new directions in mexican environmental policy

PROFILE New Directions in Mexican Environmental Policy STEPHEN P. MUMME* Department of Political Science Colorado State University Ft. Collins, Colorado 80523, USA

ROBERTO A. SANCHEZ Urban and Environmental Studies El Colegio de la Frontera Norte, Tijuana P.O. Box L Chula Vista, California 92012, USA

ABSTRACT/Since taking office 1 December 1988, Mexico's incumbent president, Carlos Salinas de Gortari, has intro- duced important innovations in environmental policy that dis- tinguish his administration from those of his predecessors. Greater administrative continuity, improved regulatory capacity achieved through statutory change, focused priorities cen- tering on pollution abatement in Mexico City, and an aggressive search for external financing for pollution control are hall-

marks of Salinas' approach. The success of these environmental reforms depends heavily on economic recovery, however, and environmental policy still suffers from un- deffunding, bureaucratic fragmentation, and heavy reliance on voluntarist enforcement mechanisms. Recently, U.S. congressional debate on a proposed free trade agreement with Mexico has been a factor in spurring the Salinas government to take new antipollution and conservation measures. Mexi- co's growing environmental movement is a/so an important force behind the government's new responsiveness in environmental matters. The Salinas administration recognizes the issue's political salience and has sought to defuse environmental criticism using a large arsenal of resources at its dis- posal. Salinas' environmental policy strategy may thus be characterized as both proactive and reactive in nature. While the reforms are evidence that Mexico is beginning to take environmental matters more seriously, economic recovery and sustained environmental activism remain vital to further progress.

In just over two years in office, Mexico's president, Carlos Salinas de Gortari, has attracted international attention for his bold economic and political reforms. Salinas and his aggressive team of young advisors have successfully reduced the government's presence in the economy, dampened inflation, attacked corruption, and loosened the grip of the traditionalists, the old party dinosaurs, on political power. Moreover, he has sought, admittedly with less success, to nudge Mexico along a path towards greater political pluralism.

Salinas' macroeconomic and political reforms rever- berate across the spectrum affecting a wide range of policy including the environment. Although still early in his six-year nonrenewable term of office, known in Mexico as the sexenio, the Salinas administration has already established a distinctive approach in dealing with environmental issues, an approach impressive enough to earn the young president United Earth's first "Green Nobel" prize.

The Safinas administration's innovations in the environmental policy sphere suggest that Mexico may fi- nally be ready to come to grips with the environmental

KEY WORDS: Environmental policy; Environmental interest groups; Mexico

*Author to whom correspondence should be addressed

costs of its post-World War II struggle for industrializa- tion. While the new reforms have been highly political, resembling the formalism of the past, they are suffi- ciently different from measures taken by previous administrations to warrant careful scrutiny for whatever prospects they may hold for environmental improve- ment. They are all the more significant as Mexico enters into negotiations of a landmark North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA), which promises to inten- sify the pace of Mexican economic development and concomitant pressures on the Mexican environment.

This essay analyzes the significance of the Salinas administration's new policy initiatives in relation to the policies of earlier administrations and the emerging politics of environmental concern in the 1980s. Empha- sis is placed on the government's administrative and statutory reforms, on current patterns of implementation, on its recent response to the NAFTA debate, and on its relations with Mexico's growing environmental movement. The article concludes that Salinas' innovations have placed Mexican environmental policy on stronger institutional foundations. Further progress, however, is contingent on Mexico's economic recovery and sustained activism on the part of Mexico's environmental movement.

A n t e c e d e n t s

Assessing his first year of performance before Mex-

Environmental Management Vol. 16, No. 4, pp. 465-474 �9 1992 Springer-Verlag New York Inc.

466 s.P. Mumme and R. A. Sanchez

ico's assembled political elite in Mexico City in Novem- ber 1989, Salinas observed that "environmental protection has been incorporated as a fundamental national priority" (Salinas de Gortari 1989). Whatever the merits of this claim in a city that is an international metaphor for environmental calamity, the claim itself is significant and attributable to the rapid mobilization of environmental concern since 1984. It is indicative, first, of the new political sensitivity of Mexican presidents to environmental issues and, second, of their new-found need to manage the burgeoning environmental movement.

The expansion of environmental concern in Mexi- can society is unquestionably one of the most important new developments in Mexican politics in the last de- cade, and the Salinas administration is the first new administration to have to deal with its effects. It is important, briefly, to understand the background of this so- ciopolitical change in order to appreciate both the challenges Salinas confronts in this arena and the new directions it has taken.

The roots of change are located in the decision of Salinas' predecessor, Miguel de la Madrid, to devote presidential attention to Mexico's beleaguered environment. Following through on campaign commitments to upgrade attention to environment in his administration, De la Madrid innovated in a number of different areas, elevating environment to cabinet rank in a new ministry, the Secretariat of Urban Development and Ecology (SEDUE), streamlining environmental administration, revamping the environmental law, and cam- paigning to elevate public awareness of environmental issues (Mumme and others 1988, DuMars and Beltran del Rio 1988).

These innovations notwithstanding, environmental progress faltered under De la Madrid. Afflicted by the worst economic crisis since the Great Depression, budgetary allocations to SEDUE's ecology functions remained sparse throughout the De la Madrid sexenio, stunting its regulatory capacity. Written agreements, or convenios, between SEDUE, other government minis- tries, and private-sector industries remained the principal vehicle of implementing environmental policy. Based on voluntary commitments, these agreements were largely symbolic rather than substantive. Official policy, moreover, discouraged punitive forms of regulation. The new laws, although improving on the past, were vague on specific mechanisms of enforcement, which in turn remained sporadic, with little real follow- through. It is clear in retrospect that the De la Madrid government's emphasis on economic recovery rele- gated environmental policy to all but a rhetorical back seat (Mumme and others 1988).

What the De la Madrid innovations did nurture,

however, was a remarkable mobilization of environmental interests. Environmental groups proliferated rapidly after 1984. Favored by the course of events, including deteriorating air quality in Mexico City and other industrial cities, the disastrous explosion of a Pe- troleos Mexicanos (PEMEX) propane distribution facility in the Mexico City suburb of San Juanico in 1984, the even more calamitous earthquake in September 1985, as well as internationally galvanizing events like Bhopal and Chernobyl, small groups and associations led by middle class activists sprang up in urban com- munities throughout the country. By 1987 two national associations of ecologists, the Pacto de Ecologistas (an association of associations) and the Movimiento de Ecologis- tas Mexicanas, as well as a fledgling Green Party, the Partido Verde, were politically visible, together with a large number of smaller advocacy groups (Mumme and others 1988, Redclift 1987).

The newly mobilized ecology movement quickly demonstrated that it was a force to be reckoned with beyond its actual numbers. Linking a critique of environmental conditions to political performance, environmentalists drew constant attention to the government's shortcomings. Environmentalist criticism of the policy- performance gap at SEDUE contributed substantially to its reputation as the most troubled government agency under De la Madrid and a rapid turnover in its ministerial leadership (Carabias 1990).

Environmental activists also linked their environmental critique to a rebuke of the political system itself. The government's failure to enforce environmental statutes was attributed to its excessive centralism, its political monopoly on the legislature, and its patronage ridden bureaucracy, all of which contributed to administrative inefficiency and lack of democratic accountability (Garcia and Reyes 1986).

Nowhere was this more visible than in the case of public opposition to Mexico's first nuclear electric facility, under construction at Laguna Verde, Veracruz. La- guna Verde, after 1987, became synonymous with government incompetence. National polls indicated over- whelming popular distrust in the government's competence to operate the plant. Numerous organized demonstrations kept the plant's problems prominent in the public media. By the summer of 1987 the government was forced to undertake an expensive public relations campaign to change public opinion on the issue, to no avail (Montafio and others 1988, Stevis and Mumme 1991).

By mid-1987 the environmental issue loomed prominent in electoral politics. In Mexico City, the nation's political center, polls ranked environment next to public security as the two most pressing policy priorities

New Directions in Mexican Environmental Policy 467

behind economy recovery. A number of political parties, including various of the leftist parties associated with Cuautemoc Cardenas' National Democratic Front (FDN), were vocal in their opposition to Laguna Verde (Excelsior 1988f, g,h). For the first time ever in Mexican politics, most parties, from the governing Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI) on down, incorporated environmental issues into their party platforms (Excelsior 1988h). Opposition parties in both the right and the left criticized the PRI's environmental performance, argu- ments which resonated strongly in the pofiticaUy important urban areas. The 1988 presidential campaign and the PRI's lackluster performance in the nation's principal metropoli clearly demonstrated that environment had become an important valence issue in Mexican politics.

The Salinas Strategy

Salinas' approach to environmental policy has been markedly responsive to this new politicization. From the outset, the Safinas campaign found itself on the defen- sive on the environmental issue and sought to neutral- ize its impact. Upon receiving the PRI's official nomi- nation, Salinas assigned two top aides, Manuel Cama- cho Solis and Patricio Chirinos, both close associates during Salinas' tenure as head of the Secretariat of Pro- gramming and Budget from 1982 thru 1987, to manage the environmental issue (Exc~laior 1988e).

The outlines of Salinas' approach to environment were defined in several major campaign speeches in January and February of 1988. The overriding policy priority, of course, was economic recovery. Progress in all substantive policy directions was subsidiary to this. Zeroing in on the environment, however, Salinas stressed the importance of policy continuity. Environ- ment, he stressed, had become a basic priority of the government, one that would be sustained in this administration. While growth remained essential to recovery, environmental degradation could no longer be justified as an inevitable corrollary of economic development (Excelsior 1988b,c).

Salinas further accentuated the importance of better regulation. He emphasized the need to prioritize, to ameliorate the most pressing environmental problems. While conspicuously eschewing any criticism of his predecessor, a political taboo for PRI presidential candi- dates, he dwelled on actual performance. Mexico City's environmental predicament was invariably mentioned first, followed by reference to the deterioration of the Lacandon forests, degradation of the Coatzacoalcos and Lerma River basins. Conservation and protection of water resources, particularly in urban areas, were also a

favorite theme in Salinas' campaign speeches (Excelsior 1988b,c,i).

A third basic theme of the Salinas campaign was the need for concertaci6n, or government-society cooperation in remedying environmental problems (Excelsior 1988c). Active public participation was considered essential to effective progress in environmental amelioration. Entailed here was not only the participation of environmental interest groups, but the cooperation of the private sector in financing ameliorative solutions.

Managing the Environment

Since assuming office 1 December 1988, the Salinas administration has staked out a distinctive approach to environmental management predicated on maintaining administrative continuity, building regulatory capacity, and managing the political outfall of the newly mobilized environmental movement.

The defining features of environmental policy under Salinas are administrative continuity and fiscal aus- terity. Breaking with the past, Salinas has left intact the basic structure of environmental administration inher- ited from his predecessor. SEDUE and its Subsecretar- iat of Ecology continue to retain primary jurisdiction and coordinating responsibilities with respect to other government agencies in the environmental area. Other administrative structures, such as the National Ecology Commission, an interagency body created in 1984 to coordinate overall environmental strategy, are also re- tained. Even more unusual given the Mexican tradition of wholesale sexenial administrative turnover is the fact Salinas has held on to senior environmental managers from the De la Madrid administration. Manuel Cama- cho, the top man at SEDUE, was transferred to the politically and environmentally sensitive post of chief of the Department of the Federal District (DDF), while Patricio Chirinos assumed the leadership at SEDUE. Chirinos' decision to hold on to a number of Camacho's senior people at SEDUE's ecology division signifies the government's concern with establishing an image of continuity and competence in environmental administration (Uno Mds Uno 1988, Excelsior 1988k).

The fiscal outlines for environment under Salinas are structured in the context of major reductions in spending associated with the government's priority of containing inflation and maintaining its macroeconomic commitments. In the first two years of Salinas' sexenio federal environmental budgets were cut back against early projections for modest growth. Officials openly admit that additional investments in the environmental area hinge on renewed economic growth


and foreign assistance (Ojeda Mestre 1989, Excelsior 1989g, LaJornada 1989c, Uno M~s Uno 1990b).

The Salinas administration has aggressively sought foreign assistance to supplement its meagre resources for combatting pollution. At the European Communi- ty's so-called environmental summit in Paris in 1989, Salinas successfully persuaded Japan to consider contributing part of its $2.3 billion in Third World environmental assistance to ameliorating Mexico City's environmental problems. As much as $1 billion has been promised (Nauman 1989b, Excelsior 1989f, 1990a). More recently, the U.S. Export - Import Bank has ear- marked $455,000 for Mexico City's air pollution program (Monge 1991a, Excelsior 1991). Salinas has like- wise received commitments for technical assistance in copying with the federal district's air pollution woes from US EPA chief, William Reilly, as well as technical assistance from Germany, Japan, France, and Canada (Nauman 1989a, US Department of State 1991).

With respect to regulation, the Salinas administration has departed from the past in two important respects: first, increased emphasis on substantive regulation; second, prioritization of programs.

The centerpiece of Salinas' policy is actually a major revision of the environmental law undertaken at the end of the De la Madrid administration, promulgated 1 March 1988 (Diario Oficia11988). The new law improves on the past in several respects. It provides a more de- tailed administrative and regulatory prescription for federal environmental management. Further, the new law invests SEDUE with greater coordinating power in environmental administration, strengthens its hand in enforcing compliance with environmental regulations, and clarifies the administrative competencies of other federal agencies in the environmental sphere. For example, the new law stipulates a specific division of labor between SEDUE and the DDF in enforcing environmental regulations in the federal district. It further re- quires environmental impact assessments for all federal public works, potentially polluting industries, mining, tourist development, and sanitary facilities, among others. It also calls for stricter technical norms governing environmental quality in substantive areas. The law opens new opportunities for citizen participation in environmental enforcement and encourages the development of state and local ordinances to reinforce and supplement federal legislation (Diario Oficial 1988, DuMars and Beltran del Rio 1988).

With this document in hand, the Salinas administration has made clear its next priority is the development of regulatory and technical norms that give force to basic environmental law. A major deficiency of general environmental law over the past two decades has been

its failure to elaborate specific implementing legislation to guide enforcement. In Mexico, such regulations, known as reglamentos, are purely administrative in nature and need not be submitted to Congress for legis- lative approval. In lieu thereof, administrative agencies lack appropriate policy guidance to implement policy.

In a speech inaugurating the Programa Nacional de Conservacitn Ecol6gica y de Proteccitn al Ambiente in January 1989, Salinas charged SEDUE "with develop- ing norms and technical standards that set limits on air pollution emissions, stricter standards for wastewater discharge, and stricter criteria for the disposition of solid wastes" (Excelsior 1989b, Uno M~s Uno 1989a). In fact, the new reglamento offensive had begun in June 1988 and was followed with a battery of new reglamentos and norrnas t?cnicas (technical guidelines) issuing from SEDUE and DDF in the fall and spring of 1988-1989 (Gaceta Ecol6gica 1989). The new reglamentos define a basic thrust of the Salinas reforms and are just the beginning of an ambitious effort to bolster the government's regulatory authority in this area. As many as 80 new regulatory edicts have been promised by SEDUE's Director of Norms and Vigilence before the Salinas sexenio is finished (Guido 1989).

Salinas' regulatory assault is centered on Mexico City. The federal district and its environs have by far and away received the lion's share of attention since the administration assumed office. Among the genuinely new environmental programs--announced just two weeks after Salinas assumed office--are a new munici- pal traffic system, mandatory vehicle emissions testing, provision of lead-free gasoline for Mexico City motor- ists, a new water conservation program, and other measures (Excelsior 19881). Other programs carrying over from the De la Madrid government include new initia- fives in garbage collection and sanitation and urban re- forestation and greenspace campaigns. These programs were supplemented in June 1989 with a decision to begin converting Mexico City's aging fuel oil power plants and heavily polluting industries to natural gas (Excelsior 1989d).

It is still too early to fairly evaluate the effectiveness of many of these federal district programs, but several observations are in order. First, the much ballyhooed and maligned vehicle emissions program is, by any stan- dard, a courageous undertaking. With 80% of the city's air-quality problem attributed to its 2.8 million vehicles, any serious assault on the air-quality problem must test vehicles (Legoretta 1990). The obstacles are formidable, of course. The city's fleet of private vehicles is old and inefficient compared to those in more industrialized na- tions. Economic conditions have led many owners to cut back on maintenance. Mexico, at the outset, lacked the


infrastructure to administer the program and has had to develop one from scratch. It still lacks qualified personnel to man the program and resources and for over- sight to ensure administrative probity (Excglsior 1988d, Monga 1989). All that said, Salinas has taken an ambitious and essential step towards coping with Mexico City's polluted atmosphere and set an important prec- edent for the future.

In a closely related initiative begun in November 1989, federal district officials inaugurated a new program, Un Dia Sin Auto (one day without your automo- bile), to reduce the circulation of vehicles in Mexico City (Excelsior 1989i). While its effectiveness in reducing pollution is controversial, the program has proven politically popular with Chilangos (Mexico City residents). De- spite resistance from various quarters of the business community, who complain of losses caused by delivery delays and tardy employees, DDF has stayed the course. It has even extended the ban to include Mexico City's ubiquitous taxis and peseros, or jitneys (Excelsior 1990b).

Second, DFF and SEDUE officials are coordinating more closely on program development and are trying to project a performance orientation to ecology and the environment (Ojeda Mestre 1989). Both Camacho and Sergio Reyes Lujan, subsecretary of ecology at SEDUE, are highly conspicuous in promoting these new programs. In this regard, primary responsibility for industrial pollution is vested in SEDUE, while mobile sources and commercially generated contamination is regulated by the Department of the Federal District (Diario Oficial 1988). In October 1990, in an effort to increase interagency coordination of programs, the government announced the consolidation of the various initiatives taken already in the Programa Integral Contra la Con- taminacion Atmosferica de la Zona Metropolitana de la Ciudad de Mexico, to be capitalized with a combined budget of $2.5 billion--increased to $3.3 billion in Feb- ruary 1991 (Monge 1991b).

Third, the success of these programs depends heavily on economic recovery and the cooperation of other powerful government departments. Both PEMEX, the government oil monopoly, and SARH, the Secretariat of Agriculture and Water Resources, are key actors in ameliorative and conservation programs within the city. These bureaucratic goliaths behave with considerable autonomy in practice, and SEDUE, short of sustained presidential management, has an uphill battle to elicit greater policy cooperation than in the past.

Fourth, these programs continue to depend heavily on rhetoric and voluntary compliance for success. Im- plementation by concertaci6n is heavily stressed by administration officials and is evident in the numerous and highly publicized convenios, or reciprocal coopera-

five agreements, SEDUE has signed with private industries and public agencies.

Outside the federal district, the government's priorities are less certain, but still better defined than earlier administrations'. Salinas has stressed several issues thus far, including the conservation of water resources, protection of the tropical forests with emphasis on the La- candon region, ameliorating contamination in the Lerma-Chapala and Coatzacoalcos River basins, decon- taminating several notoriously polluted ports---Guay- mas, Sonora has received special attention--and addressing ecology needs in Mexico's most populous and industrialized cities. By June 1990 Salinas had declared a three-month moratorium on forest harvesting in the Lacandon, banned the harvesting of migratory turdes, mobilized the army in a national deforestation campaign, banned development of new water systems in the federal district, and inaugurated a coordinated multi- agency campaign to clean up the Lerma-Chapala River basin (Excelsior 1989a,c, Arizona Daily Star 1990, Uno Mrs Uno 1989b,c). Salinas also promised Mexico would initiate negotiations aimed at joining the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora (CITES) (Uno Mds Uno 1990a).

Enforcement improved after Salinas took office but, unfortunately, remains ad hoc. Fines and plant closures increased moderately towards the end of the De la Madrid administration. They did not noticeably dimin- ish in the first two years of the Salinas sexenio. SEDUES's facilities inspection regime did increase in Mexico City and in the highly populated surrounding State of Mex- ico during this time, however, gathering steam in the fall of 1990 (Excelsior 1989e, 1990e). Furthermore, in March, 1989 the US Environmental Protection Agency and SEDUEjointly announced a cooperative program of plant inspections among the maquiladoras, or twin plant industries along the US-Mexican border (US- Mexico Report 1989). However, SEDUE's ranking officials, Patricio Chirinos and Sergio Reyes Lujan, have regularly affirmed that persuasion is preferred over sanctions in the government's arsenal of regulatory ap- proaches (Excelsior 1990d).

Since January 1991, however, the Salinas administration's enforcement efforts have intensified markedly, driven by unprecedented domestic and international criticism of the governments' performance (Christian Science Monitor 1991, US Department of State 1991). Mexican officials were genuinely surprised by the pos- sibility that criticism from US environmental organizations might contribute to derailing the NAFTA process. Concurrent wit the NAFTA debate, the government was embarrassed by an lengthy air-quality crisis in Mex- ico City that provoked an intense public outcry, forcing


it to declare a three-day air pollution emergency, 7-10 March (Uno Mds Uno 1991).

Responding to these setbacks, the Salinas administration initiated an intense environmental campaign aimed at restoring domestic and international confi- dence in its environmental agenda. Updating an earlier timetable for decommissioning, the government announced the closure of PEMEX's March 18 refinery in the federal district, an aging facility that was a conspicuous contributor to Mexico City's air-quality problems (New York Times 1991, Uno Mrs Uno 1991). Simulta- neously, SEDUE intensified its environmental inspection regime and displayed additional muscle in mandat- ing some 226 temporary and partial closures of violat- ing industries in Mexico City and the surrounding State of Mexico between April and June 1991 (Christian Sci- ence Monitor 1991, US Department of State 1991). SE- DUE further announced its intention to expand and improve the quality of its air pollution monitoring system and initiate a planning process for the next winter's thermal inversions entailing operational reductions of up to 50% from major sources of industrial pollution (Chirinos 1991, US Department of State 1991).

Addressing ciriticism of its administrative capacity in environmental matters, the government further announced expansion of SEDUE technical support staff in Mexico City from 9 to 50, with another 50 to be hired for the US-Mexico border region, effective in 1991, as well as the expansion of its office of Environmental In- spection for Industry and the addition of several new reglamentos and normas t~cnicas by way of beefing up its enforcement activities (Bush 1991, Reyes Lujan 1991). Accompanying these changes, it promised to increase SEDUE's ecology budget from a reported $5 million in 1989 to $39 million in 1991 (Bush 1991, Reyes Lujan 1991).

To what extent this latest show of enforcement will survive the NAFTA negotiations remains an open question. Until recently, the actual allocations for pollution control have been a fraction of their announced targets (Ojeda Mestre 1989, Excelsior 1989g,h). Budgetary commitments are still fragile, subject to administrative dis- cretion and dependent, ultimately, on economic recovery. Increases in SEDUE's manpower for enforcement will certainly help and are already contributing to its heighted compliance regime. Other proposals presently under consideration, such as allowing SEDUE to charge for services (licenses, inspections, environmental impact studies, and such) it presently provides at no cost to the private sector, harbor some promise for enhancing rev- enues allocated to environmental management. Such positives notwithstanding, environmental functions are apt to remain grossly underfunded in the near and

longer term and heavily dependent on voluntarist mechanisms for success.

Environmental Politics

An important lesson of the 1988 campaign was the potential potency of the environmental issue, particularly in Mexico's most industrialized regions and among the politically active urban middle class. The emergence of environmental organizations is one of the first really new forms of political mobilization in Mexico in several decades and thus presents a potential challenge to the assimilative capacity of the political system.

The administration's response has been twofold, em- ulating in softer from the traditional pan o palo---bread or stick----cooptative tactics of the PRI. The Salinas administration has tried to coopt existing environmental groups in support of government initiatives. Its primary objective has been to enlist the attentive and organized public in solidarity with the government's environmental program for both substantive and political reasons. In particular, the government has sought to recruit environmentalists into government offices, on the one hand, and, on the other, deflect environmental criticism into substantive policy channels rather than as a referendum on the PRI and the system in general.

By comparison with the De la Madrid administration, the Salinas team has been moderately successful in this respect, having profited from the experience of its predecessor (New York Times 1989). Salinas has man- aged to bring a number of activist leaders into the system, most noticeably in the case of the DDF government, SEDUE, and the PRI's political think tank, the Institute for Political, Economic, and Social Studies (IEPES). The heads of several environmental organizations interviewed during the summer of 1989 expressed real concern that the environmental movement might sacrifice its public credibility should too many activists associate themselves with the new programs (Aridjis 1989, Cipres Villareal 1989).

The Salinas government has also broadened the official arenas for environmental activism, particularly in the federal district. Each of 16 delegaciones, or wards, within the federal district has an environmental com- mittee and the facilities of the delegacirn are open to neighborhood groups for the purpose of supporting the government's environmental programs (Ojeda Mestre 1989). For example, the delegacirn facilities are used in finding alternate transportation options for schoolchildren to reduce vehicular traffic devoted to this function. Ram6n Ojeda Mestre, Director of the DDF's Department of Pollution Prevention and Con- trol, says public participation in these committees has been less enthusiastic than hoped for but emphasizes


that citizen participation is an important part of Salinas' agenda (Ojeda Mestre 1989). It is obvious, of course, that supporting the government's programs is not ob- jectively a politically neutral act, although PRI officials perceive it as such.

As noted, the Salinas administration has been most concerned with groups explicitly tying the government's performance on ecology and environment to a referendum on Salinas and the system as such. Most prominent here are the elite critics of the system and opposition political parties. Elite criticism is promi- nently associated with, although by no means confined to, the Grupo de C/en, a loosely organized association of Mexico's prominent intellectuals and artists concerned with Mexico's environmental predicament. Organized in 1984 and including such luminaries as Octavio Paz, Carlos Fuentes, Elena Poniatowska, Enrique Krause, and others, the Cien is able to bring considerable pres- sure on the regime by virtue of their international prominence, moral authority, and media access.

Since its founding, the C/en has vigorously criticized the government on a variety of issues. It specifically disassociates itself from any political party or ideological position--its leadership includes PRI partisans and critics sympathetic to the opposition--yet its indictments of government performance have badly embarrassed the regime (Aridjis 1989, Mexico Journal 1989, Excelsior 1988j). Its positions, too, have helped legitimize and reinforce the nascent environmental movement. Cien exposes have expressly linked environmental conditions with systemic maladies---government mismanage- ment, corruption, lack of political accountability, and the PRI's political monopoly (Lazaroff 1989, The News 1989, LaJornada 1989a,b). Such views on issues as diverse as the Laguna Verde question, Mexico City's air pollution, PEMEX's depredations in the Gulf coast oil zone, giant hydroelectric projects on the Usumacinta River, the fate of the Lacandon, wildlife protection (Mexico has yet to sign the CITES treaty), and other matters have never proven popular with the government. While the government has sought to turn this to its advantage, employing Cien members in television ads promoting the environment, it is also concerned about the political impact of Cien's campaigns (Aridjis 1989, ExcElsior 1988j). Cien leader and noted Mexican poet, Homero Aridjis, himself a former Mexican ambassador to the Netherlands and Switzerland, has made serious allegations of government intimidation and interfer- ence with Cien activities (Aridjis 1989, Excelsior 1988j).

Opposition parties are the principal mass organizations linking political system performance with environmental performance. As seen above, the environmental theme was very visible in the 1988 campaign. Most of

the various left parties associated with Cuauhtemoc Cardenas' National Democratic Front (FDN), the run- ner up in the 1988 elections, have incorporated environmental issues into their platforms. Mexico's small green party, the Partido Verde, also threw its bantam weight behind Cardenas (Excelsior 1988a, 1990c). The FDN's success in the 1988 contest raised the spectre that the environmental issue might be captured by the opposition, something the PRI could ill afford in a time of economic crisis and declining popular support. Since 1988, amplified opposition presence in the National Congress, as well as 30 of 66 seats in the federal district's new Representative Assembly, have endowed the opposition parties with greater potential than ever for em- barrassing the government on environmental ques- tions.

The environmental issue, however, is only one of various issues around which opposition criticism of government performance has coalesced. The Salinas administration's response to environmental challenge in the electoral arena has been part of its overall approach to managing the opposition parties, one that emphasized economic recovery, improved policy performance, increasing political openness, and taking full advantage of its domination of the electoral machinery, representative institutions, and administrative appara- tus to influence affairs. Salinas' efforts to coopt environmental organizations, increase government sponsored public participation in the environmental arena, and demonstrate results in the environmental arena may all be read as part of its strategy to defuse opposition criticism. The government's dominance of the policy agenda in this area does confer a large advantage, as it does in other issue areas.

Mexico's Environment under Salinas: Assessment and Prospects

At this juncture, nearly halfway though Salinas' sexenio, it is evident that the Salinas team is taking the politics of ecology seriously and is searching for ways to narrow the huge gap between policy and performance in environmental affairs. The Salinas approach is both reactive and proactive. As reactive policy, Salinas' environmental strategy is aimed at deflecting the thrust of environmental politics into substantive, functionally neutral, regime supportive avenues of political engage- ment. As proactive policy, the Salinas administration is buttressing the government's regulatory arsenal in ways that are forcing action to an unprecedented degree. In this same spirit, Salinas is attempting to demonstrate actual results in a handful of the most notorious cases of

472 S. P. Mumme and R. A. Sanchez

environmental degradation in order to build confi- dence in the regime's commitment to environmental amelioration.

Whether the Salinas innovations will succeed along both dimensions is at present an open question. There is little doubt that Salinas' policy group is concerned with the potential political influence of the environmental movement. While the movement itself is diverse and by varying degrees inclined to cooperate with the regime in promoting environmental values, its present independence and its popular resonance among the urban educated class and increasingly, with Mexico's pro- vincial and rural masses, make it a force to be reckoned with.

Mexican environmentalists, on the other hand, as seen above, are profoundly conscious of the fact their legitimacy rests on maintaining a credible distance from government policy and politics. Given the cooptative propensities of the Mexican regime, sustaining an independent and critical environmentalism is central to holding the government accountable and stimulating the development of the environmental movement. In short, there is an obvious limit on environmentalists' capacity to cooperate with the government short of compromise.

Regulatory innovation under Salinas is also subject to acute constraints. Salinas should be credited for stress- ing continuities in policy and personnel in the environmental arena. In itself, this is a major departure from Mexican practice and helps institutionalize environmental policy in Mexican government. Salinas' barrage of rule specifications, despite the formalism that per- vades Mexican policy, amplifies attention to environmental problems as well as the means of holding the government accountable for its environmental commitments.

A host of problems remain, even so. The economic crisis continues to bedevil policy implementation, with adverse effects across the board. Funding is the Achilles heel of the environmental program. Nevertheless, there are some positive signs. Mexico's agreement in principle with foreign creditors in July 1989 and the subsequent restoration of economic growth harbor some hope for restoring projected funding to the environmental program. Salinas' successful solicitation of foreign assistance, both monetary and technical, although aimed al- most exclusively at Mexico City, will infuse new funds into the various pollution control programs now on the docket.

Other problems persist. Salinas' reforms notwithstanding, the intergovernmental division of labor still stands in need of further specification and refinement. The basic difficulty here, as noted above, is that SEDUE

remains dependent on more powerful agencies for actual implementation of programs with which it shares overlapping funcdons in the environmental area. More- over, the government's policy of economic liberalization and divestiture of parastate industries---nearly 800 of 1155 units have been sold off since 1983--actually di- minishes its regulatory authority as these concerns are returned to the private sector. In this arena, the conve-

nio, or voluntary agreement, remains an exceedingly feeble regulatory device.

SEDUE also wants for qualified technical personnel. To remedy this deficiency, the government has sponsored various new training programs and turned to the industrialized countries for technical assistance. Such programs are still in their infancy, enrollments are small, and their impacts will take years to mature. SEDUE and DDF officials stress they are trying to ac- complish in a sexenio what took Britain, Japan, and the United States decades to achieve, and they have adopted an ecumenical search for solutions. Even so, they admit they cannot expect too much in the short term.

In sum, Salinas' environmental policy is evidence that Mexico is beginning to confront the seriousness of its environmental predicament. Environmental values are better institutionalized than before, strategies for coping with problems are politically and administra- tively more realistic and more mature. Even so, after 20 years of formalism, Mexican environmental policy is still in its infancy. In the longer term the success of Salinas' environmental policy reform is contingent on Mexico's economic recovery and the sustained mobilization and independent activism of the environmental movement until the end of the Salinas sexenio and beyond.

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