Free Trade <i> and</i> a Cleaner Mexico : President Salinas still has something to prove

As Mexico and the United States work their way toward a historic free-trade agreement, new questions are being raised about the possible harm it could have on the environment. These are worrisome--but not sufficiently grave to merit derailing the all-important negotiations.

Recently, The Times’ Mexico City bureau reported on a confidential Mexican study that is highly critical of the country’s current environmental policies and warns that they could be weakened even further by the competitive pressures of free trade. That could happen if Mexican firms, faced with tough competition from U.S. companies after free trade is in effect, cut costs by spending less on environmental cleanup.

To illustrate its point, the study focused on the Mexican government’s seeming inability to prevent the dumping of dangerous wastes in Mexico City. The environmental experts who conducted the study found, for example, that only about one-third of the dangerous liquid wastes generated in Mexico City are properly disposed of. The rest is probably dumped into the city’s sewer system.

The report concluded that even Mexico City officials are far more aggressive about cracking down on illegal dumping than their federal counterparts--not the kind of publicity Mexico’s President Carlos Salinas de Gortari wants right now. Part of the political deal President Bush struck with Congress in order to negotiate a free-trade pact with Mexico and Canada was a promise he would negotiate a parallel agreement on environmental issues. Salinas helped smooth the way by hiring more inspectors for Mexico’s overworked environmental agency, SEDUE.

But so far only a few early steps have been taken on environmental issues. The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, for example, recently assigned a top-level official to the American Embassy in Mexico City for the first time. While not insignificant, such small steps won’t be enough to satisfy the public concern in the United States and Mexico over Mexican environmental problems.

The environmental movement south of the border is small but assertive. There will be many more reports in the months to come as Mexican environmentalists publicize their country’s problems--not so much to scuttle free trade as to put pressure on Salinas to deal with the environment.

These reports mustn’t stop the trade negotiations. In the long run the only answer to Mexico’s environmental problems is prosperity. Without foreign investment and the other benefits that free trade can provide, Mexico will never have enough money to clean up its environment. But the lack of prosperity now must not be an excuse for doing nothing about serious problems like the illegal dumping in Mexico City.

Salinas says he cares about Mexico’s environment, but he must show good faith by using the limited resources he has at hand to crack down now--and crack down hard--on polluters in Mexico. If he doesn’t, environmental issues will continue to undermine the free-trade pact he so badly wants.