New directions in Mexican environmental policy

Mumme, Stephen P.; Sánchez, Roberto

doi:10.1007/bf02394122

Cited by 8 publications

(2 citation statements)

References 2 publications

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“…Additional funding, hiring, and training of personnel is taking place (Benanti 1991), but Mexico lacks the level of funding available in the United States and Europe for pollution monitoring and control activity and suffers from bureaucratic fragmentation and reliance on voluntarist enforcement mechanisms (Mumme and Sanchez 1992). Private industries dealing with hazardous wastes agree with academic observations that knowledge concerning maquiladora waste generation is poor and inconclusive.…”

Section: Policy Implicationsmentioning

confidence: 91%

Estimating maquiladora hazardous waste generation on the U.S./Mexico border

Bowen

Kontuly

Hepner

1995

Environmental Management

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/ Maquiladoras, manufacturing plants that primarily assemble foreign components for reexport, are located in concentrations along the northern frontier of the US/Mexico border. These plants process a wide variety of materials using modern industrial technologies within the context of developing world institutions and infrastructure. Hazardous waste generation by maquiladoras represents a critical environmental management issue because of the spatiat concentration of these plants in border municipalities where the infrastructure for waste management is nonexistent or poor. These border municipalities contain rapidly increasing populations, which further stress their waste handling infrastructure capacities while exposing their populations to greater contaminant risks. Limited empirica~ know~edge exists concerning hazardous waste types and generation rates from maquiladoras. There is no standard reporting method for waste generation or methodology for estimating generation rates at this time. This paper presents a method that can be used for the rapid assessment of hazardous waste generation. A first approximation of hazardous waste generation is produced for maquiladoras in the three municipalities of Nogales, Sonora, Mexicali, Baja California, and Cd. Juarez, Chihuahua, using the INVENT model developed by the World Bank. In addition, our intent is to evaluate the potential of the INVENT model for adaptation to the US/Mexico border industrial situation. The press of border industrial development, especially with the recent adoption of the NAFTA, make such assessments necessary as a basis for the environmental policy formulation and management needed in the immediate future. Maquiladoras on the BorderManufacturing processes can be divided schematically into the transformation processes that convert raw inputs into components that are assembled into finished output and the assembly processes that treat and combine those components. Even with efficient manufacturing processes and process chemical reuse there is inevitably some generation of waste by-products. Many hazardous material inputs to the assembly process such as solvents, acids, and paints are necessarily potential components of the waste stream, being primarily used in treating and preparing outputs rather than becoming a part of the sellable product.Maquiladoras, a t~rm used for manufacturing plants that primarily assemble foreign-made components in Mexico, are a subset of developed world industrial facilities and function as off-shore assembly

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Section: Policy Implicationsmentioning

confidence: 91%

Estimating maquiladora hazardous waste generation on the U.S./Mexico border

Bowen

Kontuly

Hepner

1995

Environmental Management

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“…The evolution of air-pollution control legislation in the USA since 1970 (Schulze, 1993), for example, reflects a progressive tightening of environmental quality standards coupled with more open and accountable government and the emergence of new environmental problems (including rural acid rain and stratospheric ozone depletion). Recent changes in the direction of environmental policy in Mexico reflect a presidential belief that environmental policy still suffers from underfunding, bureaucratic fragmentation and heavy reliance on voluntarist enforcement mechanisms (Mumme and Sanchez, 1992).…”

Section: Environmental Policymentioning

confidence: 99%