterioration to natural resources, or pollution with dangerous repercussions for ecosystems or public health.

With respect to sanctions, Article 171 of the current LGEEPA provides that violations of the law, its regulations, and related provisions may be administratively sanctioned with a fine, temporary or permanent closure, administrative arrest for up to thirty-six hours, confiscation, and suspension or revocation of concessions, licenses, permits, or authorizations.

The Initiative provides for a substantial increase in sanction amounts, with fines that could reach up to 7.5 million Units of Measurement and Update, equivalent to approximately MXN $880,000,000.00 considering the daily UMA value in effect for 2026.  It also proposes the extension of certain procedural deadlines, including the deadline to submit written arguments.

The Environmental Offenders Registry may generate additional consequences for sanctioned individuals or companies, including regulatory restrictions and greater reputational exposure in future permits, environmental audits, financing transactions, acquisitions, public procurement or tender proceedings, and investment processes.

7. Practical Implications

The Initiative points toward a possible transition toward a more preventive, technical, and documented environmental regime. For new projects, environmental studies should be prepared with greater technical depth, considering direct and indirect impacts, cumulative effects with other projects, synergistic impacts, residual impacts, prevention, mitigation, restoration, and compensation measures, as well as consistency among the technical design of the project, environmental authorizations, and applicable conditions.

For existing operations, the review should focus on current authorizations, conditions, periodic reports, compliance with mitigation measures, risk studies, inspection history, corrective measures, works carried out without authorization, and potential environmental liabilities. The existence of mechanisms to regularize works or activities carried out without authorization does not, by itself, eliminate exposure to safety measures, sanctions, or environmental liabilities.

In acquisition, financing, investment, or expansion processes, the environmental analysis should include missing authorizations, compliance history, environmental damage contingencies, exposure to offender registries, quantification of impacts, operational restrictions, suspension risks, and potential restoration or compensation costs.

In sectors involving hazardous substances or sensitive industrial processes, preparation should include risk maps, operational controls, emergency protocols, insurance, evidence of training, compliance with conditions, and traceability of technical decisions related to the prevention of environmental damage.

8. What Comes Next?

Follow-up should focus on the eventual submission of the Initiative to the Congress of the Union, the text that may be submitted for legislative discussion, the amendments that may be incorporated during the process, and the transitory provisions defining the gradual implementation of the new regulatory framework.

At the close of this bulletin, the Initiative had been published on the Plataforma Integral de Gobernanza Regulatoria (Comprehensive Regulatory Governance Platform), with no official record of formal submission to the Congress of the Union. Therefore, follow-up should focus on its potential legislative submission, the text that may be submitted for discussion, any amendments that may be incorporated during the process, and the transitory provisions that will define the gradual implementation of the new regulatory framework.

The critical variables will be the treatment of pending proceedings, environmental impact assessment requests, and administrative appeals; the possibility that project proponents may voluntarily choose to be subject to the new regime; the temporary continuity of regulations and Mexican Official Standards that do not conflict with the new law; the subsequent harmonization of secondary regulations and state legislation; the gradual implementation of the Environmental Offenders Registry; the requirements to replace fines with environmental projects; the rules for regularizing works or activities without authorization; the criteria to determine highly hazardous activities; and the parameters to quantify environmental damage.

The Environmental Law practice remains available to assess the potential impact of the Initiative on projects, authorizations, compliance audits, regulated operations, administrative proceedings, and investment processes subject to environmental risks.