Stories written by Emilio Godoy
Emilio Godoy is a Mexico-based correspondent who covers the environment, human rights and sustainable development. He has been a journalist since 1996 and has written for various media outlets in Mexico, Central America and Spain.
| Twitter |
On Mar. 9, more than half of Mexico reported maximum temperatures above 30 degrees Celsius, although spring has not even arrived yet in this Latin American country located in the northern hemisphere.
Tatei Haramara, one of the sacred sites of the Wixárika indigenous people in the state of Nayarit in northwestern Mexico, has shrunk in size from its original area and is suffering from a lack of legal protection.
In the municipality of Papantla, in the southeastern Mexican state of Veracruz, the non-governmental Regional Coordinator of Solidarity Action in Defense of the Huasteca-Totonacapan Territory (Corason) works with local communities on empowering organizations, advocacy capacity in policies and litigation strategies.
The Mayan Train (TM), run by the government’s National Tourism Development Fund (Fonatur), threatens the Mayan Jungle, the second largest in Latin America after the Amazon rainforest. its ecosystems and indigenous communities, as well as underground caves and cenotes - freshwater sinkholes resulting from the collapse of limestone bedrock that exposes groundwater.
A dark mole dots the brown earth, among the green scrub at this spot in southeastern Mexico. A repetitive “glug, glug,” a noise sounding like a thirsty animal, and an intense stench lead to this site, hidden in the undergrowth, where a broken pipe has created a pool of dense oil.
The pillar coral (Dendrogyra cylindrus), which takes its name from its shape, is found throughout the Caribbean Sea, but its population has declined by more than 80 percent since 1990. As a result, the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) has listed it as "critically endangered" due to the effects of the human-induced climate crisis.
In addition to its nutritional properties, quinoa, an ancestral grain from the Andes, also has cosmetic uses, as stated by the resource use and benefit-sharing permit ABSCH-IRCC-PE-261033-1 awarded in February to a private individual under a 15-month commercial use contract.
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.
VERACRUZ, Mexico - By 2025, the state-owned Petroleos Mexicanos (Pemex) should comply with Mexican regulations to produce clean fuels, including marine ones, but there’s an obstacle: Mexico lacks a plan for the development of cleaner marine fuels.
Mexico has more than 11,000 square kilometers of continental coastline and intense maritime traffic. This Latin American country received 12 045 vessels as of July, compared to 11 971 on that date in 2021.
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 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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
At home, Isabel Bracamontes uses gas only for cooking. "We try to prepare food that doesn't need cooking, like salads," she says in the southeastern Mexican city of Mérida.
Along the wide slash of white earth in southwestern Mexico there are no longer trees or animals. In their place, orange signs with white stripes warn visitors: "Heavy machinery in motion," "No unauthorized personnel allowed".
As he points to a white shelf that holds bean seeds, Austrian biologist Peter Wenzl explains that one of them, obtained in Ecuador, provided a gene for the discovery that major seed protein arcelin offers resistance to the bean weevil.