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.