Trade Pact and the Environment

The article on the North American Free Trade Agreements (NAFTA) impact on the environment (“Report Sees U.S. Trade Pact as Mexico Pollution Threat,” July 17) must be put into its proper context in order to avoid the misleading implications it extracted from the report “Guidelines for Toxic Waste Management, With Special Attention to Hospital Waste Treatment.” The report was not commissioned by the Mexican government, as the article states. It was proposed by the prime minister of Denmark to the Mexico City mayor during a visit the former made to the capital in 1989. Its purpose was to identify Mexico City’s toxic waste management situation and to propose initiatives and technologies to properly deal with that issue.

Hence, by no means does this report entail a “Mexican government’s first admission” that the NAFTA “could worsen industrial pollution” in Mexico, as your article asserts.

Second, the report is not “highly critical of Mexican environmental policies,” but of the toxic waste situation faced in Mexico City. It does disagree with the federal environmental ministry’s position in the fact that the authors argue it should be the government, not the private sector, that is the responsible entity for the introduction and the financing of environmental technologies in industries. In fact, it is from among the reasons presented by the Danish experts to support this contention that the only reference to the NAFTA in the 82-page document was made. Thus, the NAFTA was invoked to make a point in favor of one of the various recommendations prompted by the study matter. The study matter (i.e., dangerous waste disposal in Mexico City) was never imagined to be presented the other way around, that is, as an illustration of the ecological perils of the NAFTA, as The Times’ editorial on this subject led readers to believe (“Free Trade and a Cleaner Mexico,” July 21.)

The editorial’s appreciation that the key fact for the solution of Mexico’s environmental problems is prosperity is fully shared. No one could be more interested in a clean environment in Mexico than the Mexican people. That is why we have set for ourselves in our legislation the highest environmental standards there are in the world and that is why our commitment to those standards has been demonstrated in actions such as the recent costly shutdown of the Pemex oil refinery in Mexico City. That also explains why since the beginning of the Salinas administration, public and private investment in environmental protection has increased eightfold. We are anxious to do more and we will do much more as we obtain the enhanced prosperity and additional financial resources the NAFTA is expected to provide.

MARTIN TORRES, Press Attache

Consulate General of Mexico

Los Angeles