MANAGING MEXICO’S ECONOMY : Green vs. Growth : A Tiny State Ripe for Tourism Is Testing Mexico’s Promise to the Environment

Developers are busy here in the impoverished Pacific state of Nayarit, paving the way for yet another playground for foreign tourists.

The setting is attractive: unspoiled beaches set against volcanic cliffs and tropical deltas so thick with mangroves that they touch overhead, shading canals where herons, storks and pelicans rest.

But that could change soon. The sprawl of international hotels--rapidly consuming more and more of Mexico’s coastline--is spreading across the Ameca River from the trendy resort of Puerto Vallarta to this tiny state.

Whether tourism can develop here without wrecking the pristine setting will test Mexico’s promise to not let its quest for foreign investment compromise the environment.

Such fears have haunted the effort to win approval of the North American Free Trade Agreement. But the discussion has played out against the backdrop of Mexico City smokestacks and drainage ditches on the Rio Grande.

Concern that NAFTA would open the door to more polluting foreign investment has focused on the nearly 2,000 foreign-owned assembly plants along the border. But tourism brings Mexico more foreign exchange dollars than all those factories combined and at just as high a cost to the environment.

Lax enforcement of pollution laws has allowed international hotel chains to overbuild in some coastal areas, dump sewage into many of the nation’s most beautiful bays and replace estuaries critical to sustaining fish and bird species with man-made marinas.

Nayarit officials, who are trying to find a healthier way to bring in tourist dollars, need look no further than their state’s southern boundary to see the effects of environmental mismanagement. Southern Nayarit shares Banderas Bay with Puerto Vallarta, which in four decades has evolved from fishing village to movie star hideaway to crowded hodgepodge of time-share condominiums and discount hotels on the package tour circuit.

In Nayarit, the state government has ordered resort builders to make their projects conform to a 30-volume master plan for ecologically sound coastal development, which was created with the support of the Cousteau Society.

The plan includes studies of such issues as soil conditions for building, the availability of water, and the relative long-term economic benefits of tourism compared to fishing and agriculture in different regions. Based on those studies, the plan provides guidelines for development.

The plan was cited in the Cousteau Society magazine as an example of how international organizations can help developing countries create road maps for environmentally friendly development. Mexican President Carlos Salinas de Gortari was so pleased with the plan when it was presented to him last November that he has encouraged similar studies for two states farther down the coast.

However, the Social Development Ministry--the Cabinet-level agency charged with environmental issues--has not yet approved funding for the studies, which are expected to cost about $4 million.

And a year after the Nayarit study was completed, the state government has yet to appoint the coastal commission or local citizen councils recommended by the plan to review development proposals and monitor compliance with environmental regulations. To complicate matters, a new governor took office this month, throwing the state’s bureaucracy into the upheaval that accompanies a change of administration in Mexico.

Despite delays in implementing the plan, the moratorium that was placed on building when the study began has been lifted and construction is resuming.

These events have raised questions about the government’s commitment to enforcing development rules that would be a watershed for Mexico, given its past inattention to the impact of coastal development on the environment.

The first development plan submitted to the state government is expected to be from resort giant Grupo Situr, which has announced its intention to invest $25 million over the next two years to complete the long-stalled Nuevo Vallarta complex across the state line from Puerto Vallarta.

The area already has 10 high-rise hotels with 2,659 rooms, as well as 314 vacation homes. Existing buildings include a Jack Tar Village, part of a Canadian-based resort chain similar to Club Med.

Situr plans to finish the development in a style similar to its 549-acre Marina Vallarta resort in Puerto Vallarta, which has a marina and an 18-hole golf course surrounded by international hotels.

In the absence of a coastal commission, the plan will be reviewed by an existing committee of state and local government officials, once the new governor’s appointees to that committee are named, said state government spokesman Jorge Espinoza Martinez.

Situr has not consulted the Cousteau study in creating its master plan, said company spokesman Eduardo Barroso.

“We will submit a plan that is our ideal, then see what is possible,” he said. “We have a lot of experience with these types of resorts. We don’t need to consult other studies.”

Situr operates seven beach resorts and has five others under construction. Those include the Ixtapa Marina, built in 1990 and blamed for the deaths of 800 crocodiles, when the construction caused salt water to flood a freshwater lake. Local environmental officials’ demands for an environmental impact study of the marina were ignored.

“We killed a couple crocodiles and they made a big deal of it,” said Barroso.

In Nuevo Vallarta, Situr plans to expand the existing small marina to accommodate 1,000 yachts and to dredge the harbor, allowing ships to enter. That will mean destroying an estuary--a delta where river and ocean meet, creating a sort of nursery for fish and a stopover point for migratory birds.

“It’s just a swamp,” Barroso said.

Agustin Gonzalez, a Nayarit native who spent two years working on the Cousteau plan as a graduate student at the University of Florida, winces when he hears the Situr proposal.

“Ecologists shudder at the word marina ,” he said. “There used to be a small estuary in Puerto Vallarta. Now it is a marina.”

However, he added that because part of the Nuevo Vallarta estuary is currently used to dock boats, it may already be dead. In that case, the best use for the area could be as a marina, providing that steps are taken to minimize the effects on nearby lakes, avoiding the type of situation that occurred in Ixtapa.

Gonzalez said he is most worried that the planned dredging could have a detrimental impact on the entire bay.

“We’ve really given up on Nuevo Vallarta,” he said. “Our emphasis will be on what happens farther north.”

Gonzalez is working with developer Jorge Gomez on a development plan for the 13 miles of coastline at the northernmost tip of Banderas Bay, an area called Punta Mita.

The Gomez plan is to build a series of mostly small, low-rise hotels and private ranches. The most intense development would be a resort--which the Four Seasons hotel chain has been approached about managing--facing the ocean at the edge of the bay.

Gomez actually initiated the involvement of the Cousteau Society. After buying the 2,600 acres from a trust fund the state government was selling as part of the overall trend toward privatization in Mexico, he checked in 1989 to see what restrictions were placed on development there.

He was appalled to learn that no studies had been done to set development standards for the area. He met with the governor to suggest the state create a plan, and came out of the interview charged with compiling an environmental study for the entire Nayarit coast. After months of insistence, he persuaded the Cousteau Society to help him develop a plan.

Over the last four years, Gomez has learned not only about resorts, but also about intensive aquaculture being proposed for the estuaries in the northern part of the state. The study discourages that, pointing to disastrous results in Ecuador, where increased pollution from aquaculture severely damaged estuaries.

“We have tried to develop a study that compared economic and environmental effects of development,” Gomez said. “We realize that unless it is economically feasible, it will be difficult to convince people to conserve. We are trying to show that it can be profitable to use the environment rather than to consume it.”