Environmental Impact of Agricultural Trade Liberalization under NAFTA

Fifteen years after its implementation, the North American Free Trade Agreement has been subject to evaluations from different perspectives, including environmental assessments. According to the Commission for Environmental Cooperation (CEC), results of these evaluations show that at the aggregate level, the environmental impacts of free trade are marginal. This article presents relationships between corn trade and environment through an ex post evaluation. I show a quantification of the land-use change and connections with deforestation and biodiversity loss in Mexico, as poor farmers expanded their agricultural activity into marginal forest and jungle areas to compensate for lost income. I also analyze the impact on land-use change in the United States resulting from increased corn exports to Mexico.