Mexico y el Medio Ambiente después del TLCAN

¿Qué tanto hay de cierto en que sólo el comercio guía los altibajos de la política ambiental en el mundo?

Un artículo comisionado que deseo compartir con quienes gustan de la relojería...

What has happened to the environment in Mexico since
NAFTA and the North American Agreement on Environmental Cooperation
(NAAEC) came into force?
Luis Fernando Guadarrama Marrón
April 2006

When the prospects of a free trade agreement between Mexico and the United States were first brought up, an impressive boom of predictions and probable scenarios exploded in the collective imagination. From the environmental stance, the predictions hovered over two, opposing, views with no intermediate possible outcomes: either Mexico’s environmental performance and institutions would pair up to the US (and Canada) as a result of trade integration; or on the other hand, Mexico would become the dump of both its partners’ worst polluting industries.

Neither has happened. Aside from some anecdotal cases, no discernible migration of dirty industries has happened between Canada and the US, towards Mexico. However, this has not meant that the environmental indicators, and the performance of our environmental institutions have decidedly shown a trend towards the better. As a matter of fact, according to the Environmental Sustainability Index (ESI) designed by the Yale Center for Environmental Law and Policy (YCELP) and the Center for International Earth Science Information Network (CIESIN) of Columbia University, for the World Economic Forum (WEF – Davos), Mexico has observed a downwards trend in its environmental performance overall from 2000 to 2006.

So, were both sides of the possible scenarios wrong for the Mexican case in relation to NAFTA? Obviously, the “Pollution Haven” hypothesis has shown time and again, that it is completely flawed. The reasons for this have been mentioned on countless analysis and therefore I would omit them.

However, the “Upward Performance and Institutions” hypothesis unfortunately does have a lot of truth to it. The problem is that in the Mexican context it has been impossible to grasp and use this hypothesis to our environmental benefit. Aside from the simplistic arguments championed by the World Trade Organization (WTO) that freer trade, under adequate environmental institutions, benefits environmental performance, the specific process that lead to NAFTA and the NAAEC could have made a strong and positive impact on the environment of Mexico, if only its momentum had not fizzled out.

During the final stages of the NAFTA negotiations, a huge environmental conscience grew in Mexican society. This increasing flow of mobilization and involvement had its roots on two sources: first the tough local, but very small up to then, organized environmental community in Mexico; and more importantly, the influx of ideas and support from the international, mainly US based, environmental NGO movement. It was with this support and guidance that many Mexican environmental NGO appeared and surfaced as legitimate stakeholders in the process towards trade liberalization. It was this organized involvement that led to the negotiations and establishment of NAAEC and its Commission on Environmental Cooperation (CEC) as a “watchdog” of the possible environmental consequences of NAFTA.

The CEC, legitimized in its birth by this phenomenal and coordinated North American environmental movement, appeared to be strong enough to really make a change in the way the environment and its institutions would be regarded in a North America with liberalized trade. At least in the early stages of implementation of both NAFTA and NAAEC the CEC made its mark; its citizen submission instruments (art. 13, 14 and 15 of NAAEC) fostered what appeared to be an unstoppable social involvement in the environmental wellbeing of the region.

Along the way, unfortunately, something happened; support and overview of the CEC by NGO of all three Parties of NAFTA, dwindled down. The consequence was inevitable: all three Governments just followed the trend and made policy of disdaining the CEC. The latest: the Mexican Government has hinted that it wants to slash 60% of the budget it must allocate to the CEC. Almost no one in the environmental community has even muttered a word. The one objective and fully recognized positive link between the environment and NAFTA, that is NAAEC and the CEC, was left before it could gain momentum and foster better environmental stewardship in North America and in Mexico. And this phenomenon is not restricted to the CEC, as I shall point next; it has had an impact on environmental stewardship all over the world.

It is clear that Mexico’s environmental woes were not created by NAFTA, and that whatever NAFTA could do to ameliorate or aggravate them, shares importance with respect to our national context and priorities. Furthermore, these priorities are influenced by other international issues besides trade liberalization and NAFTA. For example, let us have a look at what is happening in the Global Environmental Governance System and how it impacts the establishment and evolution of national environmental institutions.

After the 1972 United Nations Conference on Human Environment, held in Stockholm, almost every country in the world put up some kind of specialized agency for environmental stewardship within their Governments. Mexico was not an exception and a high level environmental office was put up within the Health Ministry. In the road up to the United Nations Conference on Environment and Development (Earth Summit) held in Rio de Janeiro in 1992, almost all the successful Multilateral Environmental Agreements (MEA’s) that are in force today, were signed and ratified. It is no surprise that Mexico’s spending for environmental purposes peaked, in real terms, at that time; and its actual institutional basis was established. Not only the prospect of NAFTA intensified the efforts to achieve a better environmental scorecard in Mexico; it was also the trend in Global Environmental Governance.

Since then, however, the panorama seems much like what happened with the CEC. Almost with no exceptions, all MEA’s negotiated after Rio have had little results or have been un - ratified by key Parties, making them useless. For example, in sharp contrast we see the Montreal Protocol on Ozone Depleting Substances of 1987, which is regarded to have a lot of success, as opposed to the Kyoto Protocol on Climate Change (established in 1997, into force in 2005) , which was born dead without the participation of the United States and other Parties. Furthermore, does anyone remember the outcomes of Johannesburg in 2002?

There are no simple answers to this falling trend in environmental awareness on a global scale. But surely something has happened with the starters of all this more than 30 years ago: organized environmental civil society. It is getting harder and harder each day to be an environmental NGO. All this other social issues have taken precedent over the environment, and society seems not to notice or care about it. And Government officials are taking note. Mexico may be an illustrative case in point, but surely not the only one, in which spending on environmental issues has dropped in the last decade... and by nearly 50%. And that is reflected on the state our environment is as of now. Probably no much worse than it was a quarter of a century ago... but in those days, people seemed to care and do something about it. Not much anymore.

Iniciando

¿Qué se siente cuando se tiene un oficio? ¿Acaso se respira con tranquilidad? ¿Acaso se lo toma uno con calma?

No me refiero aquí a tener altos estudios, una profesión certificada... me refiero a un oficio. Esto es, una habilidad presentemente necesaria en la vida cotidiana, irremplazable, y mayoritariamente manual y específica. Ninguna generalidad de intelectuales (el filósofo del pueblo), tampoco el profesor que forja generación tras generación ni el cura que salvaguarda las conciencias colectivas. Me refiero a un “oficio”... el sastre, la costurera, el plomero, el electricista, el reparador de TV, el mecánico automotriz, el relojero... Y si bien en muchos casos un individuo puede llevar el oficio que particularmente le queda a niveles de “arte”, tampoco, creo, me refiero a artesanos o artistas aquí. Ser considerado más que bello, útil.

En breve, más "utilidades".

Saludos.

El Relojero