Sustainability regulation for companies in Latin America: a country guide

There is no such thing as Latin American sustainability regulation. What exists is five national frameworks that resemble each other far more than their terminology suggests, plus a common external pressure reaching any company that exports or sells to a multinational. If you work with teams across the region, this guide gives you the shared pattern and the essentials of Mexico, Chile, Colombia, Peru and Argentina, with a link to each country's full guide.

The short version: almost no country in the region currently requires private companies to publish a full sustainability report, yet all of them require specific environmental data to be filed in public registries, and several tax those emissions. The obligation does not arrive through narrative reporting, it arrives through data.

Five patterns that repeat across the region

1. IFRS S1 and S2 are advancing, at different speeds

The ISSB's IFRS S1 and IFRS S2 are the reference convergence framework across Latin America, and each country is absorbing them at its own pace and by its own route. Mexico translated them into its own standards, the CINIF's NIS. Argentina accepts them as one of the two acceptable frameworks in its professional standard. Colombia is in a voluntary convergence process led by its accounting standards board. Chile and Peru keep their own reporting formats for the securities regulator. What has not happened in any of the five is mandatory, across-the-board adoption for all companies.

2. National carbon footprint platforms, voluntary and tiered

Chile and Peru run public, free and voluntary programmes for organisations to measure, verify and reduce their emissions, with seals or levels that recognise progress: HuellaChile, with four seals, and Huella de Carbono Perú, with four levels. They are voluntary, but they work as a gateway: they normalise the corporate emissions inventory before it becomes compulsory, and they are starting to count in public tenders and large contracts.

3. Pollutant release and transfer registries

This is the most cross-cutting obligation and the most underestimated. Chile has the RETC and its Single Window, Colombia the Single Environmental Registry, Mexico the National Emissions Registry alongside the Annual Operating Certificate. They are annual filings, with a threshold, a deadline and a sanction. And they ask for exactly the data any sustainability report needs afterwards.

4. Extended producer responsibility

Whoever puts a product on the market answers for the waste it generates. Chile developed this through its EPR Law and its target decrees by priority product. Peru organises non-municipal waste management around Legislative Decree 1278, which puts recovery first. The logic is the same, and it pulls in companies that never considered themselves part of the waste sector, starting with anyone selling packaged goods.

5. A price on carbon

Three of the five countries already charge for emitting. Chile taxes air emissions from certain establishments through its green tax on stationary sources. Colombia taxes the carbon content of fossil fuels through its national carbon tax. Mexico combines a federal carbon tax with state-level taxes and an emissions trading system. The practical effect is that measuring stops being a reputational exercise and becomes a cost line.

Country summary

Mexico

This is the most mature of the five when it comes to company-level emissions reporting. The General Climate Change Law organises climate policy and embeds the nationally determined contribution. Hanging off it is the National Emissions Registry, which requires annual reporting from establishments above the threshold of 25,000 tonnes of CO2 equivalent. The environmental authority is SEMARNAT, and inspection and sanctioning sit with PROFEPA.

On sustainability-related financial reporting, Mexico moved first with the CINIF's sustainability information standards, the Mexican adaptation of the ISSB standards. The detail is in our article on IFRS S1 and S2 in Mexico, and the full map in our guide to environmental regulation and certification in Mexico.

Chile

Chile has the most complete architecture in the region and the sharpest enforcer. Law 21,455 sets emissions neutrality by 2050 and, in its article 41, opens the door to mandatory annual emissions reporting for establishments that already file through the RETC Single Window. The CMF's NCG 461 governs the integrated annual report of securities issuers. And the Environment Superintendency inspects and sanctions, with fines of up to ten thousand annual tax units and a public sanctions registry.

The full guide is in environmental and sustainability regulation for companies in Chile.

Colombia

Law 2169 of 2021 put the country's climate targets into statute and, in its article 16, created mandatory greenhouse gas emissions reporting. On the financial side, disclosure is set by the Financial Superintendence circulars, and the country also has its own Green Taxonomy classifying activities and assets by environmental objective. In day-to-day operations, what reaches most companies is the Single Environmental Registry.

The full guide is in environmental and sustainability regulation in Colombia.

Peru

Law 30754 and its implementing regulation created the national measurement, reporting and verification system, which includes Huella de Carbono Perú and the national registry of mitigation measures. For companies with listed securities, the concrete requirement is the Corporate Sustainability Report that the SMV requires as an annex to the annual report. On waste, Legislative Decree 1278 sets the obligations of non-municipal generators.

The full guide is in environmental and sustainability regulation for companies in Peru.

Argentina

This is the most decentralised of the five, with national minimum standards and provincial competence. General Environment Law 25,675 is the umbrella statute and Law 27,520 the climate one, though neither in itself imposes emissions measurement or reporting on private companies: the national inventory is territorial, not corporate. The real requirement comes through the capital markets, via ESG reporting to the CNV, and the how is set by FACPCE Technical Resolution 60, which replaces the RT 36 social report and accepts GRI and the IFRS Sustainability Disclosure Standards.

The full guide is in environmental and sustainability regulation in Argentina.

The pressure coming from Europe

This is where many Latin American companies discover that the regulation affecting them most is not their own. Three European instruments reach exporters and suppliers in the region today.

CBAM, the carbon border adjustment

The carbon border adjustment mechanism has been in its definitive regime since 1 January 2026. The transitional period ended on 31 December 2025. It covers iron and steel, cement, aluminium, fertilisers, electricity and hydrogen.

The piece that most changes the calculation for a mid-sized exporter is the de minimis threshold of 50 tonnes of net mass per year, aggregated across all covered goods and per legal entity identified by its EORI number. Below that there is no obligation. Three warnings:

• Electricity and hydrogen fall outside the threshold and always trigger the obligation.
• There is no retroactive exemption: once you cross 50 tonnes, the obligation covers the whole year, and you must be authorised before you cross it.
• The annual declaration is due by 30 September of the following year.

For a Latin American exporter, what matters is that you are the one who has to supply the embedded emissions of the product, installation by installation and with a traceable methodology. The detail is in our guide to CBAM in 2026.

EUDR, the deforestation regulation

The deforestation-free products regulation directly affects soy, beef, coffee, cocoa, timber, palm and rubber supply chains, which is a large share of what the region exports to Europe. Its application was postponed to 30 December 2026 by Regulation (EU) 2025/2650, with a simplification package to follow. This is the second postponement, so it would be unwise to count on a third. What it requires is geolocation of the plots of origin and a due diligence statement. More context in our article on the EUDR postponement.

What a European customer subject to the CSRD ends up asking for

After the omnibus reform, Directive (EU) 2026/470 left the CSRD applying to EU companies with more than 1,000 employees and more than 450 million euros in net turnover, with first reports covering financial years beginning on or after 1 January 2027. That is far fewer companies than before, but they are precisely the large buyers.

For a Latin American supplier there is a useful piece of news: the voluntary standard based on VSME, adopted on 3 July 2026, acts as a cap on what a company subject to the CSRD can ask of its value chain. If a customer sends you a three-hundred-question survey, that cap is your argument. The full set of changes is in our article on the omnibus package.

What to do with all this

The most expensive mistake is treating each requirement as a separate project. They all ask for variants of the same dataset: energy, fuels, processes, waste, water, transport and suppliers. An order that works:

1. One emissions inventory covering scope 1, 2 and 3, following the GHG Protocol or ISO 14064-1, at the most granular level you can sustain.
2. Traceability back to the source document. That is what separates a figure that survives verification from one that does not.
3. One repository, several outputs. The same data feeds the RETC or the RUA, the carbon tax, the national footprint platform, the securities regulator's report and the European customer's questionnaire.
4. A calendar by country. Deadlines do not line up across jurisdictions, and annual filings cluster in the first quarter.

Frequently asked questions

Is sustainability reporting mandatory in Latin America?

Not generally for private companies in any of the five countries. There are specific requirements for securities issuers in Mexico, Chile, Colombia, Peru and Argentina, and requirements to file environmental data in public registries that reach many more companies.

Which country has the toughest regulation?

It depends on the dimension. On environmental inspection and enforcement, Chile. On company-level emissions reporting, Mexico, because of the RENE threshold. On sustainability-related financial reporting, Mexico again, because of its sustainability information standards.

Does CBAM affect me if I export to Europe?

Only if your product falls within the covered sectors. If it does, check the threshold of 50 tonnes of net mass per year aggregated per legal entity, and bear in mind that electricity and hydrogen always trigger the obligation.

Can the same measurement serve several countries?

Yes, if you build it properly. Filing formats differ, but the underlying data is the same. What you only need to solve once is the source-level detail and the traceability.

Operating across several countries in the region multiplies the forms, not the data. At Manglai we help you keep a single inventory, traceable back to the source invoice, that every filing can draw on. Start with our carbon footprint solution.