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Exequiel Ezcurra, Marisa Mazari-Hiriart, Irene Pisanty, and Adrián Guillermo Aguilar
The Basin of Mexico: Critical Environmental Issues and Sustainability
United Nations University Press (1999)

This landmark study forms part of the series UNU Studies on Critical Environmental Regions. The Basin of Mexico exemplifies an endangered environment well on its way to criticality. At the helm of this dangerous course is Mexico City, that massive megalopolis in which dramatic concentrations of all kinds have coalesced to render an already precarious environment supremely capable of "biting back" and posing an immediate and long-term threat to human use, health, and well-being. The extraordinary pace of environmental changes is already depleting natural resources in the region and beyond and may be overwhelming local environmental sinks as well as institutional and societal capacities to cope.

An ever-increasing propensity to inhibit ongoing environmental degradation by enlisting imported resources and awaiting technological fixes may well have the effect of increasing overall risk. At the same time, however, the prospect of reversing the trajectory toward criticality is not altogether out of the question and may well be in progress in specific areas. Ezcurra and his colleagues rightly view the region as a laboratory engaged in testing many of the processes under way in the less-developed regions of the world. The outcome of this experiment may signal the fate of other mega-cities across the globe.
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The Basin of Mexico: Critical Environmental Issues and Sustainability
Table of Contents

Exequiel Ezcurra, Marisa Mazari-Hiriart, Irene Pisanty, and Adrián Guillermo Aguilar

1. Instituto de Ecología, Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México
2. San Diego Natural History Museum
3. Facultad de Ciencias, Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México
4. Instituto de Geografía, Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México

Table of contents

Editors' introduction

CHAPTER 1. INTRODUCTION

CHAPTER 2. THE ENVIRONMENTAL HISTORY OF THE BASIN
The ecological transformations of the Basin of Mexico
The environmental setting
The physical environment
Vegetation
Fauna
Ecological productivity of the Basin of Mexico
Demographic and resource changes in the Basin of Mexico
Natural resources, and the growth and collapse of human settlements Extinctions and the transition to agriculture
Tectonic vulnerability
Temples and desertification
The rise and fall of Tenochtitlan
The Colonial Period
The Independence
The Revolution
Modern Mexico

CHAPTER 3. THE SOCIO-ECONOMY OF THE BASIN OF MEXICO
Urban growth and social distribution
Urban growth
Physical expansion
The process of metropolitanization
The economy of the basin
Industrial activity
Economic preeminence

CHAPTER 4. RECENT CHANGES IN THE ENVIRONMENTAL SITUATION OF THE BASIN
Vegetation changes in the Basin of Mexico
The environmental impact of urbanization patterns
Population and land surfaces
Water resources
Water systems
Water demand, use and recharge
Environmental effects of water management
The drainage system
Waste
Liquid waste
Solid waste
Air quality
An environment at risk

CHAPTER 5. THE DRIVING FORCES OF ENVIRONMENTAL CHANGE
Population Change
Governmental policies
Distribution of wealth and resources
Technological capacity
Economic development and environmental degradation

CHAPTER 6. THE VULNERABILITY OF THE BASIN
Factors leading to environmental endangerment
Vegetation and open space: Parks, green areas and protected zones
Water quality and amount
Waste
Air quality
Centralism and ecological subsidies

CHAPTER 7. THE RESPONSE TO THE ENVIRONMENTAL PROBLEM
Trends in environmental institutions in Mexico City
The construction of an environmental conscience
Trends in governmental institutions
The evolution of environmental policies
Industrial risk in the wake of the Earth Summit
New economic and political tools for ever-growing environmental problems
Environmental sustainability as a major political concern
Current perspectives on governmental policies
Trends in non-governmental institutions
The starting point: a concern for resource degradation
Biosphere reserves and biological diversity
The emergence of ecological activism
A taxonomy of NGOs
Recent trends in NGO organization
Environmental Networks
Appendix to Chapter 7. List of Acronyms and Initialisms.

CHAPTER 8. CONCLUSIONS

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