Financing Environmental and Infrastructure Needs on the Texas-Mexico Border: Will the Mexican-U.S. Integrated Border Plan Help?

Abstract

Industrial integration between Mexico and the United States has provided the basis for a border manufacturing, retarling, and agro-industrial economy. But this growing industrial base has created infrastructure and natural resource strains that threaten the economic vitality of the region. Infrastructure and environmental concerns are closely linked, because the failure to provide sufficient public infrastructure has led to pollution of this region's dwindling resource base. Border communities and states have asked both federal governments to incorporate these concerns within negotiations for the proposed North American Free-Trade Area. Their reasoning is that if free trade will expand the economic activity of the region, it mustalso take into account the regional strains that such activity will generate.