Guatemala, as well as most developing countries, feels the pressure of the rest of industrialized countries for it to regulate and protect its ecology.

Our nation's industrial businessmen feel like they are still walking on quicksand for, on one side, they would not want their products to be unfit to enter global markets and, on the other, they are not sure which are the environmental standards that must be followed. There is uncertainty because of the lack of clear regulations that state what the cost of improving their company's ecological standards will be.

The new era of ecological regulation had its origins in the presidential mandate of Vinicio Cerezo A., when the National Environmental Commission (CONAMA) was created. The main contact between most businesses and the CONAMA rests on the law that states that any new industrial project must be backed by an environmental impact study approved by the commission. But this is only one of the legal functions conceded to the CONAMA, among which the function of imposing administrative sanctions to those who violate ecological regulations stands out. The main problem in applying this law is that it contains a series of norms and faculties to act and sanction, without there being clear and specific norms on the standards to impose.

Guatemalan businessmen must be conscious that taking care of the ecological factor in their company gains importance every day, not only in the view of a global economy, but also within Guatemala's internal legal scheme. The new penal reforms that were recently introduced could substantially change the way local companies treat the subject of ecology and the way they behave. And these are only a small sample of many other norms and regulations that are making their way in this field.