ABSTRACT
This chapter examines the environmental problem in the context of Mexican development strategies. In March 1988, Mexico promulgated an ecology law that elevated a long history of declarations of good intentions to the level of formal commitments to confront the problems of the deteriorating quality of the natural environment. The Mexican state attempted to anticipate the environmental movement by encouraging the formation of special interest groups, which helped shape a framework for a state response to environmental problems. Citizen awareness of environmental decay is relatively undeveloped in Mexico. As the gravity of the economic crisis increases, along with a new public awareness of its severity, new initiatives are being approved and even subsidized regardless of their environmental impact. Mexico has demonstrated a fundamental inability to confront ecological imbalances in the face of other contradictions in the national development model. The conflict is most apparent when evaluating some of the environmental programs themselves.
