Carla Garcia Zendejas

Carla García Zendejas is a recognized environmental lawyer native to the Baja California peninsula. After graduating from the Universidad Autonoma de Baja California Law School, she earned a Masters in Law as a Fulbright Scholar from the Washington College of Law at American University. Since then, she has been working in the public interest to advance the causes of labor rights, environmental protection, and the enhancement of government transparency in Mexico.

Carla succeeded in making government agencies more transparent to the public by incorporating public participation and right-to-know mechanisms in state and municipal law. She served as staff attorney and was co-founder of Yeuani, an organization which provided free legal and consulting services to community groups and women workers from the maquiladora industry. Carla co-founded the Ja Jan Water Monitoring Group, a binational network of environmental organizations, academic institutions and citizen volunteers from both the U.S. and Mexico which included the San Diego Coastkeeper, focusing on the impacts of water pollution on the shared coastline.

Carla is the Mexican Director of the Border Power Plant Working Group – an organization created in 2001 striving to improve the environment along the US-Mexico border through the promotion of renewable energy supplies and the implementation of environmentally sustainable and safer power plant design. In January of 2003 Carla was featured on "The News Hour with Jim Lehrer" for her work challenging ill-advised power plants in Mexico designed to serve U.S. energy needs. Efforts from this group and many others in the region were instrumental in halting several liquefied natural gas plants on the Baja California coast proposed by corporations such as: Marathon Oil, Chevron-Texaco, El Paso, and Conoco Philips. She has provided activists with critical knowledge to fight ill-advised LNG terminals not only on the Baja California peninsula, but also on the U.S. Pacific Coast and in Spain.

Since 1998, Carla has participated as Mexican partner with the E-LAW network (Environmental Law Alliance Worldwide) which brings together attorneys and advocates from around the world sharing legal strategies across borders. She currently serves as Legal Consultant to E-LAW.