| Montreal, 2/06/2008 – Today, the Secretariat of the Commission for Environmental Cooperation (CEC) made public a factual record concerning submission SEM-03-004 (Alca-Iztalpalapa II), which was filed with the Secretariat on 17 June 2003. In the submission, Ángel Lara García (the “Submitter”) asserts that Mexico is failing to effectively enforce its environmental law with respect to a polystyrene latex manufacturing and impregnation plant operated from 1958 to 2005 by ALCA, S.A. de C.V. (ALCA). The plant produced footwear components and was located next door to the home of the Submitter in Iztapalapa, Mexico City.
On 9 June 2005, further to Resolution 05-05, the CEC Council instructed the Secretariat to prepare a factual record in regard to the matter raised in the submission. Factual records provide information on alleged failures to effectively enforce the environmental law in North America that may help the submitters, the Parties to the North American Agreement on Environmental Cooperation (NAAEC), and other interested parties take action in relation to the matters raised by the submissions.
The ALCA-Iztapalapa II factual record provides information relevant to a determination of whether Mexico failed to effectively enforce the first paragraph of Article 150 of the General Ecological Balance and Environmental Protection Act (Ley General del Equilibrio Ecológico y la Protección al Ambiente—LGEEPA) and information concerning alleged failures to investigate and prosecute environmental offenses under Article 414, first paragraph, and Article 415 paragraph I of the Federal Criminal Code (Código Penal Federal—CPF). A summary of the facts is included in the factual record.
On 16 November 2007, the Secretariat submitted a final factual record to the CEC Council. On 30 May 2008, in Resolution 08-02, the Council unanimously decided to make the factual record public.
The CEC was established under the NAAEC to address environmental issues in North America from a continental perspective, with a particular focus on those arising in the context of liberalized trade. The Council, the organization's governing body, is composed of the top environmental officials of Canada, Mexico and the United States.
The citizen submissions mechanism of the CEC enables the public to play a whistle-blower role on matters of environmental law enforcement. Under Article 14 of the NAAEC, any person or nongovernmental organization may submit a claim alleging that a NAFTA partner has failed to effectively enforce its environmental law.
For more information, please visit the CEC's Citizen Submissions on Enforcement Matters page.
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