Guatemala has once again extended the period in which businesses lacking valid environmental permits must obtain them. A day before the latest deadline for so-called “regularization” of environmental permitting—July 11, which itself represented the extension of an earlier deadline in July 2016—the government announced the compliance period was being extended again, until January 2020. The postponement reflects struggles by Guatemala’s Ministry of Environment and Natural Resources (MARN) to implement a regulatory regimen requiring businesses to update expired environmental permits or secure such permits for the first time, and—in the case of certain activities—conduct environmental-impact studies. In granting successive deadline extensions in July of 2016 and then again last month, the government has effectively put off use of the regimen’s... [Log in to read more]