Client Requirement: IQF is one of the largest agriculture producers in the southern zone of Peru. Most of its production is for export. This year the Environmental Governmental Agency (Oefa) performed an inspection on IQF premises and challenged (i) the supposedly lack of environmental assessment and (ii) the supposedly lack of water rights currently in force. As the challenge over the lack of water rights in force is extremely important to IQF agriculture business, this matter will be described separately in the next Section. In the present Section we will describe IQF requirement about the defence over the supposedly lack of environmental assessment.
Our participation: The environmental legal regulations are still under construction and we found-out that the obligation to count with environmental assessments in the agriculture business has not been activated yet by the Government (apparently the governmental officers tried to enforce a rule applicable to other business such as Mining). However, we did not ground our defence only on this formality. We went further and explained how the company had indeed performed each and all obligation that would derive from an environmental assessment (no matter it has not been delivered yet because it is not mandatory under the law). This way, we provided comfort to the governmental agency about the rigorous compliance with the law and also about the extra-mile performed by the client regarding compliance of actions that would be required within a future environmental assessment.
Client benefit: Client used a solid legal ground to respond the inspector’s challenge and also reinforced its reputation as a company that runs the extra-mile in all matters related to environmental care actions.
