SEMARNAT Ends Mining Permits Within Protected Natural Areas

SEMARNAT has formally barred environmental permits for mining exploration or extraction inside Mexico's federally protected natural areas, applying the prohibition even to concessions granted before the 2023 mining-law reform and extending CONANP's technical review to projects located outside ANP boundaries that could still affect them. The measure, backed by Supreme Court rulings upholding the reform's non-retroactive application, coincides with an international arbitration ruling that largely favored Mexico in the long-running Vulcan Materials/Calica dispute, reinforcing the government's regulatory stance on mining near protected ecosystems. Mining companies with legacy authorizations inside ANPs face a 15-business-day deadline to begin mandatory restoration filings or risk non-compliance.

SEMARNAT has published an agreement in the DOF on July 20 that bars its own officials from issuing any environmental permit for mining exploration or extraction inside federally protected natural areas (ANPs), a prohibition that applies even to concessions granted before the May 2023 mining-law reform. 

Signed by Minister of Environment Alicia Bárcena Ibarra and effective the day after publication, the measure closes what had remained an open question since the 2023 reform: whether older concession holders could still secure environmental clearance to operate inside a protected reserve. The answer is now a formal no.

The text instructs every SEMARNAT administrative unit and decentralized body, including the Directorate General of Environmental Impact and Risk, to deny authorizations, permits, licenses or favorable resolutions tied to mining exploration, extraction or ore-processing works inside federally protected natural areas. 

The restriction is explicit about reaching backward in time: concession holders whose titles predate May 9, 2023 are not exempt, because the agreement treats the environmental permit and the mining concession as two independent, sequential procedures, a concession alone was never an automatic right to extract, and now that gap has been closed administratively rather than left to case-by-case litigation.

The agreement also extends beyond project boundaries. Developments located outside an ANP but capable of generating indirect environmental impacts on one will now trigger the same review. Every environmental impact assessment request tied to mining is required to be reported immediately to the National Commission of Natural Protected Areas (CONANP), which must issue a binding technical opinion, no longer a consultative one, determining whether the project affects, directly or indirectly, a protected area. That opinion is now determinative for SEMARNAT's final decision, a meaningful shift in institutional authority from the environmental permitting office toward the conservation agency.

A transitory provision adds urgency for a specific group: holders of environmental authorizations granted before May 8, 2023 for mining works inside ANPs that have not yet filed the mine restoration, closure and post-closure program required under Art. 107 Bis of the General Law of Ecological Balance and Environmental Protection (LGEEPA) must begin that filing within 15 business days, backed by a financial guarantee.

The agreement does not automatically revoke existing authorizations; legal analysis from ALN Abogados notes that starting the filing within the window is sufficient to preserve standing while the process runs its course, and companies with unexecuted or partially executed activities inside ANPs may need to request formal rescheduling of their approved work programs to stay compliant.

The Supreme Court Groundwork

The agreement rests on Supreme Court (SCJN) rulings that upheld the mining, water and environmental reforms published on May 8, 2023 against challenges alleging retroactive application. 

The Court found that requiring new environmental authorizations to comply with current law does not violate the principle of non-retroactivity, because the permit itself, not the underlying concession, is the act being evaluated under today's rules. That reasoning is what allows SEMARNAT to apply the ANP prohibition even to pre-reform concessionaires seeking new permits.

The measure is not an isolated move. It lands roughly four months after President Claudia Sheinbaum disclosed that more than 1,126 mining concessions covering 889,502ha, including 713 inside protected areas, had already been returned to the state to prevent speculative land-holding and protect ecosystems, part of a pattern in which roughly 160 mining projects nationwide remain stalled under the 2023 reform even as exploration investment has fallen from US$500 million in 2023 to a projected US$400 million in 2025.

MBN reporting shows the government is not blocking permits uniformly: Defiance Silver secured SEMARNAT authorization to expand drilling at its San Acacio project in Zacatecas, evidence that clearances still move for projects outside protected areas and aligned with the government's selective approach to critical-mineral exploration. The new ANP agreement sharpens that distinction rather than reversing it, projects outside protected areas retain a viable, if slower, path to approval, while projects inside ANPs now have effectively none.

The clearest test of how far the government is willing to go sits in Quintana Roo. Mexico Business News has followed the long-running dispute over Vulcan Materials' Calica limestone quarry, and that test has now been resolved largely in Mexico's favor. Authorities shut the site's underwater quarrying operations in 2022, citing environmental damage and permitting irregularities, prompting Vulcan's subsidiary to pursue international arbitration before the World Bank's ICSID panel under NAFTA/USMCA rules, seeking roughly US$1.7 billion in damages over measures dating back to 2018. 

The tribunal issued its final award on July 27, 2026, dismissing nearly all of the company's claims and finding a treaty violation only in the closure of a single Calica parcel in January 2018, a measure Mexico's Ministry of Economy said represents less than 1% of the amount originally claimed, translating into an award of roughly US$17 million against the US$1.7 billion Vulcan had sought. The federal government has designated the Calica-linked land as the Felipe Carrillo Puerto Flora and Fauna Protection Area, permanently shielding it from future mining activity. The outcome reinforces the same principle the July ANP agreement now formalizes: proximity to protected ecosystems overrides prior permitting history in the government's calculus, and international arbitrators have largely declined to second-guess that approach.

Civil-society pressure has reinforced that direction. Opposition to the "Perfect Day Mexico" tourism project near Mahahual drew a Change.org petition with more than 4 million signatures and over 14,000 citizen submissions during SEMARNAT's public consultation, part of a broader wave of campaigns targeting mining, energy and coastal development projects near protected areas and water bodies across at least 10 states. 

The Mahahual case is not mining-specific, but the scale of public engagement it generated helps explain the political backdrop against which SEMARNAT chose to formalize, rather than quietly apply, the ANP restriction.

What Changes for Companies Operating Near Protected Areas

For mining companies, the practical shift is threefold. First, any project, regardless of when its concession was granted, now needs to confirm its physical location relative to the roughly 232 federally protected natural areas covering some 98 million ha of Mexican territory, since proximity alone can now trigger CONANP review even without direct overlap. 

Second, CONANP's opinion is binding, removing the room SEMARNAT previously had to weigh conflicting technical assessments. Third, companies with older, unexecuted environmental authorizations inside ANPs face a hard 15-business-day clock to begin restoration-program filings or risk falling out of compliance with the new framework.

None of this reopens the underlying legal debate over the 2023 reform; the Supreme Court has already closed that door. What the July 20 agreement does is remove ambiguity about how far the reform reaches: not just new projects, but legacy concessions; not just permits inside ANP boundaries, but activity nearby that could affect them. For a mining sector already navigating slower approval timelines and falling exploration spending, the agreement narrows, rather than clarifies, the path for any project with a protected area anywhere near its footprint.

Guidance on preventive compliance steps, reviewing project locations against ANP boundaries, tracking Art. 107 Bis obligations, and evaluating rescheduling requests for pending work programs, draws on client alerts published by Holland & Knight and ALN Abogados, both of which have advised mining and environmental clients on the agreement's transitory requirements.