NAFTA, tourism, and environment in Mexico

The purpose of this paper is to determine how NAFTA influenced the Mexican tourism sector and its effects on the environment. The linkage between the tourism sector and NAFTA is done through the analysis of foreign direct investment and cross-border trade in services. The quantitative section of the paper focuses on analyzing commercial presence in the form of hotels and restaurants, as well as the use of services abroad. The paper concludes that NAFTA represented greater certainty to investors but was not the main driver behind the investments in tourism services. The analysis of visitors from US and Canada in Mexico recognizes that NAFTA did not have significant impact on the tourism flow. NAAEC, on the other hand, serves in this research as a qualitative connection between tourism sector and the environment for attending to citizen submissions on failures in environmental law enforcement in Mexico regarding tourism projects. It is included with an economic-environmental balance in Cancun—which shows that the greatest environmental impact is of global importance: CO2 released into the air by air transportation, followed by the local impact of water consumption, waste generation, and electricity usage, in that order.