ABSTRACT

This chapter discusses the environmental impacts resulting from globalisation. Mexico's remarkable reversal from its historic position of inward-oriented development to the wholehearted embrace of international integration was never subjected to domestic debate. In Mexico, policy-makers were shaping the macroeconomic environment to attract this foreign capital as part of a campaign to reinforce the image of international responsibility. Without a change in national policy, however, the constructive local approaches are actually inimical to sustainable development. Although the Mexican economy was already in crisis, the 1982 liquidity crisis and debt moratorium and the ensuing macroeconomic changes were clearly the most immediate antecedents of the implantation of neoliberal economic policies. The private sector in Mexico has begun to define an important role to pre-empt public pressures for greater regulation of its environmental impact. Poverty and lack of commitment to comply with environmental norms for production and natural resource use complicate remedial efforts.