In anticipation to the 16th Conference of the Parties of the UNFCCC, the Mexican Presidency anticipates to demonstrate the potential for innovative policies to address climate change. The Mexican Government has already presented an ambitious plan to mitigate carbon emissions (50 million tonnes by 2012); recent legislation suggests an adaptation framework.

Mexico is highly vulnerable to hurricanes and floods—both of which are expected to intensify under climate change scenarios, making adaptation to climate extremes a priority for the country. Further, economic analyses suggest that the costs of inaction will be very high—lowering economic output by an average of 6% annually over the next few years.

The Government has recently presented the General Law on Climate Change which aims to restructure the political system that deals with climate change in Mexico, suggesting the creation of a Commission on Climate Change to be accompanied by a Council on Climate Change. The former organisation will be an implementing agency while the latter will be a monitoring and evaluation institution. As such, their roles will be mutually enforcing.

Additionally, the recent legislation emphasises the importance of two key issues: the need for adaptation and financing.

On the adaptation front, the strategies emphasise the need for robust climate analysis that highlight the shocks on livelihoods as well as the need to protect the most vulnerable communities. To this end, the initial stages of the adaptation strategy will be technical, mapping out the main risks associated with climate change in Mexico, whereas the later stages will involve concrete strategies to target vulnerable populations through microinsurance and safety nets.

In regards to financing, the Mexican Government is very keen on advancing the dialogue during the COP process. The Green Fund is proposed as the main mechanism to channel and centralise financial resources to fund climate change policy as the Kyoto Protocol phases out. The Adaptation Fund is also a focal institution to finance large-scale projects to reduce the adverse impacts of climate change on vulnerable livelihoods. Important progress is expected on this respect.

The Mexican Presidency is very hopeful for important advancements during the 16th Conference of the Parties.

PROGRESA/Oportunidades: Social protection in Mexico (Image by: Peter Bate, IDB, 2004)

Global environmental change, particularly in the form of global warming, exacerbates the risks faced by vulnerable rural communities whose livelihoods depend on climate-sensitive activities. The occurrence of immediate climate shocks, such as unseasonal droughts or floods, negatively affects food systems, thereby reducing the economic welfare of rural populations. Climate change is essentially a developmental challenge.

Within the context of climate change, the frequency and impact of shocks is becoming increasingly uncertain. Multiple approaches such as social protection (SP), disaster risk reduction (DRR) and climate change adaptation (CCA) are necessary to improve resilience and reduce external risks. The common goal of all three approaches to risk management is to improve the level of development by reducing poverty within a community, country or region. This is done by tackling vulnerabilities to specific shocks, thereby enhancing individual, community and national resilience to said shocks.

In the context of Mexico, social protection strategies have been mainstreamed into development-but there is little inclusion of climate change adaptation, and disaster risk reduction remains institutionally weak.

The Programme for Education, Health and Food (PROGRESA) and its successor programme, Oportunidades, in Mexico have been praised for improving the capacity of families to pull themselves out of poverty. In 2001, the proportion of people with income levels under the poverty line fell by 10% from 1994, with the greatest improvement noted among the poorest populations. The success of the programmes is attributed to its ability to deal with multiple risks (education, health and food) simultaneously.

However, climatic risks are excluded from development planning. Because rural populations depend on weather-sensitive activities for their livelihoods, building resilience to climate change is fundamental to reducing rural poverty. The impacts of climate change on rural livelihoods remains uncertain.

Climate models predict an adverse impact on Mexican agriculture through an increase in the frequency and impact of weather extremes. Climate change impacts will have an overall negative impact on food insecurity. Changing disease and pest patterns, also associated with climate change, will reduce productivity.

In order to address such risks, it is also important to take into consideration local coping skills as incorporation of risk is commonplace in rural communities. Communities choose crops according to the risks intrinsic to their environment: sugar cane is selected in areas exposed to hurricane risk for its ability to resist high wind speeds and flooding.

Moreover, communities may accumulate assets to improve resilience to climate shocks. Diversification of livelihoods is an important method to encourage asset accumulation. In Mexico, agroforestry techniques have improved resilience to climate shocks. By introducing a woody perennial in a plantation, the farm plot becomes more resilient to climate risks. Farmers have reported lower losses in agricultural productivity following hurricane events after using agroforestry technologies due to increased ecosystem and structural stability. An additional benefit to multiple cropping is the accumulation of cash as the result of having additional crops-reliance on a single crop renders farmers vulnerable to a single market whereas having multiple crops allows farmers to depend on multiple markets. Furthermore, agroforestry techniques are inherently more labour-intensive and therefore encourage employment within a community. Such strategies can therefore be helpful in reducing the vulnerability of rural people to climate shocks but they need to be mainstreamed into development planning.

A combination of approaches may help in improving institutional coordination, and therefore improve both the efficiency and the effectiveness of poverty reduction strategy papers. However, a combination of policies also has the potential of obfuscating their specific roles: they may overlap both in their objective and in their focus, rendering them redundant. Specific policies will likely have very specific aims and objectives in an effective social protection approach. Social protection mechanisms should focus on meteorological phenomena and their impacts on agriculture and rural livelihoods. Social protection should increase resilience to disaster risks, while also acknowledging climate variability in the long-run. Rather than focusing on increasing assets or reinforcing coping mechanisms, social protection should aim to protect livelihoods from anticipated shocks; flexibility should also be given to respond to unexpected shocks. As such, it is important for social protection programmes to take into consideration the changing nature of climate and climate shocks.

The extremely high hurricane season of 2005 highlighted the vulnerability of coastal communities to extreme weather events.  The costliest (Katrina) and the most intense (Wilma) hurricanes were recorded in this season.

Hurricane formation is closely linked to sea surface temperature. Climate models agree that the intensity and frequency of hurricanes will increase over the next few decades as a result of anthropogenic climate change.

This poses important developmental and policy challenges to Mexico.

Developmental challenges

The economic losses associated with hurricanes are huge, with post-disaster recovery accounting for 30% of the regional economy.

The most affected States in Mexico are Veracruz, Tabasco, Yucatan and Quintana Roo.

The former two are highly dependent on climate-sensitive activities including monocrop agriculture and fishing. Monocrop agriculture is economically and structurally vulnerable to climate extremes. For instance, farmers in Veracruz often define hurricanes as “the worst of enemies”-not only do they destroy farm plots, they also affect the quality of soil. Climate change disasters therefore pose important challenges to rural livelihood security.

In contrast, the State of Quintana Roo-where the world-famous tourist resort Cancun is located-depends on tourism for its economic viability. Hotels are constructed on the shoreline and are hence very vulnerable to the winds that accompany hurricanes. During the 2005 hurricane season, losses of over $100 billion were reported.

Policies: disaster risk reduction as a strategy for climate risk management

The socioeconomic implications of hurricane risk are clear. The policy implications, however, are not so clear.

The Mexican adaptation strategy deals mostly with progressive changes (such as desertification and long-term water scarcity) but ignores climate extremes. This is because of the institutional arrangements: climate change is dealt with by a number of agencies, including the Ministries of Environment and Foreign Affairs, whereas disaster policy is prepared by the Ministry of Civil Protection. Disasters are dealt with on a more ad hoc basis, depending on the nature and scale of the emergency.

Disasters continue to be treated as “unavoidable”, and so policy tends to be reactive rather than responsive. However, as part of the Hyogo Framework for Action (2005), several countries (Mexico included) have moved towards disaster risk reduction. By linking risk reduction to climate change, it is possible to adapt to future climate threats. In Mexico, institutional commitment has been attained (with all major government agencies accepting risk reduction as a fundamental aspect of climate policy), but no comprehensive achievements have yet been attained.

Major obstacles to the successful inclusion of disaster risk reduction into Mexico’s climate change policy include:

• Lack of involvement of business: it is necessary to sensitise the private sector and to highlight the profitability of engagement in risk reduction strategies (for example, through insurance).
• Lack of community participation: it is necessary to integrate vulnerable communities in climate policies so as to give them a sense of ownership with the projects.
• Lack of experience with risk reduction strategies: it is necessary to develop policies and learn from past experiences.

By integrating the political epistemologies of disaster risk reduction and climate change adaptation, it might be possible to adapt the most vulnerable coastal communities in Mexico to extreme weather events.

State Government Offices, San Miguel de Allende

It is clear that Mexico has begun taking legislative steps towards implementing climate change policy (and greener energy policy generally) in the country.  Perhaps the clearest example of this is the Ley Para el Aprovechamiento de Energías Renovables y el Financiamento de la Transición Energética (Law for Renewable Energy Usage and Energy Transition Financing), which hopes to promote and support the use of renewable energies in the country.  The law is ambitious in its remit, but issues of insufficient funding and inter-government interest negotiation may limit its effectiveness as it is implemented.

The law has three main objectives:

1. Promoting and implementing the use of renewable energy in the states;
2. Facilitating the “flow of resources” from international frameworks such as the CDM towards renewable-energy projects in the country;
3. Promoting the use of renewable energies generally, and providing education in this matter for policy-makers and other citizens.

The law aims to achieve this through the Estrategia Nacional Para la Transición Energética (National Strategy for Energy Transition), in which all major stake-holders, including energy providers, will be involved at the design stage, and through the creation of a Fondo Para la Transición Energética (Fund for Energy Transition).

Leaving aside the fact that the Fund is not extensive (3 billion pesos, or ~USD$210 million) and that this will limit the scope of the Strategy’s implementation, policy-makers and other government officials will face another significant challenge as the law is implemented: organisational problems at the national, state, and municipal levels, and the issue of negotiation between these.

The law hopes to bias energy production in the country in favour of low-carbon, or carbon-free, technologies.  To do this, renewable energy plants will be built and put into operation around the country, and the government will actively work towards “taking advantage” of international mechanisms such as the CDM.  The number of stakeholders involved in the law’s implementation will mean, however, that interests will not be shared across the board as Mexico “transitions” towards greener energy production.

At the national level, the law calls for the formation of a “technical committee” to direct the transition efforts.  Representatives from the Ministries of Energy, Agriculture and Rural Development, Fisheries, and Environment and Natural Resources, as well as from the Treasury and the Federal Commission of Electricity, the Central Electrical Company (Compañía de Luz y Fuerza del Centro), and the National Council of Science and Technology, will sit on this committee.

Needless to say, the interests of SEMARNAT (Ministry of Environment and Natural Resources) and CONACYT (National Council of Science and Technology) will differ greatly from those of the Federal Commission of Electricity (which provides electricity to the vast majority of Mexicans).

At the state level, the law hopes to promote the creation and use of renewable energy plants and the implementation of internationally financed and implemented CDM projects.

This may well result in an uneven distribution of clean energies across the country:

a. Some states, such as Oaxaca, in which the Isthmus of Tehuantepec (with its high-speed winds from both the Pacific and the Atlantic) facilitates the production of wind energy, will be better positioned geographically to produce clean energy.

b. Other states, whose economies are stronger or whose industrial development is greater, may well be better able to take advantage of international frameworks such as the CDM (and may be more interested in doing so).  Mexico has fewer CDM projects that one would expect from a country of its size and economic make-up; their current distribution is biased towards the north and centre of the country, where the larger industrial cities are situated.

c. Poorer states such as those on the Yucatán Peninsula may well lag behind in clean energy development and production as a result, creating progress in some parts of the country but neglect for green agendas elsewhere; production of carbon-heavy energies may remain stable, or even increase, in some ‘low-focus’ states as a consequence of this.

At the municipal level, the government will have to contend with municipal and citizen interests.  After the “municipalisation” of the country, spearheaded by the PAN, gave municipalities control over how municipal land can be used, municipalities and their citizen groups must agree before their land can be bought by the government in order to build federal projects such as renewable energy plants.  Municipalities’ power over predial (land use tax) collection means that economic interests, clientelism, and corruption issues play a role in deciding the fate of land in municipios.  This problem is compounded by the fact that municipal presidents tend to be figures of local influence, often with little or no political training.  Some municipalities may have progressive leaders who are able to promote the use of clean energies successfully, while other administrations may be at a loss as to how to do so.

Because municipalities will be able to sign agreements with energy providers directly (choosing what company to favour with their business), economic and personal interests may well dictate whether municipal governments choose to use carbon-free or carbon-heavy energies for their citizens.  This will be further complicated as the $3-billion “Energy Transition” fund is apportioned to different state and municipal governments.  As Nick Dommett has pointed out in another blog on Climatico, in developing countries, questions about the flow, use, and availability of money have a large role to play in determining the success of climate change policy.

Finally, lack of education about climate change mitigation and low-carbon or carbon-free energy may result in opposition to the development of renewable energy projects in municipalities.  NIMBY issues will also have a role to play, especially in parts of the country where income levels are higher, such as some areas of Mexico City and Monterrey.  The power of citizens at the municipal level must not be underestimated: during Vicente Fox‘s administration, citizen opposition to land sales stopped the development of a second, much needed airport in Texcoco (for which there was overwhelming popular support) to ease air-traffic flows to Mexico City’s Benito Juarez, which is located in the middle of one of the city’s residential areas.  Though the government can expropriate land–Fox’s government tried this to disastrous results in the case of the Texcoco airport–in order to facilitate the development of projects such as renewable energy plants, this option is obviously a political landmine: past experience suggests, however, that negotiation with citizens can be equally fraught with pitfalls.

If the Mexican Executive is to make the objectives of the Ley Para el Aprovechamiento de Energías Renovables a reality, then, it seems that the best strategy would be to get the negotiations–at all government levels–underway now.

Further work on this topic is currently being carried out by MSc students at Oxford University’s Environmental Change Institute.

Photo credit: Digiyesica, Flickr

To hear about water crisis in Ethiopia does not surprise, but not many people would expect that Mexico, an industrializing country, is facing serious water challenges. Punctually to the 20th anniversary of Conagua (Mexico’s National Water Commission), Mexico City has to close its water taps: from January until the end of the dry season (April), water supplies will be suspended for three days per month, to alleviate water shortages of Mexico City’s fresh water sources, which due to scarce precipitation, have reached the lowest levels for the past 16 years.

This is certainly not a once-off problem but the first signs of the culmination of two phenomena: immense overexploitation of available water resources not just in Mexico City but across the country and decreasing precipitation due to climatic changes.

With respect to the latter, the Ministry of Environment (SEMARNAT) and the Centre for Atmospheric Sciences of the Universidad Autónoma de México estimate that by 2020 precipitation rates in the Metropolitan Zone of Mexico City could fall by 5% while temperatures may rise by up to 1.2 degrees Celsius, increasing evaporation.

And Mexico City is surely not the only place facing these risks: in fact, the entire centre as well as the North of Mexico exhibits a similar problematic: severe overexploitation of water resources, and impending adverse impacts on water resources due to climate change.

What are the key problems: in Mexico City, it is of course rapid growth of the urban area, significant water losses due to an obsolete water distribution system but especially pollution of water bodies due to untreated release of sewage water. According to Government statistics (INEGI) Mexico’s urban areas generate 243 cubic meters of wastewater per second of which 25% drain off somewhere into the land-/cityscape, and only a third of which is treated. This does not account for leakage of pollutants due to waste and refuse such as Mexico City’s “Bordo Poniente”, the world’s second largest landfill site that receives 12.5 thousand tons of waste on a daily basis. In addition, deforestation and land use change threaten hydrological cycles and the replenishment of aquifers.

What are the solutions?

Mexico City is expecting the start of the construction of what will be the world’s largest water treatment plant, with a capacity of processing 23 cubic meters of water per second. Water treatment, the extension of sewage systems and access to potable water are also the priorities of Conagua. All these measures are of dire importance, yet as long as they are not coupled with activities that tackle not only symptoms but the actual root causes of the problem -pollution and overexploitation, due to bad planning at national and local level- Mexico will be ill-prepared to face water related impacts to climate change.

Mexico’s willingness to commit to voluntary emissions caps at COP-14 put it at the forefront of climate change mitigation efforts in Latin America, and made the country the example to follow for other developing nations. But Mexico’s efforts to implement climate change policy this year and in the future will be challenged and shaped by historical, political, and national baggage.

In order to put effective measures in place and meet the country’s 2050 targets, Mexican legislators and citizens will have to think creatively about how to incorporate—or circumvent—the issues currently attached to climate change reform on the Mexican agenda.

1. Location, Location, Location. Prior to Poznan, Mexico had been focused on situating itself in relation to other countries in terms of threat and responsibility. During the first week of COP-14, Reforma, one of the country’s major newspapers, published articles that highlighted Mexico’s position as the world’s twelfth largest emitter, and as the seventeenth country on Germanwatch’s list of nations most at risk from climate change. Post-2050 commitments, the challenge will involve setting self-comparing objectives, and moving away from the shadow of international rankings and towards the more serious business of national leadership.

2. Reactive Agency: Mexico implemented very few new climate change initiatives in the first half of 2008. Though Juan Rafael Elvira Quesada, Minister of the Environment and Natural Resources, had declared in November 2007 that the “inactions of other countries” would not be “a brake” for Mexican policy, he had also joined Indian and Brazilian leaders in putting economic and social development at the forefront of Mexico’s priorities. Up until Poznan, Mexico had relied heavily on positive rhetoric backed up by very limited action. This year will require a forward-thinking and innovative attitude on the part of Mexican climate change strategists, including legislators, if Mexico is to begin movement towards meeting its 2050 goals.

3. Preparation is Key: Though Mexico’s voluntary emissions caps announcement was hailed as a surprise, it is clear that Mexican policy-makers had been preparing for appropriating a new stance on climate change at the global level. President Calderón met with Al Gore in 2007, and in October of last year, Mexican Senators met with US government representatives from the EPA, in a day-long event focussing on climate change issues. A law issued by the Mexican Congress on October 28 called for the design of a Estrategia Nacional Para la Transición Energética (National Strategy for Energy Transition), which included a focus on climate change mitigation, seemingly in preparation for Mexico’s intervention at Poznan.

4. A Private Matter: All energy reform debate in Mexico must and does take place within a controversial context of conversation about the possible privatisation of nationalised oil resources. The structure and national ownership of PEMEX (Mexican Petroleum) established after a government expropriation of all oil resources from international companies in 1938, is considered sacrosanct by many. Powerful nationalist lobbies try to block all energy reform issues (and climate change mitigation measures will be no exception) in Congress by garnering public support through a rhetoric of threat and national economic loss. Whether the language of environmental concern will be able to supplant (and so overcome the obstacle of) this historically entrenched conversation remains to be seen.

5. Where the US leads… Mexico must follow. Over the next two years, one of the Mexican government’s primary priorities will be establishing a rapport with a new American administration. At the top of the agenda will be migration, drugs and drug trafficking, and trade agreements (Mexico sends the majority of its export goods to the United States). Climate change may well lag behind other issues, and if the United States chooses to forego climate commitments in favour of dealing with the economic crisis, it has the power to pressure Mexico to push the climate issue to the bottom of its national agenda, too.

6. …but where the US has lagged, Mexico is now leading. Mexico’s willingness to take on emissions commitments in the current economic context is a contrast to Obama and Biden’s more conservative energy plan. Obama’s early enthusiasm on climate issues has waned as other concerns have waxed, and this has opened the possibility for Mexico to be a regional leader on the issue in Obama’s first term. Obama has said he will release an ambitious energy plan once he is in office, however, and the two countries’ bilateral relationship will heavily influence Mexico’s climate change policy.

7. A Proactive Legislation Approach. President Calderón’s ‘personal commitment to climate change’ (as it has been described by senior legislators in the country) has pushed the executive to gather political capital to deal with the issue during the first two and a half years of his term. Resonating interests within the PRI and PRD (the main opposition parties) and the Partido Verde (the Green Party, which has bizarrely focussed, of late, on lobbying for the death penalty for rapists and kidnappers, seemingly forgetting its green legacy) has allowed for progressive legislative action on climate change. As Marie Karaisl has commented elsewhere on this site, Calderon’s new economic crisis plan has made an effort to include green considerations. Mexico must continue to pursue the legislative angle of climate change mitigation efforts aggressively in order to meet its 2050 targets.

8. Putting its money where its mouth is. The economic crisis will have a considerable impact on Mexico’s capability to tackle climate change, as it will on nations around the world. A new law on renewable energy sources allocates $3 billion pesos for the Fondo Para la Transición Energética y el Aprovechamimento Sustentable de la Energía (Fund for Energy Transition and Sustainable Energy Usage). Mexican legislators must carve out an economic space for climate change policy, if it is to be implemented alongside concerns more pressing to the public, such as the fight against crime and drugs, and welfare and benefits issues, during the economic crisis.

9. “Education is the best provision for old age”: As Mexico has emerged into its new role as a climate change leader in Latin and North America, its first priority—and perhaps its biggest challenge—in 2009 must be education. Mexico’s current climate change strategy includes an ‘education and awareness’ element, as evidenced by the recent Ley para el Aprovechamiento de Energías Renovables y el Financiamiento de la Transición Energética (Law for Renewable Energy Usage and Energy Transition Financing).  But if Mexico is to overcome both the historical legacy and the current obstacles that stand in the way of decisive action on climate change in the country, it will require the full support of an informed, and concerned, population.

A few days ago, Mexico’s president F. Calderon announced the Agreement to support households and employment (Acuerdo de Apoyo a la Economía Familiar y el Empleo) to abate the impacts of the economic crisis. Having discussed the possibility of integrating climate change concerns into economic recovery with 70 high level policy makers at the GLOBE meeting in November, Mexico’s anti-crisis plan indeed shows some green features.

1. The government will support families to exchange their old household appliances with new energetically more efficient ones.
2. Part of the employment created under the Temporary Employment Programme will be used for cleaning up forests and water bodies from garbage (garbage is the main methane emitter in Mexico).
3. Mexico will speed up its Infrastructure programme focusing on improving PEMEX oil distribution infrastructure.

The administration certainly shows good will; whether the net effect will be “climatically” positive or negative depends on the net effect of other crisis policies such as the reduction of industrial electricity tariffs and the accelerated extension of road and highways.

Mexico ended the year 2008 with great expectations regarding climate change action for the year to come: demonstrating leadership, it announced voluntary emissions reductions through a cap-and-trade scheme to be operational by 2012. But the efforts necessary for this undertaking could be seriously hampered by other national priorities: the fight against organized crime – and of course the economic crisis.
A look at planned government spending for 2009 demonstrates the prioritization: in November, congress approved a budget of US$ 170 billion. According to the Secretaría de Hacienda (Mexico’s Treasury) aggregating planned expenditures across the security sector (the Ministry of Security, special programmes, law and order, etc), will amount to USD 6.7 billion an approximate 30% increase compared to last year’s spending. The Ministry of Environment (SEMARNAT) will receive an approximate USD 3.3 billion.
The prioritization of security is further evident in official discourse, especially of President Calderon who has come under heavy pressure from civil society to improve the currently dismal security situation. News agencies differ on the exact number, but this year between 3,000 and 5,000 people have been murdered partly due to the response of the drug cartels to the fight against organized crime that President Felipe Calderon initiated in 2006. Moreover, Mexico by now leads the list of countries with the highest number of kidnappings before Iraq and Colombia. Yet, organised crime may impinge on environmental efforts more directly: undermining environmental regulations and legislation where it is cheaper for polluters to bribe themselves out of their obligations and responsibilities.
Apart from security issues, Calderon has approved an extensive infrastructure expansion plan, partly to counterbalance economic losses caused by Mexico’s direct dependence on the ailing US economy. The 2009 budget, allocates USD 5 billion to infrastructure development, 2/3 of that money into roads and highways. Taking a pessimistic view, these infrastructure projects may simply eclipse environmental and climate mitigation efforts such as reforestation, and induce additional demand for road transport. From an optimistic point of view, these investments in infrastructure development may create an opportunity to identify and incorporate sustainable solutions into infrastructure planning and design.
This year’s congress elections are a third factor that will influence climate change and environmental policy most likely negatively given the above two priorities. In any case, Mexico has certainly an interesting year ahead.