System Maintenance and Environmental Reform in Mexico

Abstract

Evidence of Mexico's ecological crisis is everywhere. Fifty years of economic miracles and debacles have left its environment in a shambles. Whether one considers the net reduction of Mexican forests by 66 percent overall, with an annual rate of loss in excess of a million acres, attendant problems of soil erosion and desertification, the reduction of the Lacandon jungle by 70 percent in the past 40 years, the loss of thousands of species of fauna and flora, the contamination of over 60 percent of its streams and rivers, the degradation of its two most celebrated natural lakes at Chapala and Patzcuaro, the massive oil spills along the Gulf of Mexico coastline, damaging national fisheries and aquatic life, the inadequate sanitation or sewage facilities in half of Mexico's cities and towns, Mexico City's dubious status as the world's worst metropolitan air polluter, or the virtual absence of hazardous-waste disposal facilities against a backdrop of intensive toxic waste production, it is clear Mexico's environmental is at the breaking point.' The social costs of ecological decline have been profound. Rural areas have borne the brunt of environmental neglect as public policies favoring commercial and export-oriented agriculture depressed prices for traditional commodities, increased factor costs, and rewarded monoculture production. The effects are seen in the decline of sustainable agriculture practices, increased dependency on pesticides and artificial fertilizers, destruction of forests and other resource commons, displacement of rural populations, increased labor migration, and swelling numbers of immigrants to Mexico's cities. In Oaxaca's Mixteca alone, arable land has been reduced 70 percent, forcing thousands of campesinos into the itinerant labor stream (Wright, 1990: 95).