Francis Ogwal (L) of Uganda and Basile van Havre (C) of Canada, co-chairs of the group responsible for drafting the post-2020 global biodiversity framework, explain the status of negotiations at the Palais des Congrès in Montreal on Dec. 14, 2022. Discussions are entering the final stretch to approve the new biodiversity protection targets. CREDIT: Emilio Godoy/IPS
by Emilio Godoy (montreal)
Inter Press Service
MONTREAL, Dec 15 (IPS) – Created in 2016, the Mexican Caribbean Biosphere Reserve (MCBR) hosts 1900 species of animals and plants and contains half of the Mesoamerican Barrier Reef System, the second largest in the world after Australia’s Great Barrier Reef.
This ecosystem is under pressure from the construction of two of the seven routes of the Maya Train (TM), the Mexican government’s flagship megaproject, whose construction, which began in 2020, alters the environment of the Maya Forest, the largest tropical rainforest in Latin America after the Amazon.
This is recognized in two technical reports obtained in Mexico by IPS through public information requests, which state that, although the project is outside the marine area itself, it is located within its zone of influence.
Regarding the 257-km section 4, a document from October 2021 acknowledges the impact on two high priority hydrological regions.
And with respect to the impact on the 110-km section 5, another document dated from May 2022 states that “there is no previous study or information on the monitoring and sampling sites. The presence and state of the fauna that inhabit the trees are unknown.”
The MCBR administration recognizes impacts on two priority marine regions and on the coastline of the southeastern state of Quintana Roo, which is protected by the reserve.
For this reason, the MCBR refused to issue a technical opinion on section 5 due to lack of “sufficient information and elements” and, for T4, issued an opinion that demanded the presentation of additional data and prevention, management, and oversight measures.
Despite the impact that the railroad will have in the region, the government’s National Fund for Tourism Development (Fonatur) did not request reports from at least four other nature reserves.
Fonatur will be in charge of the TM, which will run for some 1,500 kilometers, with 21 stations and 14 stops, through five states in southern and southeastern Mexico.
The case of the railway exemplifies the contradictions between the attempt to protect nature and the development of infrastructure that sabotages that aim, a theme present at the 15th Conference of the Parties (COP15) of the United Nations Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD), which began on Dec. 7 in the Canadian city of Montreal and is due to end on Dec. 19.
Moreover, the railway’s cost of some 15 billion dollars is classified as forming part of the harmful subsidies to biodiversity, which total 542 billion dollars a year globally. The investment needed for the conservation and sustainable use of nature is estimated at 967 billion dollars a year.
In the post-2020 global biodiversity framework, which is due to be adopted at the summit, one of the main 21 measures being negotiated is called in UN jargon 30×30: the protection of 30 percent of the planet’s marine and terrestrial areas through conservation measures by 2030, in an attempt to halt the loss of biodiversity on the planet.
The plan has attracted support from more than 100 countries but has awakened distrust among indigenous peoples, who have suffered from the imposition of natural protected areas without due information and consultation.
The summit, which has brought together some 15,000 people representing governments, non-governmental organizations, academia, international organizations and companies, will also discuss the post-2020 global framework, financing for conservation and guidelines on digital sequencing of genetic material, degraded ecosystems, protected areas, endangered species, the role of corporations and gender equality.
The 196 States Parties to the CBD, in force since 1993 and whose slogan at this year’s COP is “Ecological civilization. Building a shared future for all life on earth”, have not yet agreed in Montreal on the percentage of the oceans that should be protected and whether it should include waters under international jurisdiction.
The global framework is to succeed the 20 Aichi Biodiversity Targets, adopted in 2010 in that Japanese city during the CBD COP10 and due to be met by 2020, which have failed. Target 11 stipulated the protection of 17 percent of terrestrial areas and inland waters and 10 percent of marine and coastal areas.
The Maya Train, the Mexican government’s main megaproject, threatens protected natural areas, such as the Mexican Caribbean Biosphere Reserve in the southeastern state of Quintana Roo, according to a Google Earth capture. In the COP15 negotiations in Montreal, a central issue is the declaration of more natural protected areas, but one of the threats is infrastructure works. Image: Google Earth
Insufficient rules
Manuel Pulgar Vidal of Peru, WWF global leader of Climate and Energy, who is attending COP15, said the problem lies in the regulation of protected areas.
“Nations such as Colombia, Ecuador and Chile have strengthened the system of natural areas. But in general the systems are weak and need to be reinforced, and money, staff and regulations are needed,” he told IPS.
Mexico has 185 protected areas, covering almost 91 million hectares -19 percent of the national territory-, six of which are marine areas, encompassing 69 million hectares. Despite their importance, the Mexican government dedicated less than one dollar per hectare to their protection in 2022.
In addition, management plans have not been updated to cover works such as the Maya Train.
Colombia, meanwhile, protects 15 percent of its territory in 1,483 protected areas covering 35.5 million hectares, including 12 million hectares in marine areas.
Chile, for its part, has 106 protected areas covering 15 million hectares of land – 20 percent of the total surface area – and 105 million hectares in the sea, in 22 of the conservation areas.
Among the 49 governments that make up the High Ambition Coalition (HAC) for Nature and People, aimed at promoting 30×30, are 10 Latin American countries: Chile, Colombia, Costa Rica, the Dominican Republic, Ecuador, Guatemala, Mexico, Nicaragua, Panama and Peru.
Of the 586 commitments that organizations, companies and individuals have already made voluntarily at COP15, held at the Palais des Congrès in Montreal, only 93 deal with marine, coastal and freshwater ecosystems, while 294 address terrestrial ecosystem conservation and restoration; 185 involve alliances and partnerships; and climate change adaptation and emission reductions are the focus of 155.
A group of government delegates discuss the post-2020 global biodiversity framework with new biodiversity protection targets to be approved at COP15, which is being held at the Palais des Congrès in the Canadian city of Montreal. CREDIT: IISD
Aleksandar Rankovic of the international NGO Avaaz said the key challenge goes beyond a specific protection figure.
“The hows are not in the debate. It’s up to each country how it will implement it. It’s left to each country to decide what’s appropriate. There is little openness on how to achieve the goals,” the activist from the U.S.-based organization dedicated to citizen activism on issues of global interest, such as biodiversity, told IPS.
Only eight percent of the world’s oceans are protected and only seven percent are protected from fishing activities. Avaaz calls for the care of 50 percent of marine and terrestrial areas, with the direct participation of indigenous peoples.
The protection of marine areas is tied to other international instruments, such as the Global Ocean Treaty, which nations have been negotiating since 2018 within the framework of the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea and which aims to protect 30 percent of these ecosystems by 2030.
Pulgar Vidal, for his part, called for the approval of the 30×30 scheme. “Implementing these initiatives takes time. And you need an international financing mechanism,” he stressed.
In Rankovic’s view, a strong global framework is needed. “The issue is broader, because fisheries are not well regulated. Without this, marine areas will be part of a weak program,” he warned.
COP15 has also coincided with the 10th Meeting of the Conference of the Parties to the Cartagena Protocol on Biosafety and the 4th Meeting of the Conference of the Parties to the Nagoya Protocol on Access to Genetic Resources and the Fair and Equitable Sharing of Benefits Arising from their Utilization, both components of the CBD and part of its architecture for preserving biodiversity.
The laying of the Mayan Train along 1500 kilometers through five states in the south and southeast of Mexico, mostly through the Yucatan Peninsula, will damage the fragile jungle ecosystem, with the removal of vegetation and animal species. The photo shows an area cleared of vegetation near the municipality of Valladolid, in the state of Yucatan. CREDIT: Emilio Godoy/IPS
by Emilio Godoy (mexico city)
Inter Press Service
MEXICO CITY, Nov 02 (IPS) – A beige line slashes its way through the Mayan jungle near the municipality of Izamal in the southeastern Mexican state of Yucatán. It is section 3, 172 kilometers long, of the Mayan Train (TM), the most important megaproject of President Andrés Manuel López Obrador’s administration.
The metal scrape of the backhoes tears up the vegetation to open up arteries in the jungle for the laying and construction of the five stops of this part of the future railway network, which is being built at a cost currently estimated at more than 15 billion dollars, 70 percent more than initially planned.
Pedro Uc, an indigenous member of the non-governmental Assembly of Defenders of the Múuch’ Xíinbal Mayan Territory, summed up the environmental impact of the TM in an area of milpa – a traditional system of cultivation of corn, squash, beans and chili peppers – and poultry farming.
“Everything that is happening in the Yucatán peninsula is affecting the Mayan people, damaging the trees, the water, the animals. It is a part of our territory that is being destroyed. Those who don’t produce their own food have to depend on others,” he told IPS from Buctzotz (Mayan for “hair dress”), in Yucatán, some 1,400 km from Mexico City.
Without land, there is no food, stressed the activist, whose organization works in 25 municipalities on the peninsula, which includes the states of Campeche, Quintana Roo and Yucatán, and is home to the second most important jungle massif in Latin America, after the Amazon.
“It has never carried out its role. It has not addressed the issue, it is merely ornamental. Profepa should attend to the complaints,” said Uc, whose town is located 44 kilometers southeast of Izamal, where one of the railroad stations will be located.
Profepa, part of the Ministry of the Environment and Natural Resources (Semarnat), received two complaints in 2020, one in 2021 and 159 in the first five months of this year for “acts or omissions in contravention of environmental laws,” according to public information requests submitted by IPS.
Profepa oversees the megaproject through its “Mayan Train Inspection Program, in the areas of environmental impact, forestry, wildlife and sources of pollution”, the results of which are unknown.
In December last year, the agency carried out an inspection of hazardous waste generation and management in the southern state of Chiapas, which, together with the states of Campeche, Quintana Roo, Tabasco and Yucatán, is part of the route for the railway.
In addition, in June and July, two other visits were made to verify measures to mitigate pollutant emissions and waste management. Profepa is still analyzing the results of these visits.
The environmental prosecutor’s office has carried out exploratory visits in nine municipalities of section 2, eight of section 4 and 16 of section 5. The laying of lines 6 and 7 began last April, but the agency has not yet inspected them. The megaproject consists of a total of seven sections, which are being built in parallel.
The TM, to be built by the governmental National Tourism Fund (Fonatur), will cover some 1,500 kilometers, with 21 stations and 14 stops, according to López Obrador, who is heavily involved in the project and is its biggest supporter.
To lay the railway, whose trains will transport thousands of tourists and loads of cargo, such as transgenic soybeans, palm oil and pork, 1,681 hectares of land will be cleared, involving the cutting of 300,000 trees, according to the original environmental impact study. The laying of sections 1, 2 and 3, which require 801 hectares, began without environmental permits.
The government sees the megaproject as an engine of social development that will create jobs, boost tourism beyond the traditional tourist attractions and bolster the regional economy, which has sparked controversy between its supporters and critics.
The construction of the Mayan Train has involved logging in several jungle areas in southeastern Mexico. The photo shows a breach opened by a backhoe on the outskirts of Playa del Carmen, in the state of Quintana Roo, in March 2022, without the required intervention by the environmental prosecutor’s office. CREDIT: Emilio Godoy/IPS
Free way
In November of last year, López Obrador, who wants trains running on the peninsula by the end of 2023, classified the TM as a “priority project” by means of a presidential decree, thus facilitating the delivery of environmental permits. On Oct. 25 the president promised that the test runs would begin next July.
This classification reduces Profepa’s maneuvering room, according to Carlos del Razo, a lawyer specializing in environmental cases, of the law firm Carvajal y Machado.
“Some of the early complaints could be filed for works where permit exemptions were issued because they were done on existing rights-of-way. But if it decides not to act, it has to argue that decision. The environmental prosecutor’s office will not have a particular interest in approving government works,” he told IPS.
In its authorizations, Semarnat ruled that Fonatur must implement programs for integrated waste management, soil conservation and reforestation, air quality monitoring, flora management and rescue and relocation of wildlife.
López Obrador denies that there is deforestation, and promised the construction of three natural parks in eastern Quintana Roo and the reforestation of some 2,500 hectares in the vicinity of the railroad route.
In a tacit acknowledgement of logging in the project area, the Ministry of National Defense will plant trees, at a cost of 35 million dollars, according to an agreement between Fonatur and the ministry contained in the massive leak of military emails made by the non-governmental group Guacamaya and consulted by IPS.
Viridiana Mendoza, Agriculture and Climate Change specialist for Greenpeace Mexico, criticized “the lack of action” by Profepa.
“They had already deforested without an environmental impact assessment, which is a crime. We are not surprised, because it is part of the dynamic that has characterized the Mayan Train: illegalities, omissions, false information, violation of procedures. There is a conflict of interest because Profepa answers to Semarnat,” she said.
The international non-governmental organization has found “insufficient, false and inaccurate” information on sections 5, 6 and 7, so it is not possible to assess the dangers and damage to local populations and ecosystems.
Parts of the jungle of the Yucatan peninsula, in southeastern Mexico, have been cut down to make way for the construction of the Mayan Train. But the environmental prosecutor’s office, failing to comply with its legal duty, has turned a deaf ear to complaints of alleged ecological crimes. CREDIT: Guacamaya Leaks
Risks
The project is a paradox, because while the government promises sustainable tourism in other areas of the peninsula, it threatens the very attractions of this influx of visitors, such as the cenotes – deep, water-filled sinkholes formed in limestone – cave systems and the entire ecosystem in general.
The TM endangers the largest system of underground and flooded grottoes on the planet, a complex of submerged caves beneath the limestone terrain.
The porous (karst) soil of the peninsula sabotages the government’s plans, as it has forced Fonatur to change the route of the megaproject several times. For example, section 5 has experienced three modifications between 2021 and January 2022.
Faced with the wave of impacts, the last hope lies in organization by local residents, according to the Mayan activist Uc.
“Between the possible and the impossible, we inform people so that in their own community, they can make the decision they want to make. People do not have the necessary information. Let them take up the struggle from their own communities and make the decisions about what comes next,” he said.
But attorney Del Razo and environmentalist Mendoza said the courts are the last resort.
“The judiciary continues to be the most independent branch of power in Mexico. Interested parties could seek injunctions that order Profepa to correct the process. A strategy of specific details is needed to demonstrate the infractions. The effective thing is to go into the details of the challenges,” explained Del Razo.
Mendoza said there is a lack of access to information, respect for public participation and environmental justice.
“Profepa should have stopped the works for the simple fact of not having the environmental authorization when the removal of vegetation began,” she said. “We don’t see it as likely that it will seek to stop the construction, because we have seen its reaction before. Semarnat supports the project, regardless of the fact that it has failed to comply and is in contradiction with the laws.”
While its opponents seek to take legal action, the TM runs roughshod over all obstacles, which are dodged with the help of the Environmental Prosecutor’s Office, at least until now.
The Mexico City government is increasing the number of electric buses in its fleet, such as the trolleybuses pictured here on a street in the south of the capital. But their energy source is still fossil fuels and the deployment of electric cars remains slow in the country. CREDIT: Emilio Godoy/IPS
by Emilio Godoy (mexico city)
Inter Press Service
MEXICO CITY, Sep 19 (IPS) – The Mexico City government began testing an elevated route for electric buses with great fanfare on Sept. 11, in a bid to promote more sustainable transport. The initiative is part of an incipient promotion of electromobility in the country, amidst pro-fossil fuel energy policies.
Mexico, a country of some 129 million people, lacks a national road transport strategy, considered vital for reducing polluting emissions and for the path to a low-carbon economy, which restricts the adoption of policies.
Experts consulted by IPS highlighted the limitations of the measures introduced regarding road transportation.
“Electric mobility is still not very developed, both in terms of facilities for acquiring vehicles and infrastructure. We are not advancing as fast as other Latin American cities. There is a lack of cutting-edge projects,” Bernardo Baranda, director for Latin America of the non-governmental Institute for Transportation and Development Policy, based in Mexico City, told IPS.
Mexico City, home to more than 20 million people when its suburbs are included, seeks to promote electric public transport with the new route for an elevated track exclusively for buses. It is also pushing other initiatives, such as the conversion of buses from diesel to electric, announced in July.
Only two other major cities in the country, the western city of Guadalajara and the northern city of Monterrey, have electric public transportation buses.
In the Latin American region, capitals such as Bogota, Montevideo and Santiago de Chile have large electric public transport fleets and countries such as Chile, Costa Rica, Panama and Uruguay already have sectoral plans in the region.
Sales of electric and hybrid cars are on the rise: in 2016, dealerships sold 254 electric units, compared to 1,703 in the first half of this year alone.
Self-charging hybrids that do not need to be plugged in (they use their gasoline engines to charge the batteries) have been the most popular, with the number purchased climbing from 7,490 in 2016 to 19,060 in the first half of 2022. Sales of plug-in vehicles grew from 521 to 2,263 in that same period.
Since 2018, the government’s Federal Electricity Commission (CFE) has held at least two tenders for the installation of so-called electrolineras, charging stations, in the country, where more than 2,000 points are already operating. But not all of them are working, as IPS found in a tour of several areas of the Mexican capital.
Be that as it may, the government’s plan to deploy this infrastructure has not sufficed to boost the purchase of electric vehicles.
An electric charging point in a neighborhood in south-central Mexico City. The state-owned Federal Electricity Commission has installed more than 2,000 electric vehicle charging centers in Mexico, but this and other measures have not encouraged their spread in the country. CREDIT: Emilio Godoy/IPS
Gustavo Jiménez, director of the consulting firm Grupo E-mobilitas, acknowledged “slow progress” in the deployment of public transportation, cab fleets and delivery companies, as well as vehicle assembly projects.
“For the last two years there have been no export and import tariffs for electric vehicles, which reduces the cost by 20 percent. There is also a reduction in value added tax. But progress has not been as fast as we would like. It is complicated to charge your vehicle as you drive around the country,” he told IPS.
The National Electric Mobility Strategy, which the government of President Andrés Manuel López Obrador froze when he took office in December 2018, created a comprehensive framework and incentive schemes for electric vehicles.
In addition, the current government, described as “pro-fossil fuels” by environmentalists critical of its defense of hydrocarbons, maintains record levels of gasoline subsidies, which will exceed 15 billion dollars in 2022, according to official estimates.
Latin America’s second-largest economy is the world’s 12th biggest oil producer and 17th biggest gas producer. In terms of proven crude oil reserves, it ranks 20th and 41st, according to data from the state-owned oil giant Petróleos Mexicanos (Pemex), in an industry protected by López Obrador despite the country’s climate commitments.
Among the measures of the stalled Strategy were the installation of charging infrastructure in streets and homes, the introduction of green license plates and the exemption of import and export taxes for electric vehicles.
During the 2nd Annual Meeting of the U.S.-Mexico High Level Economic Dialogue, held in Mexico City on Sept. 12, the United States invited its neighbor and trading partner to participate in an integrated electric vehicle supply chain – an essential link in the economic-environmental program implemented by the U.S. government.
Mexico City, Guadalajara and Monterrey, together with three Colombian cities and five Brazilian cities, are also participating in the TUMI E-Bus Mission project, aimed at supporting 500 cities by 2025 in their transition to the deployment of 100,000 electric buses in total.
The decarbonization of transportation is fundamental to the fight against the global climate crisis. In Mexico, CO2 emissions from that segment totaled 148 million tons in 2019, equivalent to 20 percent of the total, according to the government’s National Institute of Ecology and Climate Change (Inecc).
Mexico and the United States are seeking to integrate the electric vehicle manufacturing value chain. In the image, Mexico’s foreign minister, Marcelo Ebrard, shows an electric unit manufactured in Mexico in February 2022. CREDIT: Secretariat of Foreign Affairs
Estimates by the Ministry of the Environment and Natural Resources put life-cycle emissions (from fuel extraction to combustion in the engine) at 358 grams of CO2 per kilometer for gasoline-burning vehicles, 166 for hybrid cars (using fuel and electricity) and 77 for solar energy users.
It also outlines 35 emission reduction actions with which the country would obtain total benefits of 295 billion dollars.
In the case of electromobility, the average cost of pollution abatement amounts to 500 dollars per ton, with an investment of nearly 5.9 billion dollars, gross benefits of 3.1 billion dollars and a reduction of 600,000 tons of CO2.
By replacing diesel buses with electric buses, the average cost would add up to 152.90 dollars per ton of CO2. The benefits of fuel savings would amount to 3.2 billion dollars.
By 2030, emissions cuts would contribute one million tons, but this potential would increase as domestic power generation incorporates more clean energy.
The CFE estimates that by 2041 some 700,000 electric vehicles will be in circulation in the country and will require 40,000 charging stations, which also means strengthening the domestic electric power grid.
However, at the same time, the Mexican government has provided for the legalization of used cars coming from abroad in 2021, which experts see as a negative step in the fight against pollution.
Baranda the transportation expert said gasoline subsidies, the promotion of fossil fuels and the lack of energy transition are barriers to electromobility.
“You need public policies, at the federal and state level, such as incentives and infrastructure. Many countries are doing this. Mexico is not on the way to making good on international commitments. It’s a good opportunity to invest in electric transportation,” he said.
For his part, Jiménez questioned the current energy policy, which has an impact on sustainable mobility.
“There are no clear incentives for public transportation, significant subsidies are required. There is not so much infrastructure, there are no regulations for chargers, there are no measures for the circulation of electric cars. There is a lack of a coherent enabling framework and a national program to promote electric vehicles. Mexico has no coordination at the national level,” he complained.
Aerial view of San Crisanto and its preserved mangrove, in the state of Yucatan, in southeastern Mexico. In addition to trapping and storing CO2, mangroves control coastal erosion, protect against hurricanes and clean water. However, in Yucatan, as in other similar ecosystems, they face threats from increasing urbanization, mass tourism and the effects of the climate crisis. Credit: Juan Pablo Ampudia / IPS
by Emilio Godoy (sinanchÉ, mexico)
Inter Press Service
SINANCHÉ, Mexico, Aug 02 (IPS) – Two extremes of coastal development can be found side-by-side in the small community of San Crisanto, in the municipality of Sinanché in Mexico’s southeastern Yucatán state.
On one side is the mangrove forest that the community has conserved since 1995. It protects the settlement from coastal erosion, supports local fisheries and provides jobs in ecotourism. And, as of 2022, it is generating income from carbon credits.
On the other side, two large housing developments are taking shape. Such building work in the coastal zone is one of the biggest threats to mangrove ecosystems in Mexico and worldwide. But in San Crisanto, the forest is safe — for now.
“Fortunately, the mangroves are well,” says to IPS José Loria, president of the community-based San Crisanto Foundation, which oversees efforts to protect and restore them. “We’re working. Thanks to this, there is a better perspective regarding their environmental services.”
But elsewhere in Mexico threats to mangroves are rising. Meanwhile, uncertainty surrounds government-funded efforts to restore the coastal forests, and it is unclear whether the mangroves can cope with rising sea levels the global warming is creating.
Loss and restoration
Only three countries — Indonesia, Australia and Brazil — have a greater area of mangroves than Mexico, which had 905 086 hectares of these forests in 2020.
These fragile ecosystems have a dual role to play in the fight against the climate crisis. On one hand, they absorb and store vast amounts of carbon. On the other, they protect coastlines from storms and rising seas.
But they are under threat from the construction of aquaculture farms, infrastructure, and tourist development. Regulations intended to protect mangroves and wetlands haven’t stopped their devastation.
Mangrove deforestation affects three states in particular, according to Mexico’s Mangrove Monitoring System. In the northern territory of Sinaloa, it totaled 5 258 hectares between 2015 and 2020, in Baja California Sur it amounted to 1 068 and in the northern state of Nayarit, 247 hectares.
As well as deforestation, large areas of mangroves are being degraded by human activities. While the total area of degraded mangroves fell from 18 332 hectares in 2015 to 9 680 hectares in 2020, it increased in the states of Baja California Sur and Chiapas, in the south.
But many mangrove restoration projects are in fact taking place. Between 2006 and 2020, for example, Mexico’s National Forestry Commission (Conafor) approved 74 mangrove planting projects to compensate for deforestation elsewhere. These projects took place in 13 states, covered 11 479 hectares and cost 200 million dollars, according to Conafor data. Nayarit state has hosted 21 initiatives and the southeastern state of Veracruz, 18.
In addition to these deforestation-compensation projects, Conafor funded 11 mangrove restoration initiatives in 2021. Together, they planted 1,34 million mangrove seeds on 1 048 hectares, and cost 2,52 million dollars.
Mangrove logging in Puerto Morelos, in the southeastern state of Quintana Roo, in the Yucatán Peninsula, a forbidden activity by the environmental laws. In Mexico, mangroves face threats from urbanization, tourism development and the installation of aquaculture farms. Credit: Emilio Godoy / IPS
Information vacuum
Claudia Teutli, a mangrove researcher at the Center for Research and Advanced Studies of the state-run National Polytechnic Institute, critiques some aspects of policies towards mangroves.
“We don’t know the success of the projects, due to how the restoration has been done,” she told IPS. “It has been done mostly for offsets requirements . There wasn’t a goal of recovering the ecosystem.”
Teutli says the government’s monitoring system is out of date, and that restoration requires better strategies and knowledge of restoration sites.
“There is a confusion between restoration and reforestation,” she says. “We don’t know what was done and how. Success is more than the number of planted trees.”
Joanna Acosta, a professor of conservation biology at the state-run Autonomous University of Carmen in the southeastern state of Campeche, agrees.
“We don’t know where restoration has worked or where it has failed,” she says. “The governmental cartography doesn’t clarify if the mangroves are restored or not. We have to introduce transparency strategies, because there shouldn’t be intervention in areas already under restoration.”
The scale of the challenge is huge — Acosta estimates that Mexico has at least 235 000 hectares of mangroves that are not covered by conservation or management programs. She says that acknowledgement of the value of mangroves should work in favor of the design of public policies.
“Mangroves are the most resilient to the climate crisis, that’s why they should be protected,” she says. “It’s important to protect them due to their capacity for capturing and storing carbon, and because their degradation releases carbon dioxide.”
Inside San Crisanto’s large coastal mangrove swamp, in the southeastern state of Yucatán, which survives thanks to the local community’s efforts. Mexican policies for mangrove protection haven’t yielded clear results, as there is a lack of follow-up for monitoring and evaluation of the governmental support programs. Credit: Emilio Godoy / IPS
Resisting rising seas?
The community in San Crisanto is capitalizing on this. It has begun selling carbon offsets based on the carbon its 850 hectares of mangrove forest stores.
San Crisanto is an ejido — an area of land owned by the state but held and managed communally by local people. Its mangroves also generate revenue from Conafor’s Environmental Services Payment Program. This year, the program is paying the ejido 53 dollars for each of 340 hectares of mangroves.
The ejido suggests the creation of a national mangrove network and a national coastal resources system.
“There should be some work for building the organization,” says Loria. “We are the starting point for correcting environmental processes and generating resilience.”
But despite San Crisanto’s successes, Loria acknowledges problems such as coastal erosion. This raises the questions of how Mexico’s mangroves will tolerate rising seas as the planet warms.
The San Crisanto ejido protects since 1995 mangrove forests in the northern coast of the Mexican southeastern state of Yucatán, that’s home to species of fish, birds, like the pink flamingo; mammals and others.
Credit: Juan Pablo Ampudia / IPS
by Emilio Godoy (sinanchÉ, mexico)
Inter Press Service
SINANCHÉ, Mexico, Jul 27 (IPS) – When hurricanes Opal and Roxanne both hit the Mexican state of Yucatán in a ten-day period in 1995, they destroyed much of the mangrove forest in the small coastal community of San Crisanto. The local people responded by replanting mangroves and clearing channels among the trees to allow water to flow freely. They committed to protect the ecosystem.
Today it’s a conservation success story, with the restored mangroves protecting the coastline, sustaining wildlife and supporting livelihoods based on fishing and ecotourism. Now, after 27 years of hard work, the community is reaping new benefits by capitalizing on the carbon the mangroves contain. They are selling Mexico’s first carbon credits based on the so-called ‘blue carbon’ of marine ecosystems.
“We have been the first to do so,” says to IPS José Loria, the president of the community’s San Crisanto Foundation. “We are pioneers. We built the project, we designed it. It is a meaningful issue, relevant to the area. It’s a long-term project.”
Mexico has huge reserves of blue carbon and, as San Crisanto shows, it can generate finance that supports conservation and sustainable livelihoods.
But Mexico has no national policies and plans for tapping into this potential, and blue carbon gets scant mention in the country’s climate change commitments. Lacking support, communities, companies and nongovernmental organizations are pushing on anyway.
Credit: Johana Claudio / IPS
Rising market
Mangroves, seagrasses and salt marshes hold back waves, limit erosion and lessen the impacts of rising sea levels, so their conservation is a nature-based adaptation to the climate crisis.
But these ecosystems also capture and store vast amounts of organic carbon, so they play a key role in limiting the global heating that causes climate change in the first place. There comes its “blue carbon” name.
For the captured and stored carbon dioxide (CO2), the mangroves owners can issue certificates for selling in domestic and international markets to corporations interested in reducing their polluting emissions.
Companies and individuals can buy these credits on what is known as the voluntary carbon market to offset their greenhouse gas emissions — each credit represents the removal of one metric ton of carbon dioxide from the atmosphere.
In fact, a mangrove absorbs 5-10 times more carbon than a tropical forest of the same area.
This is especially relevant for Mexico, which has a greater area of blue carbon ecosystems than most other countries. In 2020, for example, it had 905 086 hectares of mangroves — only Indonesia, Australia and Brazil have more.
This means that Mexico is well-placed to benefit from the emerging trade in blue carbon credits.
“The voluntary carbon market is in full growth, as more and more companies are integrating carbon credits into their environmental strategies to complement the measurement and reduction of their emissions,” says Alessandra Souroujon, a senior analyst at Climate Seed — a carbon trade broker based in Paris.
“It is expected that this trend will continue to increase and, with it, more projects of this type will be developed.”
In an e-mail to IPS, Souroujon emphasized challenges, such as the cost of certification and the need for long-term community commitment and the right project partners.
She said the success of San Crisanto shows the potential for the trade in blue carbon to finance the conservation and restoration of mangroves, and to produce income to develop the community and improve the quality of life there.
Mangrove rows in the San Crisanto ejido, in the state of Yucatán, in southeastern Mexico. After the strike of two devastating hurricanes in 1995, the ejido owners restored the habitat and cleaned the channels to allow the flow of water in the mangrove. Credit: Emilio Godoy / IPS
San Crisanto shows how
San Crisanto is located in the Sinanché municipality, about 1 360 kilometers southeast of Mexico City. It is an ejido — an area of land owned by the state but held and managed communally by local people.
A few dozen meters from the village’s sea-bleached sandy streets, spreads a green blanket of tall, thin trees. They are the 850 hectares of mangroves that the community has preserved since 1995.
The forest has four species of mangrove trees: red mangrove (Rhizophora mangle), white (Laguncularia racemosa), black (Avicennia germinans) and buttonwood (Conocarpus erectus). It is a haven for fish, turtles, crocodiles and 167 bird species, including pink flamingos that have returned to the area after a gap of 50 years.
Having spent years counting species there, the local land managers are now counting how much blue carbon the mangroves hold.
The venture, with 125 000 dollars of investment from the ejido’s coffers, started in 2015 with the measurement of carbon in mangrove tree trunks and branches.
It took a few years of trial and error to get the methodology right before the ejido could report its data to a certification body for verification. This was completed in March 2022 by the Mexican subsidiary of the Colorado’s Ruby Canyon-based Ruby Canyon Environmental Inc.
Loria told IPS that the ejido’s carbon credits are being sold in the international voluntary market for more than 20 dollars per ton of carbon. This is a noteworthy fee — four times more than the price of carbon credits from some projects in terrestrial forests in Mexico. One European company producing luxury goods has already bought more than 10 000 offsets from the ejido.
But this is just the start. This year, the measurement of above-ground carbon totaled 25 tons per hectare. The number of offsets the ejido can sell is set to increase as the mangroves grow and once the ejido has also quantified the carbon in the roots and sediment.
“The revenues will strengthen the project,” says Loria. In an announcement published on 31 May 2022, the San Crisanto Foundation said it would use the money generated by selling carbon credits “to maintain the mangrove forest, fund environmental education, strengthen local culture and traditions, and enhance public services, improving the community’s quality of life”.
Lost at sea
Despite Mexico’s potential, cases like San Crisanto happen in a vacuum as there is no national blue carbon strategy. In 2021, a non-governmental organization, The Nature Conservancy Mexico, produced a roadmap for developing such a strategy but it has not published it.
Blue carbon does feature in the commitments Mexico has made under the 2015 Paris Agreement on climate change, in a periodically updated document called a Nationally Determined Contribution (NDC).
The latest NDC, from 2020, mentions “strengthening instruments and executing actions for biodiversity conservation and the restoration of marine, coastal and freshwater ecosystems, as well as increasing and maintaining carbon reservoirs, with emphasis on blue carbon”.
The NDC notes that blue carbon can contribute to ten of the 17 Sustainable Development Goals that the international community adopted in 2015 at the United Nations to achieve by 2030. These include the goals on clean water, climate action, underwater life and terrestrial ecosystems.
Similarly, while the country’s Climate Change Strategy for Protected Natural Areas 2015-2040 aims to mitigate the climate crisis through carbon capture and storage, it only mentions blue carbon once, in relation to mapping the resource in those areas.
More than half of Mexico’s mangroves — some 464 000 hectares — are preserved in these areas, which are under the jurisdiction of the governmental National Commission of Protected Natural Areas (Conanp). They represent a great opportunity for blue carbon projects, but Conanp lacks precise CO2 measurements at each site.
This is a challenge as the carbon content of mangrove forests varies greatly. While San Crisanto has 25 tons of above-ground carbon per hectare, other mangroves in Mexico have several hundred tons.
There is even more carbon underground — as much as 1 000-2 000 tons per hectare. But while above ground carbon can be quantified with satellite-based measurements, CO2 in roots and sediments must be laboriously measured on site.
A Conanp document seen by IPS recommends advancing the quantification of blue carbon deposits, the formulation of regulations including to count emissions from coastal degradation, and the promotion of regulated trading schemes for offsets.
When IPS asked Conanp to comment about the lack of a national strategy, a spokesperson replied that, “it has not been possible to consolidate the efforts between the various stakeholders and the financing needed for the generation of an effective strategy, which contemplates the diversity of existing contexts”.
Conanp acknowledged that it seeks strategies to take advantage of the potential of the carbon market, “with special emphasis on all the mechanisms used being translated into social benefit of the legitimate holders of environmental assets”.
It says, the roadmap for a strategy must cover at least a 10-year period and include the quantification of the contribution of blue carbon ecosystems to the climate action and the mobilization of climate finance for its management.
Joanna Acosta, a conservation biologist at the state-run Autonomous University of Carmen, located in Ciudad del Carmen (Campeche), says to IPS the environmental authorities already know what to do, but there has been no political will to move forward with policies that support blue carbon projects.
“They are long-term projects,” she says. “There has to be a very clear vision that it is meant to conserve and restore mangroves, and that the money from the offsets has to be invested again in the community. In Mexico we are not ready for carbon credits. There are many expectations, but nothing is clear.”
Acosta proposed a roadmap that generates institutional arrangements and clear rules, “so that each party knows what their responsibility is, from the community, which is close to the resource, to academia, in support of the community, and the government”.
Jorge Herrera, academic at the Center for Research and Advanced Studies of the state-run National Polytechnic Institute, says there is too much emphasis on carbon offsets, and that other conservation approaches are also needed to protect mangroves.
“The benefits depend on the carbon in the mangroves, not just the credits,” he told IPS. “What is least known is carbon in the soil, of which we know very little. Those in charge of the policies should explain why blue carbon mechanisms are missing.”
Credit: Johana Claudio / IPS
Slow carbon
Despite the absence of enabling policies, some blue carbon projects are trying to make progress. In Magdalena Bay, in the northern state of Baja California Sur, the private Corporación MarVivo is developing the MarVivo Blue Carbon Conservation Project in partnership with local communities. By conserving 22 000 hectares of mangroves, it aims to offset 26 million tons of CO2 emissions over 30 years.
In November 2021, the company and the US private corporation Carbon Streaming announced an investment agreement through which the latter will invest six million dollars in the implementation, with an initial disbursement of two million.
Upon the project reaching its goals, the fund will deliver four installments of one million dollars and will have the right to buy more than 200 000 credits each year.
Several other initiatives want to take off, but they face barriers, mainly financial.
Nongovernmental organization Costasalvaje’s Blue Carbon Project aims to protect 33 891 hectares of mangroves in the Gulf of California, in northern Mexico. The organization is working with the El Dátil community to restore degraded red mangroves in the El Vizcaíno Biosphere Reserve in the state of Baja California Sur.
It is also working with the women’s group “Guardians of the Conchalito” to restore the mangroves of El Conchalito Estuary, near the state capital La Paz.
The organization has estimated that a 16 592-hectare area of mangroves in northwestern Mexico stores 20-million tons of carbon, equivalent to the emissions of 608 944 cars in a year.
On the southern side of the Gulf of California, in the western states of Nayarit and Sinaloa, TNC Mexico identified 80 000 hectares for protection and regeneration in the Marismas Nacionales Biosphere Reserve.
Closer to San Crisanto, in Yucatán state, the Sisal ejido in the Hunucmá municipality is preparing to launch the trade of carbon credits from 5 060 hectares of mangroves. It aims to sell 3.18 million credits over 30 years.
And in south-eastern Mexico, in Quintana Roo state, a consortium led by the non-governmental Resiliencia Azul is seeking 100 000 dollars to certify carbon and issue offsets in a project called Taab Ché (mangrove, in the indigenous Mayan language).
The project is working in the Yum Balam Flora and Fauna Protection Area, whose 7 265 hectares of mangroves are mostly in good condition, and the Isla Cozumel Natural Areas which have 3 011 hectares of mangroves, with almost half being well preserved.
A possible future
Back in San Cristanto, Loria says that other communities seeking to capitalize on the blue carbon in their mangroves will need trust and patience.
“They have to be sure of what they want to do,” he says. “If the community wants to, it doesn’t need a national framework. We did it, period. It depends on the maturity of the organization, the work that has been done. It doesn’t happen by spontaneous generation.”
But Tannia Frausto, the climate change manager for Costasalvaje, stresses the need for policies that can be applied locally.
“If there was a national strategy, with clear policies and funding, and it was a priority, the conservation of those ecosystems could be sped up and prioritized,” she says. “Mangroves are already a resource we have, so the job is to take care of them. It is urgent to create the legal framework that allows optimizing resources. Environmental degradation is going faster than what can be protected with the current instruments.”
Frausto recommends closing the gap between investment and ecosystem recovery.
“At a global level, companies are going to need carbon offsets, not only to mitigate but because of a sense of social responsibility,” she says. “While offsets are not the ultimate goal, they allow entrepreneurs, bankers and communities to be brought together and seated at the same table. That’s the added value.”
Mexican workers harvest produce on a farm in the western U.S. state of California. The number of temporary agricultural workers from Mexico has increased in recent years in the United States and with it, human rights violations. CREDIT: Courtesy of Linnaea Mallette
by Emilio Godoy (mexico city)
Inter Press Service
MEXICO CITY, Jul 08 (IPS) – Eduardo Reyes, originally from Puebla in central Mexico, was offered a 40-hour workweek contract by his recruiter and his employer in the United States, but ended up performing hundreds of hours of unpaid work that was not authorized because his visa had expired, unbeknownst to him.
Hired by recruiter Vazquez Citrus & Hauling (VCH), Reyes and five other temporary workers reached the United States between May and September 2017, months before starting work for Four Star Greenhouse in the Midwest state of Michigan.
In 2018, they worked more than 60 hours per week, received bad checks, and never obtained a copy of their contract, even though U.S. laws require that they be given one.
When they complained to Four Star and to their recruiter about the exploitative conditions, the latter turned them over to immigration authorities for deportation in July of that year because their visas had expired, which they had not been informed of by their agent.
In December 2017, the U.S. Department of Labor (DOL) authorized the arrival of 145 workers to the Four Star facilities in Carleton, Michigan. They were to earn 12.75 dollars per hour for 36 hours a week between January and July 2018.
Reyes’ case is set forth in complaint 2:20-CV-11692, seen by IPS, filed in the Southern Division of the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Michigan by six Mexican workers against the company and its manager, whom they accuse of wage gouging, forced labor and workplace reprisals.
This story of exploitation has an aggravating factor that shows the shortcomings of the U.S. government’s H-2A temporary agricultural workers program, or H-2A visa program.
The United States created H-2 visas for unskilled temporary foreign workers in 1943 and in the 1980s established H-2A categories for rural workers and 2B for other labor, such as landscaping, construction, and hotel staff.
These visas allow Mexicans, mainly from rural areas, to migrate seasonally to the U.S. to work legally on farms included on a list, with the intermediation of recruiting companies.
In 2016, the US Department of Transportation fined VCH, based in the state of Florida, for 22,000 dollars for a bus accident in which six H-2A workers were killed while returning from Monroe, Michigan to Mexico.
Two years later, the DOL’s Wage and Hour Division banned VCH and its owner for three years due to program violations in the state of North Carolina, such as failure to reimburse travel expenses and payroll and workday records. However, both continued to operate in the sector.
The workers’ odyssey begins in Mexico, where they are recruited by individual contractors -workers or former workers of a U.S. employer, colleagues, relatives or friends in their home communities – or by private U.S. agencies.
Structural problem
Reyes’ case illustrates the problems of labor exploitation, forced labor and the risk of human trafficking to which participants in the H-2A program are exposed, without intervention by Mexican or U.S. authorities to prevent human rights violations.
Advocates for the rights of the seasonal workers and experts pointed to worsening working conditions, warned of the threat of human trafficking and forced labor, and complained about the prevailing impunity.
According to Lilián López, representative in Mexico of the U.S.-based Polaris Project, the design and operation of the program result in a high risk of human trafficking and forced labor, due to factors such as the lack of supervision and interference by recruiters.
“Economic vulnerability puts migrants at risk, because many workers go into debt to get to the United States, and that gives the agencies a lot of power. They can set any kind of requirement for people to get the jobs. Sometimes recruiters make offers that look more attractive than they really are. That is fraud,” she told IPS in Mexico City.
The number of calls to the National Human Trafficking Hotline operated by Polaris in the US reflects the apparent increase in abuses. Between 2015 and 2017, 800 people on temporary visas, 500 of which were H-2A, called the hotline, compared to 2,890 people between 2018 and 2020 – a 360 percent increase.
Evy Peña, spokesperson for Mexico’s Migrant Rights Center, said temporary labor systems are designed to benefit employers, who have all the control, along with the recruiters.
“From the moment the workers are recruited, there is no transparency. There is a lack of oversight by the DOL, there are parts of recruitment that should be overseen by the Mexican government. There are things that the Mexican government should work out at home,” she told IPS from the northern city of Monterrey.
She said the situation has worsened because of the pandemic.
The United States and Mexico have idealized the H-2A program because it solves the lack of employment in rural areas, foments remittances that provide financial oxygen to those areas, and meets a vital demand in food-producing centers that supply U.S. households.
But the humanitarian costs are high, as the cases reviewed attest. Mexico’s Ministry of Labor and Social Welfare has 369 labor placement agencies registered in 29 of Mexico’s 33 states. For overseas labor recruitment, seven operate – including four in Mexico City -, a small number compared to the thousands of visas issued in 2021.
For its part, the DOL reports 241 licensed recruiters in the US working for a handful of companies in that country.
The ones authorized in Mexico do not appear on the US list and vice versa, in another example of the scarce exchange of information between the two partners.
The number of H-2A visas for Mexican workers is on the rise, with the U.S. government authorizing 201,123 in 2020, a high number driven by the pandemic. That number grew 22 percent in 2021, to a total of 246,738.
In the first four months of the year, U.S. consulates in Mexico issued 121,516 such visas, 18 percent more than in the same period of 2021, when they granted 102,952.
In 2021, the states with the highest demand for Mexican labor were Florida, Georgia, California, Washington and North Carolina, in activities such as agriculture, the operation of farm equipment and construction.
The United States and Mexico agreed to issue another 150,000 visas for temporary workers in an attempt to mitigate forced migration from the south, which will also include Central American seasonal workers.
Details of the expansion of the program will be announced by Presidents Joe Biden and Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador at a meeting to be held on Jul. 12 at the White House, with migration as one of the main topics on the agenda.
Mexican farm workers wait to be tested for COVID-19 in 2020 in Immolakee, a town in the southeastern U.S. state of Florida. The pandemic hit H-2A visa holders, who are mainly engaged in temporary agricultural work, hard. CREDIT: Doctors Without Borders
Indifference
Lidia Muñoz, a doctoral student at the University of Oregon in the United States who has studied labor recruitment, stresses that there are no policies on the subject in Mexico, even though the government is aware of the problem.
“There are regulations for recruitment agencies that are not followed to the letter,” she told IPS from Portland, the largest city in the northwestern state of Oregon. “Most recruiters are not registered. The intermediaries are the ones who earn the most. There is no proper oversight.”
Article 28 of Mexico’s Federal Labor Law of 1970 regulates the provision of services by workers hired within Mexico for work abroad, but in practice it is not enforced.
This regulation requires the registration of contracts with the labor authorities and the posting of a bond to guarantee compliance, and makes the foreign contractor responsible for transportation to and from the country, food and immigration expenses, as well as full payment of wages, compensation for occupational hazards and access to adequate housing.
In addition, Mexican workers must be entitled to social security for foreigners in the country where they offer their services.
While the Mexican government could resort to this article to protect the rights of migrants, it has refused to apply it.
Between 2009 and 2019, the Ministry of Labor conducted 91 inspections of labor placement agencies in nine states and imposed 12 fines for about 153,000 dollars, but did not fine any recruiters of seasonal workers. Furthermore, the records of the Federal Court of Conciliation and Arbitration do not contain labor lawsuits for breach of that regulation.
In addition, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs (SRE) does not know how many H-2A workers it has assisted through consular services. Likewise, it does not know how many complainants it has advised.
The Mexican consulate in Denver, Colorado received three labor complaints, dated Jul. 25, Aug. 12 and Oct. 28, 2021, which it referred to “specialized allies in the matter, who provided the relevant advice to the interested parties,” according to an SRE response to a request for information from IPS.
The consulate in Washington received “anonymous verbal reports” on labor issues, which it passed on to civil society organizations so that “the relevant support could be provided.”
Consular teams were active in some parts of the US in 2021. For example, Mexican officials visited eight corporations between May and September 2021 in Denver, Colorado.
In Philadelphia, Pennsylvania they visited 12 companies between April and August, 2021. In Milwaukee, Wisconsin they visited 26 companies between June 2021 and April of this year, and in Washington, DC six workplaces were visited between August and October 2021. However, the results of these visits are unknown.
These guidelines stipulate that hiring must be done in accordance with human rights, through voluntary agreements, free from deception or coercion, and with specific, verifiable and understandable conditions of employment, with no attached charges or job immobility.
Ariel Ruiz, an analyst with the U.S.-based Migration Policy Institute, is concerned about the expansion of the H-2A visa program without improvements in rights.
“There are labour rights violations before the workers arrive in the US, in recruitment there are often illegal payments, and we keep hearing reports of employers intimidating workers,” he told IPS from Washington.
“There are also problems in access to health services and legal representation” in case of abuse, added the analyst from the non-governmental institute.
Judicialization
In the last decade, at least 12 lawsuits have been filed in US courts by program workers against employers.
Muñoz, the expert from Oregon, said the trials can help reform the system.
“There have been cases that have resulted in visas for trafficking victims. But it is difficult to see changes in the United States. They may be possible in oversight. Legal changes have arisen because of wage theft from workers,” she said.
López, of Polaris, said the lawsuits were a good thing, but clarified that they did not solve the systemic problems. “What is needed is a root-and-branch reform of the system,” she said.
The United States has made trade union freedom in Mexico a priority. Peña asked that it also address the H-2A visa situation.
“If they’re serious about improving labor rights, they can’t ignore the responsibility they have for migrant workers. It’s like creating a double standard,” she said.
With regard to the expansion of the temporary visa program to Central Americans, the experts consulted expressed concern that it would lead to an increase in abuses.
This article was produced with support from the organizations Dignificando el Trabajo and the Avina Foundation’s Arropa Initiative in Mexico.
Electricity generation in the city of La Paz in the northwestern state of Baja California Sur depends primarily on a thermoelectric plant that burns fuel oil, a highly polluting fuel. The Mexican government plans to replace it with gas. CREDIT: Cerca
by Emilio Godoy (mexico city)
Inter Press Service
MEXICO CITY, Jun 30 (IPS) – Liquefied gas does not occupy a prominent position in Mexico’s energy mix, but the government wants to change that scenario, to take advantage of the crisis unleashed by Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and the need for new sources of the fuel due to the sanctions against Russia.
The war modified the global outlook for gas by accentuating Europe’s dependence on natural gas and forcing it to look for other suppliers due to the sanctions against Russia. If prior to the war that began on Feb. 24 there was an oversupply and a lack of interest in financing gas projects, now the equation has changed radically.
ln addition to promoting the installation of private plants, Mexican President Andrés Manuel López Obrador announced on Jun. 11 the construction of a three billion dollar natural gas liquefaction plant in the southern state of Oaxaca, to be run by the state-owned Federal Electricity Commission (CFE).
A new gas pipeline to be laid between Oaxaca and Coatzacoalcos, in the southeastern state of Tabasco, will help feed the liquefied natural gas (LNG) processing plant using gas from the United States.
In July 2021, the Mexican government created the state-owned company Gas Bienestar, to sell the fuel at subsidized prices and thus cushion the impact of the international rise in fuel prices, driven by the increase in demand after the peak of the COVID-19 pandemic, which has doubled since the invasion of Ukraine.
Mexico depends on U.S. gas for residential and industrial consumption, transported mostly by pipelines belonging to U.S. companies, which are now looking for ways to sell it in third party markets, re-exporting it from Mexico after liquefying it in processing plants built here.
But this model is criticized for chaining Mexico to gas in the long term and reinforcing dependence on fossil fuels, thus breaking with the commitment to an energy transition to decarbonize domestic consumption.
“This dependence is not sustainable,” Jaqueline Valenzuela, director of the non-governmental Center for Renewable Energy and Environmental Quality, told IPS from the northwestern city of La Paz. “What we are seeing is that we are receiving gas from fracking after the government promised to stop supporting that technology. It is incoherent.”
In La Paz, the capital of the state of Baja California Sur, most of the power generation depends on fuel oil, a highly polluting petroleum derivative that is also harmful to human health.
Since the 2013 energy reform, which opened the sector to private foreign and local capital, Mexico has become a recipient of gas from the United States, obtained through hydraulic fracturing (fracking), a technique that requires large amounts of polluting chemicals and water, and transported through pipelines.
A network of gas pipelines has been created in this country of 131 million people, with 27 state and private pipelines, for distribution over a territory of almost two million square kilometers.
The recipients of the gas are some 50 thermoelectric combined cycle plants – which burn gas to generate steam for electricity – and turbogas units, both state-owned and private.
Increasingly, however, the LNG processed in Mexico will also be destined for markets in other continents, which are now eager for suppliers that are not facing Western sanctions.
Opportunism
Among the beneficiaries of the new world gas scenario are Mexican facilities that receive the fuel, liquefy it and re-export it by ship, to take advantage of the rising cost of the material.
Four private plants supply LNG in the northeast and northwest of the country, mainly for thermoelectric plants and industrial consumption.
Since 2008, the private Energía Costa Azul (ECA), located in the municipality of Ensenada, Baja California, has been operating with a capacity of one billion cubic feet (bcf) of gas per day, owned by Infraestructura Energética Nova (IEnova), a Mexican subsidiary of the US company Sempra Energy, which invested some 1.2 billion dollars in the facility.
In the Port of Pichilingue, also in Baja California Sur, the terminal of the same name, with the capacity to process three million tons of LNG per year and owned by the U.S. company New Fortress, has been operating since July 2021. The processing plant supplies the derivative to a local thermoelectric plant.
In Manzanillo, in the western state of Colima, the KMS Terminal, owned by Korean and Japanese corporations, has been operating since 2012 with a capacity of 3.8 million tons per year.
On the other side of the country, in Altamira, in the northeastern state of Tamaulipas, the terminal of the same name, co-owned by the Dutch company Vopak and Enagás from Spain, has been operating since 2006 with a capacity of 5.7 million tons per year.
Mexico as a producer
Mexico is the 12th largest oil producer in the world and the 17th largest gas producer. In terms of proven crude oil reserves, it ranks 20th, and 41st in natural gas, but its hydrocarbon industry is declining due to the scarcity of easily extractable deposits.
In Mexico, Latin America’s second largest economy, between 2019 and May this year natural gas production ranged between 4.6 and 4.8 bcf per day, according to official data.
Extraction is lower than domestic demand and to balance the deficit Mexico imports gas, especially from the United States, from which it imported a maximum of 935 million and a minimum of 640 million cubic feet per day (MMcf/d) over the last three years, according to figures from state-owned oil giant Petróleos Mexicanos (Pemex).
In addition, LNG processing has been falling. In 2019, the country refined 100,000 barrels per day (bpd) equivalent, which fell to 84,000 in 2021. And in April 2022, the total dropped to 43,000 bpd.
Imports of LNG vary widely: Mexico imported almost 54 billion bpd in 2019, a total that fell by one billion in 2020 and rose to 67 billion bpd in 2021, dropping again to 27 billion bpd last April. In addition, it has not exported LNG since July 2020, due to the demand of the domestic market.
Meanwhile, U.S. pipeline exports to Mexico have quadrupled in recent years, according to data from the U.S. government’s Energy Information Administration.
“While the U.S. must help its allies in need, the ability of U.S. gas to provide reliable and affordable energy to the world is quite limited,” Tyson Slocum, director of the Energy Program at the nonprofit consumer advocacy organization Public Citizen, told IPS from Washington.
Slocum said that “our concern is that U.S. exports to Mexico will simply feed Mexican exports of liquefied gas.”
Addiction
The greed for gas attracts private and public companies alike. The U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) has issued at least five permits to export LNG and to re-export it via Mexico since 2016. In addition, one project is under construction and three others are planned on Mexico’s Pacific coast.
IEnova and France’s TotalEnergies are building phase one of ECA, a plant with a capacity of 3.25 million tons of LNG per year with an investment of two billion dollars, scheduled to start operating in 2024. Meanwhile, phase two is under design, to produce an additional 12 million tons per year.
Mexico Pacific Limited LLC (MPL), owned by three U.S. private investment funds, is building another regasification plant in Puerto Libertad in the northwestern state of Sonora, with an investment of 2.5 billion dollars, which is projected to export 14 million tons of LNG annually to Asia.
The first stage is to begin in 2025, with 4.7 million tons, President López Obrador said at one of his morning press conferences.
In December 2018, the DOE authorized MPL to export up to 1.7 bcf per day from the future facility, an endorsement required to export the fuel from the U.S.
In addition, the Vista Pacifico LNG project planned by Sempra in Topolobampo, in the northwestern state of Sinaloa, is to transport fuel from the Permian Basin oil-and-gas-producing area in West Texas for re-export to Asia and Europe, in addition to several destinations in South America.
In April 2021 Vista Pacifico received permission from the DOE to export 40 bcf per year – 110 mcf per day – to Mexico. Of that total, 200 bcf of gas per year – 550 mcf per day – would be for liquefaction and re-export.
Last January, Mexico’s state-owned CFE and U.S.-based Sempra signed a voluntary memorandum of understanding for the probable construction of a plant for this purpose.
Also in Sinaloa, the private LNG Alliance of Singapore is building the Amigo LNG plant, which will begin operations in 2027 with the capacity to process 3.9 million tons per year.
“The country continues to bet on the fossil fuel extractivist model. We do not see another energy alternative being built in the face of the climate emergency,” complained Edmundo del Pozo, coordinator of the Territory, Rights and Development area of the non-governmental Fundar Center for Research and Analysis.
The expert told IPS that the modernization of hydroelectric plants and the strengthening of Pemex promoted by López Obrador since he took office in December 2018 have favored gas consumption.
“Continuing with fossil fuels is not an option. We are fighting for the inputs used to generate electricity to be local,” such as sunlight, said Valenzuela, the head of the non-governmental Center for Renewable Energy and Environmental Quality.
Lack of disclosure of contracts, payments and socio-environmental impacts characterize Mexico’s coal industry. The picture shows workers at the Nueva Rosita coal mine in the northern state of Coahuila. CREDIT: Courtesy of Cristóbal Trejo
by Emilio Godoy (mexico city)
Inter Press Service
MEXICO CITY, May 09 (IPS) – In the northern Mexican state of Coahuila the current situation of coal, used mainly to generate electricity, is opaque.
A veil surrounds the industry in terms of production, consumption, inspections, pollution, contracts and the state of the mines that supply coal to two power plants belonging to the governmental Federal Electricity Commission (CFE).
In the southern state of Guerrero, another power plant uses coal from Australia and Colombia.
Cristina Auerbach, director of the non-governmental organization Familia Pasta de Conchos, said there is a veil of mystery surrounding the industry in Mexico.
“The system is not transparent. Sometimes the issue goes unnoticed, because at a global level coal in Mexico is insignificant. But it is so problematic that they can’t make it transparent because they can’t order transparency” in the country, she told IPS.
Her organization was created in 2006, following an explosion caused by methane accumulation that year at the Pasta de Conchos mine in Coahuila, which left 65 workers dead, 63 of whom were buried in the explosion and whose bodies have never been recovered.
Coal is mined in Coahuila and Tamaulipas, in the north of this Latin American country. In December 2020, according to official figures, Mexico produced 459,414 tons of coal, which is highly polluting and harmful to human health.
But to meet domestic demand, the country imports about nine million tons per year.
Last March, coal-fired generation contributed more than 2,000 megawatts of electricity, three percent of the national total. In Coahuila, there are some 40 underground coal mines.
EITI, created in 2003, brings together more than 50 countries and promotes open and accountable management of oil, gas and mineral resources. Mexico joined EITI in 2017 and is currently undergoing the first review of its compliance with the standards, a process that began last August and whose results are to be published in the coming months.
In Latin America, Colombia, a producer of hydrocarbons and coal, has the most advanced status, receiving a rating of “satisfactory progress” in implementing the EITI standards. The South American nation practices proactive transparency, issuing a biannual report.
Peru, another oil and gas producer, has made “significant progress,” according to the global transparency standard.
Argentina, Ecuador and Trinidad and Tobago are other hydrocarbon producers in the region that are also under evaluation, while Brazil and Venezuela do not belong to EITI.
The José López Portillo thermoelectric plant, owned by the governmental Federal Electricity Commission and located in the northern state of Coahuila, burns coal to generate energy in Mexico. CREDIT: CFE
OGP, founded in 2011, groups 78 nations and hundreds of civil society organizations. In Mexico, the 4th National Action Plan 2019-2021 revolves around 13 topics, including transparency in final beneficiaries of companies in the hydrocarbon and mining sector.
Transparency can help strengthen accountability, the fight against corruption, the evaluation of public policies and informed decision-making by stakeholders, such as local communities.
“There is no effective access to information” in the state-owned oil giant Petróleos Mexicanos (Pemex), she told IPS.
“With regard to the issue of coal, the picture is very similar,” she added. “There is no national registry of how many pits there are. There have been complaints about illegal coal mining. The final results are quite poor. We don’t know if it is lack of commitment, or a lack of interest in promoting transparency.”
The report, prepared by organizations participating in EITI, exposed phenomena such as the partial existence of data on royalty payments for the exploitation or use of national waters and the lack of complete files on environmental matters.
Another case addresses the unavailability of geo-referenced oil well locations.
The document found that out of 49 hydrocarbon contracts of EITI companies, only 10 include social impact assessments, while only two contain an environmental impact analysis.
Mexico ranks 12th in the world in oil production, 17th in gas extraction, 20th in proven crude oil reserves and 41st in proven natural gas deposits. But its position in the oil industry is declining due to the scarcity of easily extractable hydrocarbons.
Since 2020, hydrocarbon production has been dropping. In February 2020 oil extraction totaled 1.73 million barrels per day; the following year, 1.67 million; and last February, 1.63 million, according to the government’s National Hydrocarbons Commission.
Gas has followed a similar trajectory, with production totaling 4.93 billion cubic feet per day in February 2020; 4.838 billion cubic feet per day 12 months later; and 4.673 billion cubic feet per day last February.
The lack of sufficient domestic gas makes imports necessary, especially from the United States, which have been on the rise since 2020, after a drop between 2018 and 2019.
Imports of gas grew six percent between 2020 and 2021 – from 853 million cubic feet to 904.6 million. Last February, imports totaled 640 million, more than half the volume of the entire previous year.
View of a service station of the state oil giant Pemex in Mexico City. The company’s activities suffer from a lack of transparency and access to information, despite commitments in this regard made by the Mexican government. CREDIT: Emilio Godoy/IPS
Empty promises
For its part, OGP includes the development of a National Action Plan to drive beneficial ownership transparency and initiate the publication of such data from hydrocarbon and mining companies, with the aim of building a corporate Beneficial Ownership Register by 2023.
Actions included the preparation of a diagnosis of final beneficiaries in Mexico and a pilot project for the dissemination of information, which have been completed.
These examples show how little importance the Mexican government attaches to access to public information and transparency in the extractive sector.
In addition, they highlight the challenges ahead for the government in implementing the regional Agreement on Access to Information, Public Participation and Justice in Environmental Matters in Latin America and the Caribbean, in force since April 2021 and known as the Escazú Agreement.
In 2020, CFE purchased 1.58 million tons of coal through 60 direct contracts awarded to producers in the Coahuila coal region, without environmental and social impact assessments, as revealed last November by the non-governmental organization México Evalúa.
Although the country evolved in the Resource Governance Index, developed by the non-governmental Natural Resource Governance Institute, between 2019 and 2021, issues such as governance of social and environmental impacts still need to be improved.
“Governance of local impacts is poor, mainly due to opacity in the disclosure of environmental mitigation plans, which the government considers confidential,” the paper states.
Increased pressure
In 2021 and 2022, EITI priorities in Mexico include providing information about the energy transition, supporting open data, providing information on investment decisions, strengthening revenue mobilization, addressing corruption risks, and measuring impact.
In the design of OGP’s new action plan, which is to be ready in August, civil society wants to include a commitment to transparency in hydrocarbons, mining and electric energy.
Auerbach, the activist, complained that communities have become “sacrifice zones” in exchange for mining.
“They don’t care if we are informed or not, if we protest or not, it changes absolutely nothing,” she said. “There are environmental liabilities from 50 years ago, from 30 years ago or from last week. And that is not included. Whatever the CFE and Pemex say is fine and the rest just go along with it. Under this government, they are untouchable. The Ministry of the Environment says that it is going to review how the area will end up when they finish exploiting the concessions in 50 years.”
EITI’s alternative report suggested publishing information on environmental impact mitigation in priority maritime areas for biodiversity conservation that host oil projects and payments for environmental licenses, environmental taxes, non-compliance with regulations or environmental impacts.
Pérez said the Escazú Agreement offers an opportunity to promote transparency and access to information.
“The ideal conditions don’t exist, but Escazú is an opportunity. On the environmental issue, the lack of information is well identified. The lack of public commitment is worrisome. We can link EITI and Escazú,” she said.
Every other Tuesday, a working group of Mayan women meets to review the organization and progress of their food saving and production project in Uayma, in the state of Yucatán in southeastern Mexico. CREDIT: Courtesy of the Ko’ox Tani Foundation
by Emilio Godoy (uayma, mexico)
Inter Press Service
UAYMA, Mexico, Apr 26 (IPS) – Every other Tuesday at 5:00 p.m. sharp, a group of 26 Mexican women meet for an hour to discuss the progress of their work and immediate tasks. Anyone who arrives late must pay a fine of about 25 cents on the dollar.
The collective has organized in the municipality of Uayma (which means “Not here” in the Mayan language) to learn agroecological practices, as well as how to save money and produce food for family consumption and the sale of surpluses.
“We have to be responsible. With savings we can do a little more,” María Petul, a married Mayan indigenous mother of two and a member of the group “Lool beh” (“Flower of the road” in Mayan), told IPS in this municipality of just over 4,000 inhabitants, 1,470 kilometers southeast of Mexico City in the state of Yucatán, on the Yucatán peninsula.
The home garden “gives me enough to eat and sell, it helps me out,” said Petul as she walked through her small garden where she grows habanero peppers (Capsicum chinense, traditional in the area), radishes and tomatoes, surrounded by a few trees, including a banana tree whose fruit will ripen in a few weeks and some chickens that roam around the earthen courtyard.
The face of Norma Tzuc, who is also married with two daughters, lights up with enthusiasm when she talks about the project. “I am very happy. We now have an income. It’s exciting to be able to help my family. Other groups already have experience and tell us about what they’ve been doing,” Tzuc told IPS.
The two women and the rest of their companions, whose mother tongue is Mayan, participate in the project “Women saving to address climate change”, run by the non-governmental Ko’ox Tani Foundation (“Let’s Go Ahead”, in Mayan), dedicated to community development and social inclusion, based in Merida, the state capital.
This phase of the project is endowed with some 100,000 dollars from the Commission for Environmental Cooperation (CEC), the non-binding environmental arm of the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA), formed in 1994 by Canada, the United States and Mexico and replaced in 2020 by another trilateral agreement.
The initiative got off the ground in February and will last two years, with the aim of training some 250 people living in extreme poverty, mostly women, in six locations in the state of Yucatán.
The maximum savings for each woman in the group is about 12 dollars every two weeks and the minimum is 2.50 dollars, and they can withdraw the accumulated savings to invest in inputs or animals, or for emergencies, with the agreement of the group. Through the project, the women will receive seeds, agricultural inputs and poultry, so that they can install vegetable gardens and chicken coops on their land.
The women write down the quotas in a white notebook and deposit the savings in a gray box, kept in the house of the group’s president.
José Torre, project director of the Ko’ox Tani Foundation, explained that the main areas of entrepreneurship are: community development, food security, livelihoods and human development.
“What we have seen over time is that the savings meetings become a space for human development, in which they find support and solidarity from their peers, make friends and build trust,” he told IPS during a tour of the homes of some of the savings group participants in Uayma.
The basis for the new initiative in this locality is a similar program implemented between 2018 and 2021 in other Yucatecan municipalities, in which the organization worked with 1400 families.
María Petul, a Mayan indigenous woman, plants chili peppers, tomatoes, radishes and medicinal herbs in the vegetable garden in the courtyard of her home in Uayma, in the southeastern Mexican state of Yucatán. CREDIT: Emilio Godoy/IPS
Unequal oasis
Yucatan, a region home to 2.28 million people, suffers from a high degree of social backwardness, with 34 percent of the population living in moderate poverty, 33 percent suffering unmet needs, 5.5 percent experiencing income vulnerability and almost seven percent living in extreme poverty.
The COVID-19 pandemic that hit this Latin American country in February 2020 exacerbated these conditions in a state that depends on agriculture, tourism and services, similar to the other two states that make up the Yucatán Peninsula: Campeche and Quintana Roo.
Inequality is also a huge problem in the state, although the Gini Index dropped from 0.51 in 2014 to 0.45, according to a 2018 government report, based on data from 2016 (the latest year available). The Gini coefficient, where 1 indicates the maximum inequality and 0 the greatest equality, is used to calculate income inequality.
The situation of indigenous women is worse, as they face marginalization, discrimination, violence, land dispossession and lack of access to public services.
More than one million indigenous people live in the state.
Women participating in a project funded by the North American Commission for Environmental Cooperation record their savings in a white notebook and deposit them in a gray box. Mayan indigenous woman Norma Tzuc belongs to a group taking part in the initiative in Uayma, in the southeastern Mexican state of Yucatán. CREDIT: Emilio Godoy/IPS
Climate crisis, yet another vulnerability
Itza Castañeda, director of equity at the non-governmental World Resources Institute (WRI), highlights the persistence of structural inequalities in the peninsula that exacerbate the effects of the climate crisis.
“In the three states there is greater inequality between men and women. This stands in the way of women’s participation and decision-making. Furthermore, the existing evidence shows that there are groups in conditions of greater vulnerability to climate impacts,” she told IPS from the city of Tepoztlán, near Mexico City.
She added that “climate change accentuates existing inequalities, but a differentiated impact assessment is lacking.”
Official data indicate that there are almost 17 million indigenous people in Mexico, representing 13 percent of the total population, of which six million are women.
Of indigenous households, almost a quarter are headed by women, while 65 percent of indigenous girls and women aged 12 and over perform unpaid work compared to 35 percent of indigenous men – a sign of the inequality in the system of domestic and care work.
To add to their hardships, the Yucatan region is highly vulnerable to the effects of the climate crisis, such as droughts, devastating storms and rising sea levels. In June 2021, tropical storm Cristobal caused the flooding of Uayma, where three women’s groups are operating under the savings system.
For that reason, the project includes a risk management and hurricane early warning system.
The Mexican government is building a National Care System, but the involvement of indigenous women and the benefits for them are still unclear.
Petul looks excitedly at the crops planted on her land and dreams of a larger garden, with more plants and more chickens roaming around, and perhaps a pig to be fattened. She also thinks about the possibility of emulating women from previous groups who have set up small stores with their savings.
“They will lay eggs and we can eat them or sell them. With the savings we can also buy roosters, in the market chicks are expensive,” said Petul, brimming with hope, who in addition to taking care of her home and family sells vegetables.
Her neighbor Tzuc, who until now has been a homemaker, said that the women in her group have to take into account the effects of climate change. “It has been very hot, hotter than before, and there is drought. Fortunately, we have water, but we have to take care of it,” she said.
For his part, Torre underscored the results of the savings groups. The women “left extreme poverty behind. The pandemic hit hard, because there were families who had businesses and stopped selling. The organization gave them resilience,” he said.
In addition, a major achievement is that the households that have already completed the project continue to save, regularly attend meetings and have kept producing food.
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