|
|
Informed Debate: The Public Battle over Mexico City’s New Airport
by Curtis Runyan
(Washington, DC, April 2003) By all rights, the expanse of marsh grasslands that make up the Texcoco wetlands just outside Mexico City ought to be under six feet of tarmac and concrete. With the current airport hemmed in by the city and unable to expand to meet growing demand for airplane traffic in the capital city, President Vicente Fox decreed in October 2001 that the wetlands would be the site of a new $2.3 billion international airport.
But after a massive outpouring of public dissent – protests, civil disobedience, and even hostage taking – all of that has changed. Now Texcoco, a system of lakes in Aztec times, will remain a stopover point for thousands of birds that migrate to the United States and Canada every year. And the 5,000 poor farming families who have lived on the land around Texcoco for generations are once again free to plant corn and sell their harvests in the city.
“This is one of the best examples in Mexico of how increased access to information and community participation can lead to better decisions – decisions that are more just and better for the environment,” said Isabel Bustillos of Presencia Ciudadana, a Mexican nonprofit group that for the past five years has been promoting civil participation and better access to government information. The group is part of the Access Initiative, an international network of 30 nonprofit organizations brought together by the World Resources Institute, which works to increase citizens’ access to information and promote civil participation in environmental decision-making.
In Mexico, Presencia Ciudadana helped to bring into public light information about a number of competing airport proposals, outlining their environmental and social impacts. This information, in turn, helped to spur public demand for a voice in the decision.
“This is a positive precedent,” said Pedro Cerisola, the minister of transport and communications who is in charge of the airport project. “We are not going to impose decisions. The government is willing to take no for an answer,” he said at a press conference announcing his government’s about-face on Texcoco. “And that is a fundamental change in this country.”
The Mexican government has a history of heavy-handed decision-making and a lack of openness about federal actions. The most notorious example is the Tlatelolco Plaza massacre in 1968. While most historians agree that hundreds of protesting students were shot and killed by the military, to this day details about the killings remain murky. Much of the official information about the incident remains locked away as classified – despite some efforts by President Fox to unearth documents.
The debate over replacing Mexico City’s overburdened Benito Juarez Airport – the busiest in Latin America – has simmered for decades. By 2001, several potential locations were being considered, but information about environmental and social impacts was sparse.
Leading up to the decision, the government had remained characteristically tight-lipped about the process. “We don’t know what information is being used to make this decision,” Christina Alcayaga Nuñez, a former member of the Mexican House of Representatives, told reporters. “And we don’t have access to any government decision-making process.”
In July 2001, Presencia Ciudadana and a number of other environmental organizations convened a forum for officials and scientists to debate the two top airport proposals. Pitting officials from the competing projects against each other helped to increase the flow of information about each site. In Mexico, you have to ask for information, nobody’s going to give it to you, says Bustillos. “And if you don’t have information, how do you say anything or do anything about bad projects?” she said.
Building at Texcoco would force thousands of small farmers off their land, disrupt bird migrations, and destroy fragile wetlands. Environmentalists pushed for a site in the state of Hidalgo called Tizayuca, even though it is situated about 45 miles outside the city – more than twice the distance away as Texcoco.
When Fox chose the Texcoco site in October, the peasant farmers and environmentalists were ready to take action against the decision. The farmers, who had been offered less than $3,000 per acre for their land, held bitter protests, shut down roads, and took hostage the police who were sent in to restore order. Environmentalists petitioned U.S. officials to oppose the project, saying that it violated environmental provisions in NAFTA that require open deliberations. Parties that had been ignored during the decision-making process now made it clear that they wanted the decision reversed. And it was.
Since then, the country has passed the Transparency and Access to Public Information law, which calls for the government to assess and report the environmental impact of its projects. The law is a good start, says Bustillos, even though it does not yet have any regulatory teeth. “In Mexico we have good mechanisms, it’s just that sometimes people don’t use them,” she said.
In the future Presencia Ciudadana plans to focus public attention on two major projects being fast-tracked by the Fox administration: The Plan Puebla Panama Transit project, and the Escalera Nautica Project. The transit plan would run a vast network of roads, rail tracks, and electric lines through the southern, poorer part of the country, and create a free trade zone in the region, which could threaten the region’s rich biodiversity and marginalize the area’s numerous indigenous cultures. The Escalera Nautica Project aims to increase tourism in Baja California, Mexico by building a series of more than 20 ports around the peninsula and on the mainland. The first phase of the project is already underway without environmental permits having been filed.
“At this point, all we know is that these big projects are cooking,” says Bustillos. “We still need more information about them.” (WRI Features, 980 words)
Curtis Runyan (features@wri.org) is the managing editor of WRI Features, a monthly international news features service on environment and development issues. |
