Corruption and environmental deterioration in Mexico

The presence of corruption in Mexico is a constant phenomenon that affects different areas from human rights, business opportunities, access to public health care, education, social inequality and social mobility, freedom of expression until environment and natural resources. In this sense, this text aims to shine a light on the Mexican corruption and its impact on the abuses against natural resources and environmental degradation: bribes, illegal permits, threats to journalists and environmental advocates, collusion, smuggling, cronyism, systemic influence peddling are some of the most common crimes. The present text is guided by the assumption that the environmental degradation in Mexico is accelerated due to corruption. Thus, this article is divided in two parties. The first one considers the main arguments about the correlation between corruption and environment degradation. The second one presents the consequences of Mexican political corruption and its influence in environment deteriorating. Finally, some comments are offered to wrap up the discussion, which shows the challenges to reduce the impacts of corruption into degradation of the environment.