What’s Happening in New Mexico?
New Mexico Green Amendment
The New Mexico Green Amendment Coalition continues to educate, organize and engage communities on the values of having a constitutional New Mexico Green Amendment.
Your next opportunity to learn about the New Mexico Green Amendment and how you can get up to speed and involved for 2025 is coming up on June 20 in Albuquerque. You can learn more about this live, in person event here.
Support for the Green Amendment Grows: Organizations signing on in support of the New Mexico Green Amendment continues to grow and diversify. See who is signed on in support in 2024 on the supporting organizations page of the website.
History of the New Mexico Green Amendment to bring you up to speed:
2024
The New Mexico Green Amendment was once again proposed but did not make much progress when it was quickly tabled before communities got an opportunity to see where their government leaders really stood on the matter. But a lot of information was learned about how the opposition was organizing a misinformation campaign behind the scenes that we are now well-poised to take on with facts and the truth.
2023
The New Mexico Green Amendment was once again proposed under the leadership of Senator Antoinette Sedillo Lopez and Representative Joanne Ferrary, with a growing list of cosponsors including Senator Shannon Pinto, Senator Harold Pope, Jr., Representative Tara Lujan, Representative Patricia Roybal Caballero and nearly 20 more. While the amendment did not make it all the way through the legislative process, it was the beneficiary of a robust hearing as well as a solid review by the Attorney General’s office demonstrating the amendment was not scary and in fact would be value added for state environmental protections.
2022
2022 marked a key year of growth for constitutional environmental rights recognition in New Mexico.
On January 5, 2022, House Joint Resolution 02/Senate Joint Resolution 02 — a resolution to amend the New Mexico Constitution in order to add enforceable environmental rights — was introduced by Senator Antoinette Sedillo Lopez and Representative Joanne Ferrary.
New Mexicans made powerful progress during the 2022 thirty day legislative session. After 2 well attended hearings the amendment passed the through the House Energy, Environment and Natural Resources Committee by majority vote. While the amendment was ultimately tabled by the House Judiciary Committee which rendered it unable to make it through the entire legislative process in 2022, the number of legislative supporters, organizational supporters and grassroots supporters swelled as the session progressed.
The NM Green Amendment was a featured item of discussion at the 2022 Walking 4 the Climate Rally held on MLK Day, which helped launch the legislative session. Weekly trainings, Q&A sessions, dissemination of information sheets, and over 2,000 door hangers helped inform the conversation around advancing the Amendment.
Legislative champions Representative Joanne Ferrarry and Senator Antoinette Sedillo Lopez led the effort at the legislative level and were met with great support from colleagues. The 30 day session is short and there is a lot to be accomplished. All supporters knew it would be a high hurdle going into the session, but were tremendously pleased with the progress. Over 50 New Mexico organizations signed on in support of the NM Green Amendment. And while in 2021 the New Mexico Green Amendment had 5 legislative sponsors, by the end of the 2022 legislative session the amendment secured support from 26 official sponsors including: Senator Antoinette Sedillo Lopez, Representative Joanne Ferrary, Senator Harold Pope, Jr., Senator Bill Soules, Senator Elizabeth “Liz” Stefanics, Senator Gerald Ortiz y Pino, Senator Carrie Hamblen, Representative Tara Lujan, Senator Shannon Pinto, Representative Debbie Sarinana, Senator Linda Lopez, Representative Patricia Roybal Caballero, Senator Bill Tallman, Senator Jeff Steinborn, Representative Kay Bounkeua, Representative Elizabeth “Liz” Thomson, Representative Gail Chasey, Representative Miguel Garcia, Senator Roberto “Bobby” J. Gonzales, Senator Brenda McKenna, Senator Michael Padilla, Senator Nancy Rodriguez, Senator Benny Shendo, Representative Pamela Herndon, Representative Linda Serrato, and Representative Matthew McQueen.
NM Green Amendment legislative champions and supporters have already voiced their enthusiastic support to try again in 2023 when the session will be 60 days long and the NM Green Amendment will be starting from a hard-fought higher foundation of support.
Achieving a New Mexico Green Amendment is imminently doable. Upon securing just a majority vote in each of the legislative houses, the NM Green Amendment will be placed on the ballot for a vote of the people at the next election. While the Governor has the bully pulpit and could be using her voice in support, she does not have an official role in the constitutional amendment process.
2021
In the 2021 legislative session, a very similar amendment (only a few words difference) was the subject of a February 8, 2021 hearing and vote before the Senate Rules Committee who voted 7-4 in favor. From there the amendment proceeded to the Senate Judiciary Committee where it unfortunately languished until the end of the legislative session because of the failure of Senator Cervantes to put it forth for hearing.
Not to be deterred, our legislative champions and growing coalition of organization supporters immediately started gearing up for the 2022 legislative session. 2023 education, outreach and organization is already underway.
More exciting news
On National Green Amendment Day 2021, the Doña Ana Board of County Commissioners stood in solidarity with many New Mexico organizations and passed a proclamation formally recognizing July 13 as Green Amendment Day.
Read the proclamation here and listen to Senator Carrie Hamblen’s powerful remarks on the need for a NM Green Amendment particularly for BIPOC communities. Senator Hamblen is the CEO and President of the Las Cruces Green Chamber of Commerce and serves as the state Senator for District 38.
New Mexico is being featured in The Green Amendment documentary series. You can read about the journey of interviews and filming in a 3 part reflection series written by our Founder, Maya van Rossum:
- Reflections on the first part of her trip here.
- Reflections on the second part of the trip are available here
- Reflections on the third and final part of the trip are now available – read here!
New Mexico is being featured in the Green Amendment Documentary Series.
Want to see a bit more about the beginning of our NM Green Amendment movement? This video includes highlights of one of our earlier visits and how it all began.
