Blog Post 20: Mexico and Climate Change
Central America has been described by Todd Miller, author of ‘Storming the Wall: Climate Change, Migration and Homeland Security’ as ‘ground zero’ for climate change.
Mexico is part of the dry corridor region, where the population mainly consists of subsistence farmers who are solely dependent on agriculture for income, meaning that 400,000 people in this corridor of Central America are food insecure, due to drought. The fact that Central America is an isthmus, meaning that there are two large bodies of water on either side, intensifies the potential impacts of climate change, such as sea level rise and extreme weather events. In turn, the prevalence of these events further destabilises the political system which is already riddled with corruption, resulting in poverty, little money invested in infrastructure and high levels of gang culture and crime. In fact, according to a Columbia University Report cited in the New York Times (2017), ‘where rainfall declines, “the risk of a low-level conflict escalating to a full-scale civil war approximately doubles the following year.”’. The increased occurrence of drought, along with the increased prices of inputs for farmers (such as seeds, fertilisers and machinery) and increased prices of consumer goods mean that it is no longer viable as a source of income; and here we can see why climate change is described by the pentagon as a ‘threat multiplier’. The lack of diversification of industry often acts as a push factor for farmers to migrate, at first internally to urban areas and then externally. In this blog post, I will discuss the impacts of climate change and population growth from internal migration in Mexico City, focusing particularly on water supply.
Because of the increased frequency of drought and increased temperatures leading to evaporation, Mexico City is facing a potentially catastrophic problem; the city is running out of water. This problem is accentuated by a growing population of migrants escaping rural poverty, which has led to the city growing by over 100 times since 1950. This urban sprawl of development has destroyed lakes, which underground aquifers rely on to be replenished, meaning water now has to be transported via pipeline. Mexico City now imports 40% of its water this way from rural areas, and about 40% of this is lost due to leaks and stealing. This seems to me like a lose-lose situation; where the rural population are marginalised by the removal of their water supply, hindering their livelihoods because they can no longer irrigate crops, but also creates tension in urban areas where so much water is lost in transportation that some people are forced to go without.
Some residents have spoken about the corruption that occurs in the distribution of water. One woman, interviewed by the New York Times explains how everything is political. To obtain water you must show your voting card and allegiance to particular parties: ‘’If you are in the wrong political party, you don’t get water’.
Draining water from the already depleting aquifers to find new water supplies is not a solution either. The city’s soil is built on clay and volcanic soil which sinks unevenly as the land is drilled into further, which is costly both economically and environmentally.
Mexico the world’s 13th-biggest emitter of carbon dioxide, and despite its promises to tackle the issue of climate change with a new carbon tax, Mexico has recently given foreign investors a chance to tap into its oil and gas reserves. With 80% of Mexico’s energy coming from fossil fuels, it is clear that Mexico is actually hindering its movement towards sustainability and worsening climate change in a country that is amongst the most detrimentally affected in the world.
Huge systemic changes need to be undertaken so that corruption and reliance on fossil fuels does not create even more problems for both the rural and urban populations of Mexico. It is said that up to 10% of Mexico City’s population between the age of 15 and 65 will migrate to North America as climate refugees, further increasing tension, social exclusion and focus on migration laws. With no country having a strong climate change refugee policy, it is important to raise awareness about what the future may hold for Central America and the rest of the globe, which is what I have aimed to do here.
Huge systemic changes need to be undertaken so that corruption and reliance on fossil fuels does not create even more problems for both the rural and urban populations of Mexico. It is said that up to 10% of Mexico City’s population between the age of 15 and 65 will migrate to North America as climate refugees, further increasing tension, social exclusion and focus on migration laws. With no country having a strong climate change refugee policy, it is important to raise awareness about what the future may hold for Central America and the rest of the globe, which is what I have aimed to do here.
Read more about Mexico and climate change in the following links; where much of the information in this blog post comes from;
Schmidt-Verkerk, K. (2010) ‘Buscando la vida’ – How Do Perceptions of Increasingly Dry Weather Affect Migratory Behaviour in Zacatecas, Mexico? In: Environment, Forced Migration and Social Vulnerability: 99-113
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