Summit host Mexico: Role model or sinner on climate? (Feature)

By Franz Smets Nov 22, 2010, 3:11 GMT

Mexico City - Mexico, a land between two oceans with 10,000 kilometres of coastline, and mountains, deserts, forests and volcanoes, wanted to become a role model in environmental issues as it hosts the UN climate summit next week in Cancun.

But political realities may hamper those plans.

Since it was decided that Cancun would be the site of the next UN Conference of Parties, known as COP 16, Mexico has been taking major pains to make the two-week conference a resounding success, but is also looking to revamp its own position on environmental issues.

Protecting the environment and the global climate are top priorities for Mexican President Felipe Calderon and his government.

Mexico, like the adjoining regions of Central America and the Caribbean, is greatly affected by climate change. More than 500 people have died this year in floods and mudslides in the area, which are partly blamed on climate change.

Millions of people live in places that are at risk. There are droughts and other threats for farming cultures, which sometimes leave areas on the verge of famine, like last year in Guatemala and this year in northwestern Nicaragua.

Mexicans know the Cancun summit, which begins November 29, will not deliver a desired breakthrough global treaty on climate change. The expensive meeting was degraded to a ministerial gathering, and presidents are no longer expected in the Mexican resort city.

'The worst possible scenario would be if no agreement whatsoever was reached in Cancun,' said Mexican Foreign Minister Patricia Espinoza.

In an intensive exercise in travelling diplomacy on the part of Calderon, Espinosa and Environment Minister Juan Rafael Elvira Quesada, Mexicans have tried to bring together the world's most important countries.

An emerging economy, Mexico considers itself a mediator between rich and poor nations. In recent years, it has committed itself to reducing its own greenhouse gas emissions by 30 per cent over a decade. And yet Calderon also demands financial compensation beyond the figures that industrialized nations have agreed to so far.

Last year, the Mexican government announced plans to plant 250 million trees across the country. There is also a programme to compensate owners of woodlands if they protect their forests.

'During my term, this programme has comprised a total surface of more than 2 million hectares. That is a surface the size of El Salvador,' Calderon wrote in the magazine of the German Konrad Adenauer Foundation.

A new law to protect the climate is being considered to help save energy and reduce greenhouse gases. There's room for improvement - water tanks on millions of rooftops are currently warmed up with gas. It is still early days in Mexico for the use of solar and wind power.

Putting a brake on cutting down forests is not much more than the government's wishful thinking. Elvira Quesada admitted recently that only 10 per cent of the 250 million trees that were planted have actually settled and grown.

The Ecology Council in the state of Puebla, in charge among others for the nature park around the Popocatepetl, Iztaccihuatl, Malinche and Orizaba volcanoes, estimates that every year between 200,000 and 1.2 million hectares of forest are lost. Even protected nature parks are sometimes misused for farming.

Forest areas are particularly often destroyed in the dry season that ends in June, when they can be simply burnt down. According to the National Centre for the Control of Wildfires, 744 such fires have been registered in the first 10 months of this year.

'Mexico remains far from the fight against climate change,' the Mexican daily Milenio concluded.

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