Endangered Mexico: Environment on the Edge.

• Author: Schrader, Esther

Think of Mexico and the environment, and familiar images come to mind: the shame of the sludge-filled Rio Grande and the brown layer of smog over Mexico City, the relieving beauty of white beaches and crystal-blue oceans in tourist escapes such as Cancun and Cozumel.

But while Americans are quick to decry the environmental devastation of Mexico's cities and industrial zones, the key to understanding how this country's astonishing array of natural resources has been forever damaged lies where you might least expect it -- in those very same beaches favored by pale-skinned travelers and environmentalists on vacation.

Cancun, after all, was an island inhabited by three fishermen and accessible only by boat before the Mexican government and foreign investors set their eyes on its crescent-shaped shore three decades ago. They dredged the ocean to enlarge the beaches, built a highway across the wetlands, and used the earth to fill in a vast lagoon. The isolated isle was transformed into an absurd mass of grand hotels, clogged sewers, and urban-style decay that most wildlife has long since fled.

The government and investors were able to build Cancun and a series of other resorts that scarred Mexico's coastline because of a central truth about the country to our south: Whatever environmental consciousness Mexicans once had was subsumed long ago by a culture of resource exploitation, deceit, and corruption at the highest levels of government and industry. And as long as this country remains as deeply undemocratic as it is today, Mexico's power wielders will continue to rape its treasures of air, land, and sea. The poor, meanwhile, worry more about feeding their families than saving a tree.

A new book, Endangered Mexico: Environment on the Edge, by Joel Simon, an American freelance journalist who lives in Mexico City, takes the reader on a disheartening tour of centuries of attacks on Mexico's resources. Writing simply and passionately, Simon argues that environmental degradation is both the cause and consequence of Mexico's economic crisis. In linking Mexico's failed environmental policies to its political and social instability, Simon tackles a theme that up to now has been broadly explored only by a narrow band of environmentalists.

Unfortunately, the work is less impressive when Simon surveys some of the politics and history that have been better analyzed by others before him. And although Simon attempts to communicate how central the story of the...