| | |  Editorials | Environmental | November 2009 
Climate Change in Mexico: A Policy of Pretence
 Emilio Godoy - Inter Press Service
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November 20, 2009
 |  | Mexico has been a skilled demagogue. It has played an active role on the international scene, but it has not taken a principled and consistent stand in its national policies.
- Sandra Guzmán |  | | |
Mexico City - Although it is the second largest emitter of greenhouse gases in Latin America and the Caribbean, after Brazil, and will be hosting next year's United Nations climate meeting, Mexico is heading to the Cophenhagen summit practically empty-handed.
At the Dec. 7-18 conference in Denmark, the Mexican government will present its Special Programme on Climate Change, a study of the economics of global warming, and the Fourth National Communication about climate change, a report on the state of the country's environment, which is the only new contribution it has to offer.
"Mexico has been a skilled demagogue. It has played an active role on the international scene, but it has not taken a principled and consistent stand in its national policies," Sandra Guzmán, international affairs coordinator for the Air and Energy Programme of the Mexican Centre for Environmental Law (CEMDA), told IPS.
CEMDA is one of the few Mexican non-governmental organisations that will be attending Klimaforum 09, the civil society meeting to be held parallel to the 15th Conference of the Parties to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (COP 15).
"The Mexican government is espousing rather wishywashy ideas, like giving an extra boost to the Clean Development Mechanism (CDM). It has got accustomed to pretending that climate change is a very serious problem," but without taking truly effective measures at home, Miguel Valencia, coordinator of ECOMUNIDADES-Red Ecologista Autónoma de la Cuenca de México (Autonomous Environmental Network of the Valley of Mexico), who is also going to the Klimaforum in Denmark, told IPS.
The CDM is a provision in the Kyoto Protocol, the international agreement in force since 2005 to reduce atmospheric emissions of carbon dioxide (CO2), methane, nitrous oxide, hydrofluorocarbons, perfluorocarbons and sulphur hexafluoride, regarded as responsible for global warming.
The mechanism allows Annex I industrialised countries, committed to cutting greenhouse gas emissions, to carry out emission reduction or carbon capture projects in developing countries in exchange for saleable carbon credits which count towards meeting their obligations under the Kyoto Protocol.
The Protocol binds the 37 industrialised countries that ratified it to reduce their emissions by at least 5.2 percent by 2012, with respect to 1990 levels. While it is hoped that COP 15 in Copenhagen will produce a new treaty on climate change, it is now thought this may not be agreed until the 2010 conference in Mexico.
In its Fourth National Communication to the U.N. Climate Change Conference, Mexico will report on the state of the environment and update estimates of its polluting emissions.
Mexico releases 715 million tonnes a year of CO2 into the atmosphere, mostly generated by the energy sector, industry and deforestation.
The report describes the case of 16 forest species growing in temperate, semi-tropical and arid zones in the country, and shows that the distribution of most tree species in temperate and arid zones has shrunk.
The main cause, according to the report, is higher temperatures across Mexico, and lower rainfall during nearly every month of the year.
Mexico is the only country to have prepared four national communications. The first, in 1997, discussed the relationship between vegetation distribution patterns and environmental conditions. The second, from 2001, proposed possible measures to mitigate climate change.
The third communication was presented in 2006 and dealt with the impact of climate change in Mexico.
Wooded areas - mainly scrubland, temperate woods and tropical jungle - cover 140 million hectares in the country, equivalent to 73 percent of its total surface area.
The document emphasises that clearing forested land for shifting cultivation and extensive ranching is the principal cause of land use change and deforestation.
This phenomenon, together with ecosystem degradation, affects the availability and quality of forest resources, alters the water cycle, destroys habitats, threatens the survival of animal and plant species and causes loss of productive opportunities for land owners, the report says.
Mexico has only 0.5 hectares of forested land per person at present, and is expected to have only 0.3 hectares per person by 2025, lower than the world average. The authorities have promised to reduce CO2 emissions by 50 million tonnes a year by 2012, but that would be insufficient, according to environmentalists.
Finance Minister Luis de Alba will probably lead the Mexican delegation to the Copenhagen conference, unless President Felipe Calderón himself attends, which has not yet been confirmed. Attendance by Energy Minister Georgina Kessel is also unconfirmed, in spite of climate change being an energy issue.
"Mexico has not exerted enough continuous pressure on industrialised countries to reduce their emissions and transfer technology for fighting climate change," Guzmán said.
"Citizens are the only ones who can do something about climate change, because governments are tied to vested economic interests. Everything points to Copenhagen being a failure," said Valencia.
Klimaforum 09 will bring together representatives of civil society from all over the globe, at a meeting that could be as influential as the protests at the 1999 summit of the World Trade Organisation in Seattle, Washington, which were a milestone in the anti-globalisation movement.
"I have the impression that forces within social organisations want to make Copenhagen a great show of strength for civil society," Valencia said.
Calderón has said he is not interested in calls for binding emission cuts, but in funding to help the countries of the South adapt to climate change.
In effect, Mexico will insist on its proposal for a World Climate Change Fund to provide 140 billion dollars, one of 11 funding propositions on the negotiating table.
But the Mexican initiative, officially presented in August 2008, has so far received more expressions of goodwill than cash contributions.
"Mexico will not be able to tell the summit that it has cut its CO2 emissions, but they might peak in 2012 and be reduced thereafter," Guzmán said.
Mexico is among the countries that are most vulnerable to climate change, and the long-term economic effects could be enormous, according to a report titled "La economía del cambio climático en México" (The Economics of Climate Change in Mexico), by economist Luis Galindo of the National Autonomous University of Mexico.
The report, commissioned by the Treasury and the Ministry of Natural Resources, projects an economic impact of 6.22 percent of annual GDP, equivalent to 60 billion dollars a year.
The study, the only one of its kind in Latin America, forecasts the effects in 2100 on agriculture, water resources, forests, biodiversity, housing, tourism and health, especially in the worst affected areas.
The report identifies 25 out of the country's 153 coastal municipalities as being the most vulnerable to hurricanes and tropical storms.
Four million people, out of a total Mexican population of 104 million, live in those areas and are engaged in farming and tourism activities worth more than four billion dollars a year. |
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