The process of making corn tortillas – the filling, age-old traditional food throughout much of Mexico and Central America – pollutes huge volumes of water and consumes a great deal of energy.

Tortilla production is a source of water pollution in Mexico. Credit: Verónica Díaz Favela/IPS

“Some years ago, a group of millers came to ask us if we had done anything in this area, and we realised that with thousands of mills in the country, the problem was big and something should be done,” Gerardo Ramírez Romero, a researcher at the biotechnology department of the Autonomous Metropolitan University of Mexico (UAM), told Tierramérica.

That is how the study, “Nixtamal Mills: Towards a Sustainable Enterprise”, began.

Corn tortillas are consumed by people of all socioeconomic levels in Mexico and, like bread, accompany nearly every meal. They are also the basis for tacos, a popular dish.

At the mill, the corn is cooked in limewater, a calcium hydroxide solution, and then ground to make the dough for tortillas. The process, nixtamalisation, was developed by indigenous cultures in the pre-Hispanic era.

To make the tortilla, about 30 grams of the dough are made into a ball, then rolled out to form a circle, approximately 14 centimetres in diameter, which is then cooked on a hot surface on both sides.

Cooking the corn in limewater produces a byproduct that is rich in starch, cellulose and calcium, a mix known as nejayote, and dumped directly down the drain, said Ramírez Romero.

Every kilogramme of corn uses two litres of water. And a small mill can pollute upwards of 1,000 litres of water each day. There are 20,000 of these mills in Mexico. In the first phase of the three-month UAM study, the experts were able to reduce water pollution by 80 percent, by removing the solids and producing more dough with them.

The next step will be to use solar energy to heat the water in which the maize is boiled, as a means of reducing consumption of natural gas, said Juan José Ambriz García, head of UAM’s department of engineering processes and hydraulics.

But the sun barely heats the water to 50 degrees Celsius, and the corn cooks at 90 degrees. The temporary solution is to pre-heat the water with solar energy and then make up the difference using gas, Ambriz told Tierramérica.

This way, the mills would be able to save 40 percent on gas.

In the future, changes in the design of the cooking process itself will make it unnecessary to reach 90 degrees, he said.

For now, solar energy is only being used to heat the mill water in the laboratory. What is needed is to develop machinery that is within the means of the tortilla producers and also allows them to save electricity – and that could take several years.

Currently, the largest cost to the mills, after the corn itself, is energy. A mid-sized mill – one that can provide dough to 10 tortilla factories – spends some 2,300 dollars a month on energy.

Ideally, this technology would be distributed through the “Mi Tortilla” programme, created by the federal government for millers to acquire new machinery, said Ambriz.

This type of mill “is a technological contribution from Mexico to the world,” he said. “The key aspect is that they were left as they were 100 years ago.”

In the past, the mills were subsidised by the government, Yolanda Hernández Franco, an anthropologist at UAM, pointed out. In the 1990s, the mills still received corn, gas, electricity and water at reduced prices.

The tortilla factories and the mills received frequent visits from inspectors in that period, but what they were doing was collecting bribes, she said.

When the subsidies for the tortilla industry ended, the inspectors and the corruption disappeared, but the millers were left “facing a globalised world,” not knowing how to operate more efficiently, said the anthropologist.

“If the pollution regulations were applied, no mill would survive,” Hernández said.

In the first phase of the study, the focus was on mills in the capital, but the next phase will encompass mills in different parts of the country.

The mills tend to be family operations, passed down from generation to generation, providing the dough to a group of tortilla factories, usually belonging to the same person. The largest mills supply more than 20 factories.

The mills themselves usually also have their own tortilla factory. People wait their turn to buy their daily tortillas for less than a dollar per kilo.

According to a survey by corn flour producer Gruma, Mexico’s 107 million people each consume 80 kilos of tortillas per year. There is no precise information on daily family consumption, but it is believed to have fallen 25 to 30 percent in recent years, due to increasing prices and families moving away from the traditional Mexican diet.

Felipe Galindo owns a mill. He began working there when he was 10 years old, sweeping the floors. Thirty-five years ago, the mill supplied 25 tortilla factories with dough, but now it’s down to three, he said.

Galindo believes the decline is the result of the perception that tortillas are fattening, even though “they have fewer calories than a slice of bread.”

According to Ambriz, “the tortilla is an excellent food,” and “along with the pre-Hispanic combination of greens or protein of some kind, including insects, it’s an excellent diet.”

(*This story was originally published by Latin American newspapers that are part of the Tierramérica network. Tierramérica is a specialised news service produced by IPS with the backing of the United Nations Development Programme, United Nations Environment Programme and the World Bank.)

Mexican scientists are working to make “nixtamalization,” the ancestral technique for preparing maize to be made into tortillas, a more environmentally sustainable process.

Tortilla production is a source of water pollution in Mexico - Verónica Díaz Favela/IPS

“Some years ago, a group of millers came to ask us if we had done anything in this area, and we realized that with thousands of mills in the country, the problem was big and something should be done,” Gerardo Ramírez Romero, researcher at the biotechnology department of the Autonomous Metropolitan University of Mexico (UAM), told Tierramérica.

That is how the study, “Nixtamal Mills: Towards a Sustainable Enterprise”, began.

Corn tortillas are consumed by people of all socioeconomic levels in Mexico and, like bread, accompanies nearly every meal. It is also the basis for tacos, a popular dish.

At the mill, the maize is cooked in limewater, a calcium hydroxide solution, and then ground to make the dough for tortillas. The process, nixtamalization, was developed by indigenous peoples of the pre-Hispanic era. To make the tortilla, about 30 grams of the dough are made into a ball, then rolled out to form a circle, approximately 14 centimeters in diameter. It is then cooked on a hot surface on both sides.

Cooking the maize in limewater produces a byproduct that is rich in starch, cellulose and calcium, a mix known as nejayote, and dumped directly down the drain, said Ramírez Romero.

Every kilogram of maize uses two liters of water. And a small mill can contaminate 1,000 liters of water each day. There are 20,000 of these mills in Mexico. In the first phase of the UAM study – which lasted three months – the experts were able to reduce water contamination 80 percent, by removing the solids and producing more dough with them.

The next step will be to use solar energy to heat the water in which the maize is boiled, as a means of reducing consumption of natural gas, said Juan José Ambriz García, head of UAM's department of engineering processes and hydraulics.

But the sun barely heats the water to 50 degrees Celsius, and the maize cooks at 90 degrees. The temporary solution is to pre-heat the water with solar energy and then make up the difference using gas, Ambriz told Tierramérica.

This way, the mills would be able to save 40 percent on gas.

In the future, changes in the design of the cooking process itself will make it unnecessary to reach 90 degrees, he said.

For now, solar energy is only being used to heat the mill water in the laboratory. What is needed is to develop machinery that is within the means of the tortilla producers and also allows them to save electricity – and that could take several years.

Currently, the largest cost to the mills, after the maize itself, is energy. A mid-sized mill – that provides dough to 10 tortilla factories – spends some 2,300 dollars a month on energy.

Ideally, this technology would be distributed through the “Mi Tortilla” program, created by the federal government for millers to acquire new machinery, said Ambriz.

This type of mill “is a technological contribution from Mexico to the world,” he said. “What is critical is that they were left as they were 100 years ago.”

In the past, the mills were subsidized by the government, pointed out Yolanda Hernández Franco, an anthropologist at UAM. In the 1990s, the mills still received maize, gas, electricity and water at reduced prices.

The tortilla factories and the mills received frequent visits from inspectors in that period, but what they were doing was collecting bribes, she said.

When the subsidies for the tortilla industry ended, the inspectors and the corruption disappeared, but the millers were left “facing a globalized world,” not knowing how to operate more efficiently, said the anthropologist.

“If the pollution regulations were applied, no mill would survive,” Hernández said.

In the first phase of the study, the focus was on mills in the capital, but the next phase will encompass mills in different parts of the country.

The mills tend to be family operations, passed down from generation to generation, providing the dough to a group of tortilla factories, usually belonging to the same person. The largest mills supply more than 20 factories.

The mills themselves usually also have their own tortilla factory. People wait their turn to buy their daily tortillas for less than a dollar per kilo.

According to a survey of the maize flour producer Gruma, Mexico's 107 million inhabitants each consume 80 kilos of tortilla per year. There is no precise information on daily family consumption, but it is believed to have fallen 25 to 30 percent in recent years, due to increasing prices and families moving away from the traditional Mexican diet.

Felipe Galindo owns a mill. He began working there when he was 10 years old, sweeping the floors. Thirty-five years ago, the mill supplied 25 tortilla factories with dough – now it's just three, he said.

Galindo believes the decline is the result of the perception that tortillas are fattening, even though “they have fewer calories than a slice of bread.”

According to Ambriz, “the tortilla is an excellent food,” and “in the pre-Hispanic combination of greens or protein of some kind, including insects, it's an excellent diet.”

The Mexican company BioFields will begin production in 2014 of an algae-based biofuel at a site 300 kilometres from its border with the United States, which is likely to be its biggest customer.

A digital rendering of algae-ethanol production pools. Credit: BioFields

The BioFields corporate office is located on the twelfth floor of a luxury tower in Lomas de Chapultepec, an exclusive Mexico City neighbourhood. For now, the company doesn’t sell anything, but it has big plans to revolutionise the biofuel market.

Before the end of the year, BioFields will begin construction of a pilot plant to obtain ethanol from algae in Puerto Libertad, a town of 3,000 people in the northern state of Sonora, corporate affairs director Sergio Ramírez told this reporter.

The biofuel plant will be completed in the second half of 2010, said Ramírez, who was also the first employee recruited by the company, founded in February 2007.

BioFields holds the rights to use “direct to ethanol” technology in Mexico. The method, developed and patented by the Algenol company, produces biofuel using hybrid blue-green algae, he explained.

The algae produce ethanol naturally, and the technique optimises the process so it can be done on an industrial scale. The ethanol produced can be mixed with gasoline in varying proportions, helping reduce emissions of greenhouse-effect gases generated by vehicles.

“The great success of this technology is that we found a type of algae that secretes ethanol naturally, saving two industrial steps: fermentation and synthesis into ethanol. This makes each microorganism a mini-factory,” Ramírez said.

The algae will grow and reproduce in pools of salt water that is pumped from the Sea of Cortés, which is just a few kilometres from the plant, he said.

In addition to the sun’s rays, the algae will feed on nitrates and on the carbon dioxide produced by one of Mexico’s most polluting thermoelectric plants, also located in Puerto Libertad.

In order to absorb that carbon dioxide, the pilot plant will be built on a 1.5-hectare area within the thermoelectric complex, which is owned by the Federal Electricity Commission (CFE for its Spanish initials), a federally owned energy company.

If the project goes as planned, the CFE will keep the funds generated by capturing CO2, as provided under the Clean Development Mechanism of the Kyoto Protocol on climate change.

The CDM allows industrialised countries, which are required under the Protocol to cut their greenhouse emissions, to offset their emissions by financing projects in developing countries that help fight climate change.

Once the algae-to-ethanol process proves what it can do, an industrial-scale plant will be built next to the CFE installations, in a desert area of 22,000 hectares. The aim is to produce more than 946 million litres of ethanol in 2014, and 3.8 billion litres in 2020.

The investment will be 850 million dollars, coming from the founder and director general of BioFields, Alejandro González, owner of the Gondi Group, one of Mexico’s largest cardboard recycling companies.

BioFields’ first customer will be Mexico. In 2012 the government-owned oil company Pemex plans to replace gasoline oxygenates (which represent five percent of each litre) with ethanol, which means it will need more than three billion litres per year.

But BioFields also plans to export. “We are less than 300 kilometres from California, Arizona and New Mexico,” in the U.S. southwest, which are a major ethanol consumer market, said Ramírez.

The firm is also setting its sights on Japan and Europe. Mexico has signed trade agreements with those parties that would reduce import taxes.

But Ramírez acknowledged that BioFields will face big challenges before it can become a profitable company. First of all, the global biofuels market will have to be consolidated, he says.

If a new technology is developed in the next few years that allows low-cost, deep-sea oil drilling, enough to boost world petroleum reserves, the energy supply argument in favour of biofuels would not be as persuasive.

Researcher Michelle Chauvet, of the Autonomous Metropolitan University of Mexico, said in an interview for this article that biofuels are only profitable if oil prices climb above 50 dollars a barrel.

The other challenge for BioFields is the consolidation of the carbon market – an economic approach to reducing greenhouse emissions.

The firm needs to know if it will receive compensation for eliminating CO2 from the atmosphere, and if so, how much it can charge per tonne.

According to Rodolfo Quintero, a researcher with the university’s technology and processes department, “there is great interest in developing cheap and renewable fuels that don’t come from hydrocarbons.”

“The era of cheap petroleum is over, and even though there will still be oil, it will be more expensive and scarce,” he said. Mexico itself has proved reserves of petroleum for just nine years, Quintero said.

Another aspect to consider is the negative side of first generation biofuels – ethanol and biodiesel from maize, sugarcane, soy and wheat – because they are made from food crops. With competition from the energy sector for supplies, food prices tend to go up.

Quintero also pointed out that those first-generation biofuels do not provide environmental advantages over fossil fuels, especially when one takes into account the environmental effects of the entire process from cultivation to consumption.

The BioFields approach “isn’t bad, but they have to prove that it works on an industrial scale,” said the researcher.

Chauvet, who studies the social effects of biofuel production, believes that beyond the BioFields project it is necessary to keep in mind the experiences of other countries.

Malaysia, Indonesia, Sumatra and Borneo deforested their jungles in order to supply biofuels to Europe. Argentina has seen rural population displaced as a result of the expansion of genetically modified soy, which has also led to desertification, thus further contributing to climate change.

According to Chauvet, who also holds a doctorate in economics, the move towards ethanol production from algae is a more acceptable option for Mexico than other ethanol sources, though she says labour conditions must be monitored because companies in some places treat their workers “almost like slaves.”

BioFields calculates that the construction of its energy plants will create 1,500 temporary jobs, and once they are up and running, 350 permanent jobs.

The people of Puerto Libertad work in fishing, which is seasonal, and are hopeful that they will see some benefits from the biofuel project, according to Lauro Urial, secretary of Pitiquito municipality, where the town is located.

*This story is part of a series of features on sustainable development by IPS – Inter Press Service and IFEJ – International Federation of Environmental Journalists, for the Alliance of Communicators for Sustainable Development (www.complusalliance.org).

A biological process in which blue-green algae produces ethanol will be the basis for fuel production by a Mexican company beginning next year.

A digital rendering of algae-ethanol production pools. - BioFields

The BioFields corporate office is located on the twelfth floor of a luxury tower in Lomas de Chapultepec, an exclusive Mexico City neighborhood. For now, the company doesn't sell anything, but it plans to revolutionize the biofuel market.

Before the end of the year, BioFields will begin construction of a pilot center to obtain ethanol from algae in Puerto Libertad, a town of 3,000 people in the northern state of Sonora, corporate affairs director Sergio Ramírez told this reporter.

The biofuel plant will be completed in the second half of 2010, said Ramírez, who was also the first employee recruited by the company, founded in February 2007.

BioFields holds the rights to use “direct to ethanol” technology in Mexico. The method, developed and patented by the Algenol company, produces biofuel using hybrid blue-green algae, he explained.

The algae produce ethanol naturally, and the technique optimizes the process so it can be done on an industrial scale. The ethanol produced can be mixed with gasoline in different proportions, helping reduce emissions of greenhouse-effect gases generated by vehicles.

“The great success of this technology is that we found an algae that secretes ethanol naturally, saving two industrial steps: fermentation and synthesis into ethanol. This makes each microorganism a mini-factory,” Ramírez said.

The algae will grow and reproduce in pools of salt water that is pumped from the Sea of Cortés, which is just a few kilometers from the plant, he said.

In addition to the sun's rays, the algae will feed on nitrates and on the carbon dioxide produced by one of Mexico's most polluting thermoelectric plants, also located in Puerto Libertad.

In order to absorb that carbon dioxide, the pilot plant will be built on a 1.5-hectare area within the thermoelectric complex, which is owned by the Federal Electricity Commission (CFE for its Spanish initials), a federally owned energy company.

If the project goes as planned, the CFE will keep the funds generated by capturing CO2, as provided under the Clean Development Mechanism of the Kyoto Protocol on climate change.

The CDM allows the industrialized countries, which are required under the Protocol to reduce their greenhouse emissions, to offset their emissions by financing projects in developing countries that help fight climate change. Once the algae-to-ethanol process proves itself, an industrial-scale plant will be built next to the CFE installations, in a desert area of 22,000 hectares. The aim is to produce more than 946 million liters of ethanol in 2014, and 3.8 billion liters in 2020.

The investment will be 850 million dollars, coming from the founder and director general of BioFields, Alejandro González, owner of the Gondi Group, one of Mexico's largest cardboard recycling companies.

BioFields' first customer will be Mexico. In 2012 the government-owned oil company Pemex plans to replace gasoline oxygenates (which represent five percent of each liter) with ethanol, which means it will need more than 3 billion liters per year.

But BioFields also plans to export. “We are less than 300 kilometers from California, Arizona and New Mexico,” in the U.S. southwest, which are a major ethanol consumer market, said Ramírez.

The firm is also setting its sights on Japan and Europe. Mexico has signed trade agreements with those parties that would reduce import taxes.

But Ramírez acknowledged that BioFields will face big challenges before it can become a profitable company. First of all, the global biofuels market will have to be consolidated.

If a new technology is developed in the next few years that allows low-cost, deep-sea oil drilling, enough to drive up world petroleum reserves, the energy supply argument in favor of biofuels would not be as persuasive.

Researcher Michelle Chauvet, of the Autonomous Metropolitan University of Mexico, said in an interview for this article that biofuels are only profitable if oil prices surpass 50 dollars a barrel.

The other challenge for BioFields is the consolidation of the carbon market – an economic approach to reducing greenhouse emissions.

The firm needs to know if it will receive compensation for eliminating CO2 from the atmosphere, and if so, how much it can charge per ton.

According to Rodolfo Quintero, researcher with the university's technology and processes department, “there is great interest in developing cheap and renewable fuels that don't come from hydrocarbons.”

“The era of cheap petroleum is over, and even though there will still be oil, it will be more expensive and scarce,” he said. Mexico's own proved reserves of petroleum are for just nine years, Quintero said.

Another aspect to consider is the negative side of first generation biofuels – ethanol and biodiesel from maize, sugarcane, soy and wheat – because they are made from food crops, which drives up food prices.

Quintero also pointed out that those biofuels do not provide environmental advantages over fossil fuels, especially when one takes into account the environmental effects of the entire process from cultivation to consumption. The BioFields approach “isn't bad, but they have to prove that it works on an industrial scale,” said the researcher.

Chauvet, who studies the social effects of biofuel production, believes that beyond the BioFields project it is necessary to keep in mind the experiences of other countries.

Malaysia, Indonesia, Sumatra and Borneo deforested their jungles in order to supply biofuels to Europe. Argentina has seen rural population displaced as a result of the expansion of genetically modified soy, which has also led to desertification, thus further contributing to climate change.

According to Chauvet, who also holds a doctorate in economics, the move towards ethanol production from algae is a more acceptable option for Mexico than other ethanol sources, though she says there must be monitoring of the labor conditions because the treatment by some companies in some places “is almost like slavery.”

BioFields calculates that the construction of its energy plants will create 1,500 temporary jobs, and once they are up and running, 350 permanent jobs.

The people of Puerto Libertad work in fishing, which is seasonal, and are hopeful that they will see some benefits from the biofuel project, according to Lauro Urial, secretary of Pitiquito municipality, where the town is located.

Four sculptures in human forms, made of concrete, will be submerged in November in the Mexican Caribbean – the first of 400 figures that will comprise the world’s largest underwater museum.

Coral reef on the Mexican coast. Credit: Courtesy of the Comisión Nacional de Áreas Naturales Protegidas

The Subaquatic Sculpture Museum will be situated in the West Coast National Park in the southeastern state of Quintana Roo, on the Yucatán Peninsula. The park receives nearly 300,000 visitors each year. The museum’s mission is to attract some of those tourists in order to reduce the pressures on important natural habitat in other areas.

The watery museum will become even more attractive when the sculpture area fills up with thousands of colourful fish. The concrete of the sculptures is pH neutral, which allows rapid growth of algae and incrustation of marine invertebrates.

“The underwater museum will draw many tourists, allowing us to give a rest to the natural reefs. It’s like a restoration process,” national park director Jaime González explained to this reporter.

“By becoming healthier, the coral reefs will be more resistant to hurricane damage,” he added.

The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (PCC) has warned that extreme weather phenomena, like hurricanes, will become more intense and frequent as a result of global warming. The panel also predicts higher acidity of ocean waters and consequent bleaching of coral, which can kill it.

“Coral bleaching is akin to us losing our skin pigment. The ultraviolet rays of the sun would harm us,” explained Roberto Iglesias Prieto, of UNAM’s (Autonomous National University of Mexico) Institute of Sea and Lake Sciences.

The whitening process stresses the coral, which expels the algae that live within it and which provide nutrition, leaving the coral to starve, Iglesias added. The coral also reproduces less and becomes more vulnerable to disease.

The phenomena associated with climate change threaten the survival of coral reefs around the world. In July, experts meeting at the Royal Society of London agreed that these important marine ecosystems could disappear within a century if climate-changing gas emissions aren’t sharply reduced.

What would the world be like without coral? “On this planet, 200 million people make their living from fishing for species that inhabit coral reefs,” said the UNAM expert.

Another 300 million people benefit from reefs as a form of coastal protection. “In a hurricane, 99 percent of power in waves is dissipated in the reef, thereby protecting human lives and property,” said Iglesias.

“Given the global threat of climate change, local protection of reefs is very important,” said the researcher.

“We need to gain time against climate change, by curbing the number of tourists visiting coral reefs, for example,” he said.

In the West Coast National Park of Isla Mujeres, Punta Cancún and Punta Nizuc, the challenge is to draw tourists away from natural habitats without losing the 36 million dollars the visitors bring into the area each year.

Events in recent years have left clues on how to achieve that.

González recalls that in 1997 a cruise ship destroyed 500 square metres of coral of the Cuevones reef in Punta Cancún. Since then, all tourist access to the reef has been banned.

As an alternative diving site, in 2005 the park administration submerged 110 hollow domes and concrete structures in layers to create an artificial habitat in the area known as Sac Bajo.

“At first the people of Isla Mujeres told us that they were never going to bring tourists there, but after a few years it became a must-see attraction,” said González.

Meanwhile, the Cuevones reef, where the cruise ship grounding occurred, is now the reef in the best condition in the area. “The only difference is that there are no tourists,” he said.

“If they swim near the corals, the divers with little experience might kick them with a fin or hit them with the oxygen tank,” he added.

“Before it was declared a park, the tourists even climbed up the corals and walked on top of them, breaking and shattering them,” González said.

Now there are buoys that mark the borders and tourists must wear lifejackets to prevent them from submerging. Once the underwater museum opens, it will require divers to gain previous experience in artificial habitats.

With these measures, they hope to extend the lifespan of the coral and the services the reefs provide, including the production of the white sands for which Mexico’s Caribbean beaches are famous – the result of natural erosion.

Corals also “have the potential to contain substances or pharmaceuticals that can be useful to humanity,” says Ernesto Enkerlin Hoeflich, national commissioner of Protected Natural Areas in Mexico (CONANP).

“Furthermore, they act as carbon sinks (absorbing greenhouse gases) and, because of their incredible beauty, they serve as a tourist attraction and an opportunity to reconnect with nature,” said the commissioner. For these reasons, CONANP is supporting the Subaquatic Sculpture Museum with resources and by facilitating permits.

Last year, the commissioner himself went diving in the Caribbean waters to observe the results of the concrete structures submerged in 2005, which serve the same environmental principle as the statues.

“It’s a unique experience… to witness the rapid colonisation of the spheres by thousands of fish of different species and to see how, although we sometimes damage nature, humans can also do something to restore it,” said Enkerlin Hoeflich.

The national park director González calculates that by April 2010 there will be some 250 sculptures installed in the underwater museum. The total cost of the project is about 350,000 dollars.

The artistic director is Jason de Caires Taylor, famous for his underwater sculptures, but other artists will also be involved.

The museum isn’t expected to increase the flow of tourists to Isla Mujeres much, though most agree the site will provide a new identity for the park.

Each sculpture will be human sized, with a base of four square metres. There will be theme-based galleries as well.

One of them, “The Dream Catcher,” will be the figure of a person who sorts bottles that arrive with messages sent by castaways. Another will be titled “Coral Collector”. Also in the works is a series of sculptures depicting an army of Maya indigenous warriors.

*This story is part of a series of features on sustainable development by IPS – Inter Press Service and IFEJ – International Federation of Environmental Journalists, for the Alliance of Communicators for Sustainable Development (www.complusalliance.org).

In the ocean depths off the coast of southeastern Mexico, galleries of human sculptures are to be installed as an artistic attraction with environmental ends.

A coral reef on the Mexican coast. - Courtesy of the Comisión Nacional de Áreas Naturales Protegidas

The Subaquatic Sculpture Museum will be situated in the West Coast National Park in the southeastern state of Quintana Roo, on the Yucatán Peninsula. The park receives nearly 300,000 visitors each year. The museum's mission is to attract some of those tourists, reducing the pressures on important natural habitat.

The watery museum will become even more attractive when the sculpture area fills with thousands of colorful fish. The concrete of the sculptures is pH neutral, which allows rapid growth of algae and incrustation of marine invertebrates.

“With the underwater museum we ensure a diversion of tourists, which permits us to give a rest to the natural reefs. It's as if it were a restoration process,” explained national park director Jaime González to this reporter.

“In becoming healthier, the coral reefs will be more resistant to hurricane damage,” he added.

The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (PCC) has warned that extreme weather phenomena, like hurricanes, will become more intense and frequent as a result of global warming. The panel also predicts higher acidity of ocean waters and consequent bleaching of coral – which can kill it.

“Coral bleaching is akin to us losing our skin pigment. The ultraviolet rays from the sun would harm us,” explained Roberto Iglesias Prieto, of UNAM's (Autonomous National University of Mexico) Institute of Sea and Lake Sciences.

The whitening process stresses the coral, which expels the algae that live within it and which provide nutrition, leaving the coral to starve, Iglesias added. The coral also reproduce less and are more vulnerable to disease.

The phenomena associated with climate change threaten the survival of coral reefs around the world. In July, experts meeting at the Royal Society of London agreed that these rich sea formations could disappear within a century if climate-changing gas emissions aren't sharply reduced.

What would the world be like without coral? “On this planet, 200 million people make their living from fishing for species that inhabit coral reefs,” said the UNAM expert.

Another 300 million people benefit from reefs as a form of coastal protection. “In a hurricane, 99 percent of power in waves is dissipated in the reef and doesn't reach the coast, thereby protecting human lives and property,” said Iglesias.

“Given the global threat of climate change, local protection of reefs is very important,” said the researcher.

We need to gain time against climate change, he says, for example, by curbing the number of tourists visiting coral reefs.

In the West Coast National Park of Isla Mujeres, Punta Cancún and Punta Nizuc, the challenge is to draw tourists away from natural habitats without losing the 36 million dollars they bring into the area each year.

Events in recent years have left clues on how to achieve that.

González recalls that in 1997 a cruise ship destroyed 500 square meters of coral of the Cuevones reef in Punta Cancún. Since then, all tourist access has been banned.

In 2005 the park administration submerged 110 hollow domes and concrete structures in layers to create an artificial habitat in the area known as Sac Bajo.

“At first the people of Isla Mujeres told us that they were never going to bring tourists there, but after a few years it became a must-see attraction,” said González.

The Cuevones reef, where the cruise ship grounding occurred, is now the area's reef in the best state. “The only difference is that there are no tourists,” he said.

“If they swim near the coral, the divers with little experience might kick them with a fin or hit them with the oxygen tank,” he added.

“Before it was declared a park, the tourists even climbed up the coral and walked on top of them, breaking them, shattering them,” González said.

Now there are buoys that mark the borders and tourists must wear lifejackets to prevent them from submerging. Once the underwater museum opens, it will require divers to have experience in artificial habitat.

With those measures, they hope to extend the lifespan of the coral and the services the reef provides, including the production of the white sands for which Mexico's Caribbean beaches are famous – the result of natural erosion.

Corals also “have the potential to contain substances or pharmaceuticals that can be useful to humanity,” says Ernesto Enkerlin Hoeflich, national commissioner of Protected Natural Areas in Mexico (CONANP).

“Furthermore, they act as carbon sinks (absorbing greenhouse gases) and, for their incredible beauty, they serve as a tourist attraction and an opportunity to reconnect with nature,” said the commissioner. For these reasons, CONANP is supporting the Subaquatic Sculpture Museum with resources and by facilitating permits.

Last year, the commissioner himself went diving in the Caribbean waters to observe the results of the concrete structures submerged in 2005, and which serve the same environmental principle as the statues.

“It's a unique experience… to witness the rapid colonization of the spheres by thousands of fish of different species and to see how, although we sometimes damage nature, humans can also do something to restore it,” said Enkerlin Hoeflich. The national park director González calculates that by April 2010 there will be some 250 sculptures installed in the underwater museum. The total cost of the project is about 350,000 dollars.

The artistic director is Jason de Caires Taylor, famous for his underwater sculptures, but other artists will also be involved.

The museum isn't expected to have much effect on the flow of tourists to Isla Mujeres, though most agree the site will provide a new identity for the park.

Each sculpture will be human sized, with a base of four square meters. There will be theme-based galleries as well.

One of them, “The Dream Catcher,” will be the figure of a person who sorts bottles that arrive with messages sent by castaways. Another will be titled “Coral Collector”. Also in the works is a sculpture of a Maya army.

Federico Martínez was born in a land of hurricanes. As a young boy in Mexico he saw the wind uproot trees and roll wooden houses “as if they were shoe boxes.” As an adult, he developed a house that can withstand winds up to 300 kilometres per hour and floods three metres deep.

Elevated house resistant to hurricanes and floods. Credit: Verónica Díaz Favela/IPS

The house created by Martínez, an engineer at the National Polytechnic Institute (IPN), is a response to the United Nations recommendation that countries should develop housing units that can stand up to severe weather phenomena.

The fourth report by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), a U.N. body, warns of an increase in hurricanes as a result of warmer average global temperatures, as well as sea levels expected to rise by as much as one metre by the end of the century.

Martínez developed the new approach at his company, Ingeniería Creativa en Acero (Creacero – Creative Engineering in Steel), with the support of the National Science and Technology Council and the IPN.

“I came up with several designs for building cyclone-proof houses and, for years, for each hurricane that came along, I wanted to see how it affected them,” he said.

Growing up in the city of Madero, in the eastern Gulf of Mexico state of Tamaulipas, Martínez saw more than once in the wake of storms that people and animals were killed by stepping on exposed electrical cables or disappeared in the flood currents.

His mission began to take shape in his mind: to find a response to nature’s challenge. Since the end of July, visitors to the IPN’s Dissemination Centre for Science and Technology (CEDICYT) in Mexico City have seen two prototypes of houses and one storm-proof classroom which also serves as a storm shelter, built by Martínez.

They don’t look much different than any other building. But their construction makes them resistant to category 5 hurricanes, the maximum intensity on the Saffir-Simpson scale, which measures wind intensity.

The house “is a cage of steel covered with concrete,” Martínez explained.

The prefabricated houses are 42 square metres in size. Each has two bedrooms, a living/dining room area, a bathroom and a kitchen. They also have a dome skylight and small upper and lower windows on the walls.

The specialised windows serve as “a system of air convection; the warm air rises and, in this case, the upper windows are to let the warm air out, and the lower windows are for intake,” said Martínez. The windows have a safety film so residents are not hurt if the glass is broken.

The houses were conceived for construction in coastal areas. Fifteen of Mexico’s 32 states are on the ocean, and are “very hot, and vulnerable to the effect of hurricanes,” Víctor Manuel López, coordinator of the IPN’s climate change and sustainability programme, told this reporter.

Along the nation’s coasts, “everything that is there – people as well as infrastructure – is vulnerable to hurricanes, floods and rising sea level,” he said.

In the south-eastern state of Quintana Roo, on the eastern side of the Yucatán Peninsula, “fishing villages have asked for the construction of an eight-kilometre breakwater, and they want to be relocated; some people say the sea level has risen,” López said.

To deal with flooding caused by tropical storms, one of the houses Martínez developed is mounted upon pillars 2.8 metres tall.

“The floods pass below the house without damaging it, unless the water rises above three metres, which would be very unusual,” said the engineer.

If there is no impending threat of flooding, the area under the elevated house can be used as a carpark or a shaded patio. But it should be left without walls that would impede the flow of floodwaters.

A single-storey, hurricane-resistant house costs approximately 32,000 dollars, and the elevated house costs 64,000, based on one-off construction costs. But the prices would drop by as much as two-thirds once they are mass produced. Construction time would also be reduced.

It took eight months to build the CEDICYT prototypes. “With large-scale production, our capacity would be five minutes to build the steel frame and sheeting for one house,” Herón Colín Suárez, Creacero’s administrative director, said in an interview for this article.

Prefabrication “will allow them to be built in a very short time, and at any site, even without electricity, because it can be screwed together. It would come with an instruction manual and prefabricated parts, which would make construction a speedy process, and no skilled labour would be needed,” he explained.

Creacero is looking for funding to set up a factory. Two machines need to be manufactured for production, and a freight lift is needed, as well as trained staff. The total required investment is about 2.5 million dollars.

In addition to homes, the factory could make materials to build classrooms, hospitals or just about any type of smaller building. One example is the third prototype, on view at CEDICYT, a classroom-cum-refuge measuring six by 15 metres. It is intended for classes, but also to be used as a safe place for people when hurricane-force winds hit.

The prototypes, created to stand up to cyclones, can also resist other extreme phenomena, such as tornadoes, avalanches and earthquakes, according to the engineer.

López said that in Japan they are developing hurricane and flood resistant houses, constructed in Bangladesh.

The advantage of the Mexican model is that it eliminates the major costs of importing technology, he said.

Mexico could face economic losses of up to 1.7 billion dollars from damage along its Atlantic and Pacific coasts during the current hurricane season, insurance companies warned at a seminar held early this year.

According to the National Meteorological Service, Mexico’s coastline could see the effects of as many 24 cyclones.

“The government has already streamlined the procedures for shelters with basic services,” but “those solutions are intended for towns and cities, not rural communities,” said López.

The value of the houses created by IPN and Creacero lies in the fact that they are intended for easy assembly in rural areas.

*This story is part of a series of features on sustainable development by Inter Press Service (IPS) and the International Federation of Environmental Journalists (IFEJ), for the Alliance of Communicators for Sustainable Development (www.complusalliance.org).

Over a span of eight years, a Mexican engineer visited areas thrashed by hurricanes. His goal was to design a home capable of withstanding nature's worst.

An elevated house resistant to hurricanes and floods. - Verónica Díaz Favela/IPS

The house created by this engineer from the National Polytechnic Institute (IPN) is a response to the United Nations recommendation that countries should develop housing units that can stand up to severe weather phenomena.

The fourth report from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), a UN entity, warns of an increase in hurricanes as a result of warmer average global temperatures, as well as rising sea levels – by as much as one meter by the end of the century.

Martínez developed the new approach at his company, Ingeniería Creativa en Acero (Creacero – Creative Engineering in Steel), with the support of the National Science and Technology Council and of the IPN.

“I came up with several designs for building cyclone-proof houses and, for years, for each hurricane that happened, I was going to see how it affected them,” he recounted.

He grew up in the city of Madero, in the eastern state of Tamaulipas, along the Gulf of Mexico. More than once, he saw that in the wake of the cyclones people and animals were killed by stepping on exposed electrical cables or disappeared in the flood currents.

His mission became to find an answer to nature's challenge. Since the end of July, visitors to the IPN's Dissemination Center for Science and Technology (CEDICYT) in Mexico City can see two prototypes of houses and one classroom-refuge, built by Martínez.

They don't look much different from any building painted white and violet. But their construction makes them resistant to category 5 hurricanes, the maximum intensity on the Saffir-Simpson scale, which measures wind intensity.

The house “is a cage of steel covered with concrete,” Martínez explained.

The houses are prefabricated and the floor area measures 42 square meters. Each has two bedrooms, a living/dining room, bathroom and kitchen. They also have a dome and small windows located both low and high in the walls.

These specialized windows serve as “a system of air convection; the warm air rises and, in this case, the upper windows are to let the warm air out, and the lower windows are for intake,” said Martínez. The windowpanes are protected by a film to prevent dwellers from being hurt if the windows are broken.

The houses were conceived for construction in coastal zones. Mexico has 15 states with ocean coasts, and are “very hot, and vulnerable to the effect of hurricanes,” Víctor Manuel López, coordinator of the IPN's climate change and sustainability program, told this reporter.

Along the nation's coasts, “everything that is there – people as well as infrastructure – is vulnerable to hurricanes, floods and rising sea level,” he said.

In the southeastern state of Quintano Roo, on the eastern side of the Yucatán Peninsula, “there are fishing communities that have already asked for an eight-kilometer breakwater to be built, and then to be relocated; some witnesses say the sea level was at one place and now is at another,” López said.

To deal with flooding associated with tropical storms, one of the houses Martínez developed is mounted upon pillars 2.8-meters tall.

“The floods pass below the house without damaging it, unless the water rises above three meters, which would be a very special case,” said the engineer.

If there is no impending threat of flooding, the area under the elevated house can be used as a carpark or a shaded patio. But it should be left without walls that would impede the flow of floodwaters.

A single-story, cyclone-resistant house costs approximately 32,000 dollars, and the elevated house costs 64,000, based on one-off construction costs. But the prices would drop by as much as two-thirds once they are mass produced. Construction time would also be reduced.

It took eight months to build the CEDICYT prototypes. “With industrialized production our capacity would be five minutes to build the steel profile and sheeting for one house,” Herón Colín Suárez, Creacero's administrative director, said in an interview for this report.

Prefabrication “will allow them to be built in a very short time, and at any site, even where there is no electricity because it can be screwed together. It would have an instruction manual, there will be prefabricated parts so that its construction is very fast, and skilled labor is not needed,” he explained.

Creacero is looking for financial contributions to set up a factory. Two machines need to be manufactured for production, a freight lift is needed, as well as trained staff. The total required investment is about 2.5 million dollars.

In addition to homes, the factory could make materials to build classrooms, hospitals or just about any type of smaller building. One example is the third prototype, on view at CEDICYT, a classroom-refuge measuring six by 15 meters. It is intended for classes, but also to be used as a safe place for people when hurricane-force winds hit.

The prototypes, created to stand up to cyclones, can also resist other extreme phenomena, such as tornadoes, avalanches and earthquakes, according to the engineer.

López said that in Japan they are developing hurricane and flood resistant houses, constructed in Bangladesh.

The advantage of the Mexican model is that it eliminates the major costs of importing technology, he said.

Mexico could face economic losses of up to 1.7 billion dollars from damage along its Atlantic and Pacific coasts during the current hurricane season, warned insurance companies at a seminar held at the beginning of the year.

According to the National Meteorological Service, Mexico's coastline could see the effects of as many 24 cyclones.

“The government has already streamlined the procedures for shelters where there are services available and people can gather,” but “those solutions are intended for larger populations and not for rural populations,” said López.

The value of the houses created by IPN and Creacero lies in the fact that they are intended for easy assembly in rural areas.

In the last two years a Mexico City hospital, kindergarten and municipal government office building have experimented with plant-covered rooftops. Today, workers and visitors are enjoying the benefits.

Employees and patients alike enjoy the green roof at the Belisario Domínguez Hospital. Credit: Verónica Díaz Favela/IPS

Eight months ago, the first “nature roof” was created at the Belisario Domínguez Hospital in the working-class neighbourhood of Iztapalapa, Mexico City’s most densely populated district, home to 1.8 million people.

The green roof of this three-storey hospital is divided in two: the larger part is over a portion of the first storey, the smaller is over the third.

“Having direct or visual contact with a green area helps a great deal in the patients’ recovery. In Japan, nearly every hospital has a ‘nature’ terrace,” Tania Müller, head of the project, said in an interview.

According to the hospital’s director, Osvaldo González La Riviere, “the workers enjoy the space. Initially, the smokers used it, but we have been able to regulate that. Some patients found out about the rooftop garden and now they ask to go for a stroll there, with the help of family members.”

Installation of such a roof requires waterproof treatment that prevents roots from taking hold in the building material, as well as a polyethylene layer to prevent runoff. A geotextile product is added to prevent fine particulates from the underlayer from reaching the roof itself.

And finally, the underlayer is put in place, a mix of volcanic stone material, lighter than soil, and organic material to feed the plants, which are then planted on top. The plants need no watering.

One section of the hospital’s green roof is alongside the gynaecology/obstetric ward. For women who have just given birth, “it is more pleasing to look out the window at a natural setting than to see a vending cart or a truck spitting out fumes,” said Evangelina Sandoval, the deputy medical director.

Also, “working with patients and constantly facing illness and death produces stress. Now, instead of leaving by their usual route, many workers use the emergency exits in order to pass through the rooftop garden,” she said. The hospital employs about 1,000 people.

The green area covers 1,000 square metres – one-tenth the total roof area of the hospital. The roof was transformed from a barren concrete wasteland to a lush place that attracts bees, butterflies and birds – a stark contrast to the dense traffic and the concrete structures surrounding it.

Three native species from the Valley of Mexico were planted there. “All are sedums (leaf succulents), of the Crassulaceae family,” explained Müller, director of urban, park and bikeway reforestation for Mexico City.

The heat from “a normal rooftop can reach 80 degrees Celsius, contributing to the ‘heat-island effect’ (the increase in temperature in urban areas with few green spaces and lots of pavement), especially in a city as urbanised as this one,” she said.

Thanks to the vegetation, the roof’s temperature is maintained at 25 degrees Celsius, creating a microclimate that returns moisture to the environment and retains dust and particulate matter that could otherwise harm people’s lungs, Müller added.

Furthermore, it won’t be necessary to re-waterproof the roof for 80 years.

That is why the Secretariat (Ministry) of Health gave the Mexico City government the green light to create green roofs for its 28 hospitals.

All of this “is viable, but we need resources,” said Müller. With the global economic crisis, “everywhere budgets have had to be adjusted, and that is what we are evaluating.”

Planting a rooftop can cost 95 dollars per square metre, whether in Mexico, Europe or the United States.

But the positive results are obvious. Take the Centre for Child Development (CENDI), which provides services for 400 children of the city’s subway train workers, and is located in Mexico City’s historic central district.

“Fifty percent of the city’s chickens are concentrated in the surrounding blocks, which causes heavy soil and air pollution. In addition, there is traffic and a high crime rate,” said CENDI director Nadia Tapia.

Even so, this kindergarten has generated many of the cutting-edge programmes that are ultimately implemented nationwide. In keeping with this trend, in mid-2008, the city government inaugurated a green rooftop – 1,190 square metres – on this two-storey building.

Since then, once the children reach the age of two they are introduced to the roof garden. Those ages three to six practice gardening skills in a small plot, where they make compost, and grow tomatoes, potatoes, parsley, chamomile and cactus.

“The children relax, explore and are more calm and cooperative when they reach the teaching area, increasing their capacity to learn,” said CENDI paediatric expert Araceli Becerra.

These children, explained the director, come from low-income families. “Seventy-five percent live in very small apartments, and because of crime concerns, they don’t have access to parks.”

When they visit the rooftop, “they get excited and they want to touch and observe everything,” teacher Rosa Muñoz said in an interview for this article.

According to Müller, the green roofs are an “alternative for sustainable urban development, especially in a city like this, where even if we wanted to create a ground-level park, there is no room to do so.”

In the cities of Latin America, the average for green areas overall is 3.5 square metres per person. The World Health Organisation recommends nine to 12 square metres per person.

“In Mexico City, we would have nine million more square metres of green space if we put one green square metre on every roof,” said Alberto Fabela, who is in charge of the rooftop at the Secretariat of Urban Development and Housing (SEDUVI).

Since April 2008, the SEDUVI six-storey public building has set aside 900 square metres of its roof for green space. The technique employed here is hydroponics – growing plants suspended in water.

So far, it has produced 21,000 ornamental plants, donated to the districts of Coyoacán and Azcapotzalco, where they adorn gardens and median areas along boulevards.

Geraniums, marigolds, kalanchoe, petunias are grown, “all strong and resistant to stress from the streets: cars, noise, smog, people,” said Fabela.

The plants are produced with the help of the 800 SEDUVI employees, who have the option of dedicating one hour of their workweek to maintaining, sowing or transplanting the flowers.

“We teach them to remove wilted leaves and to plant seeds. Obviously, it is a kind of therapy. We give them one hour, but the time passes quickly. The most receptive are the young people, 18 to 25, and elderly women,” Fabela added.

The Mexico city government hopes that the more than 8,000 square metres of green roofs created so far in public buildings will serve as an example for the private sector.

For now, the city plans to ask businesses requesting construction permits to dedicate 10 to 20 percent of their rooftops to green space – in exchange for tax benefits.

*This story is part of a series of features on sustainable development by Inter Press Service (IPS) and the International Federation of Environmental Journalists (IFEJ), for the Alliance of Communicators for Sustainable Development (www.complusalliance.org).

In Mexico City there are more than 8,000 square meters of public building rooftops covered with vegetation. This novel approach for bringing green to the cities is now reaching hospitals and kindergartens.

Employees and patients alike enjoy the green roof of the Belisario Domínguez Hospital. - Verónica Díaz Favela/IPS

Eight months ago, the first “nature” roof was installed at the Belisario Domínguez Hospital, in Mexico City, in the Iztapalapa district. With 1.8 million inhabitants, it is the country's most densely populated area.

The green roof of this three-storey hospital is divided in two: the larger is over a portion of the first storey, the smaller is over the third.

“Having direct or visual contact with a green area helps a great deal in the patients' recovery. In Japan, nearly every hospital has a 'nature' terrace,” Tania Müller, head of the project, said in an interview.

According to the hospital's director, Osvaldo González La Riviere, “the workers enjoy the space. Initially, the smokers used it, but we have been able to regulate that. Some patients found out about it and now they ask to go for a stroll there, with the help of family members.”

Installation of such a roof requires a waterproof treatment that prevents roots from taking hold in the building material, and then there is a polyethylene layer to prevent runoff. A geotextile product is added to prevent fine particulate of the underlayer from reaching the roof itself.

And finally, the underlayer is put in place, a mix of volcanic stone material, lighter than soil, and organ material to feed the plants, which are then planted on top. It is not necessary to water the plants.

One section of the hospital's green roof is alongside the gynecological/obstetric ward. For the women who have just given birth, “it is more pleasing to look out the window to see nature than see a vending cart or a truck emitting exhaust,” said Evangelina Sandoval, the deputy medical director.

Also, “working with patients and confronting death produces stress. Now, instead of leaving by their usual route, many workers now use the emergency exits in order to pass through the roof garden,” she said. The hospital employs about 1,000 people.

The green roof measures 1,000 square meters – one-tenth the total roof area of the hospital. The area was transformed from a concrete space to a lush place that attracts bees, butterflies and birds, standing in stark contrast to the dense traffic and the concrete structures surrounding it. Three native species from the Valley of Mexico were planted there. “All are sedums (leaf succulents), of the Crassulaceae family,” explained Müller, director of urban, park and bikeway reforestation for Mexico City.

The heat from “a normal rooftop can reach 80 degrees Celsius, contributing to the 'heat-island effect' (the increase in temperature in urban areas with few green spaces and lots of pavement), especially in a city as urbanized as this one,” she said.

With the vegetation, the roof's temperature is maintained at 25 degrees Celsius, creating a microclimate that returns moisture to the environment and retains dust and particulate matter that could otherwise harm people's lungs, Müller added.

Furthermore, it won't be necessary to re-waterproof the roof for 80 years.

That is why the Secretariat of Health gave the Mexico City government the green light to create green roofs for its 28 hospitals.

All of this “is viable, but we need resources,” said Müller. “Everywhere budgets have had to be adjusted, and that is what we are evaluating.”

Planting a rooftop can cost 95 dollars per square meter, whether in Mexico, Europe or the United States.

But the positive results are obvious. Take the Center for Child Development (CENDI), which provides services for 400 children of the city's subway train workers, and is located in Mexico City's historic central district.

“Fifty percent of the city's chickens are concentrated in the surrounding blocks, which causes heavy soil and air pollution. In addition, there is traffic and a high crime rate,” said CENDI director Nadia Tapia.

Even so, this kindergarten has generated many of the cutting-edge programs that are ultimately implemented nationwide. In keeping with this trend, in mid-2008, the city government inaugurated a green rooftop – 1,190 square meters – on this two-storey building.

Since then, once the children reach the age of two they are introduced to the roof garden. Those ages three to six practice gardening skills in a small plot, where they make compost, and grow tomatoes, potatoes, parsley, chamomile and cactus.

“The children relax, they explore and they are more calm and cooperative when they reach the teaching area, increasing their capacity to learn,” said CENDI pediatric expert Araceli Becerra.

These children, explained the director, come from low-income families. “Seventy-five percent live in very small apartments, and because of crime concerns, they don't have access to parks.”

When they visit the rooftop, “they get excited and they want to touch and observe everything,” teacher Rosa Muñoz said in an interview for this article.

According to Müller, the green roofs are an “alternative for sustainable urban development, especially in a city like this, where even if we wanted to create a ground-level park, there is no place to do so.”

In the cities of Latin America, the average for green areas overall is 3.5 square meters per person. The World Health Organization recommends nine to 12 square meters per person.

“In Mexico City, we would have nine million more square meters of green space if we put one green square meter on every roof,” said Alberto Fabela, who is in charge of the roof at the Secretariat of Urban Development and Housing (SEDUVI).

Since April 2008, the SEDUVI six-storey public building has set aside 900 square meters of its roof for green space. The technique employed here is hydroponics — growing plants suspended in water.

So far, it has produced about 21,000 ornamental plants, donated to the districts of Coyoacán and Azcapotzalco, where they adorn gardens and median areas of their boulevards.

Geranium, marigolds, kalanchoe, petunia: “all strong and resistant to stress of the streets: cars, noise, smog, people,” said Fabela.

The plants are produced with the help of the 800 SEDUVI employees, who have the option of dedicating one hour of their workweek to maintaining, sowing or transplanting the flowers.

“We teach them to remove wilted leaves and to sow seeds. Obviously, it is a sort of therapy. We give them one hour, but the time passes quickly. The most receptive are the young people, 18 to 25, and elderly women,” Fabela added.

The capital government hopes that the more than 8,000 square meters of green roofs created so far in public buildings will serve as an example for the private sector.

For now, the city plans to ask businesses requesting construction permits to dedicate 10 to 20 percent of their rooftops to green space – in exchange for tax benefits.

Graciela González answers phone calls, organises meetings and gives interviews as part of her work to save a river from ecological disaster. Thousands of kilometres away, farmer Gonzalo Rodríguez helps take air samples in a region polluted by petrochemicals.

Fourth meeting of Asamblea de Afectados Ambientales, held in May in El Salto, Jalisco. Credit: Courtesy of "Un salto de vida"

Neither of them had planned to become an environmental activist. González left her job as a teacher to work for the cause in the western state of Jalisco. Rodríguez raises livestock in Veracruz, in southern Mexico.

Like them, more and more citizens have begun to alternate their jobs with work to stop the destruction of the environment in their communities.

Last year, around a hundred citizen groups formed the Asamblea de Afectados Ambientales (AAA), which is active in 12 of the 32 states in this country of more than 107 million people.

So far the umbrella group has met four times to share experiences and plan joint strategies to call attention to their efforts.

In 2006, academics and researchers from across Mexico critical of the national scientific policies of the last 30 years founded the Union of Scientists Committed to Society (UCCS), which today has some 400 active members from fields like biology, physics, mathematics, economics, sociology, anthropology, political science and law.

Now, the two worlds have joined forces.

UCCS, based in Mexico City, created the Socio-Environmental Observatory with the goal of “documenting the most serious cases of environmental deterioration in Mexico,” explained one of its members, economist Rolando Espinoza.

Its main source of information for drawing up the map of socio-environmental problems is the AAA. It has already registered 150 cases, most of them related to “mining and oil activities, hydroelectric projects, development of road infrastructure, and sanitary landfills and waste disposal,” said Espinoza.

The most common problems have to do with water. One example is the Santiago River in the city of El Salto, Jalisco, where González lives. “First we noticed that we had to go further and further away to fish and gather fruit,” she says.

“Then we realised there was a rise in the cases of disease and death. We couldn’t find the origin of the cases of cancer, kidney failure, dermatitis, damaged lungs and miscarriage,” recalls the founder of the community association “Un Salto de Vida” (A Leap of Life).

In the 1970s, metallurgical, pharmaceutical, food, construction, petrochemical and solvent companies set up shop there, with nearly 200 firms discharging pollutants into an environment that local residents used to describe as a “paradise.”

Today one of the most notable characteristics of the river is the odour of rotten egg.

In the last couple of years, activists have pressed for the clean-up of a six kilometre stretch along the Santiago River, the pollution of which is threatening the health of the 150,000 people who live in El Salto.

When they began to complain, the state authorities reacted by downplaying the activists’ arguments.

“They told us: ‘Show me how what you are saying has any relation to pollution, that you get cancer from the effluent’,” recalls González.

According to economist Espinoza, that is a typical response from government officials.

In the southern state of Puebla, he says, the government went so far as to ask the residents to provide a study of the wind directions and speeds in an area affected by a company that recycled x-ray films and emitted toxic fumes.

“Citizens need information, they need someone from a public, educational, or scientific institution, an informed local person who will support and advise them in organising the information and making it meaningful,” Espinoza said.

That is why “we invited the network of UCCS researchers to generate or share studies to provide scientific support for the arguments in defence of the environment and health,” he added.

The cooperation between the UCCS and the AAA is perhaps the most prolific, but there are many partnerships between scientists and concerned citizens in Mexico.

The defenders of the Santiago River are already working with researchers from the Western Institute of Technology and Higher Studies, in Guadalajara, the capital of Jalisco. They plan to publicise the case in the international media and to carry out environmental monitoring of the area.

Meanwhile, students at the University of Guadalajara “are analysing the water and taking biopsies from the animals we are eating and samples from the pastures that feed the cattle,” said González.

In Coatzacoalcos, Veracruz, the U.S.-based non-governmental group Global Community Monitor has been advising the Association of Tatexco Ecological Producers (APETAC). The group taught farmers to take air samples that are then sent for analysis to a laboratory in the U.S.

According to Rodríguez, the farmer, in the Coatzacoalcos area there are 500 oil wells, four petrochemical complexes, 30 companies from other industries and a refinery. The result? Periodically, a toxic cloud forms, polluting the air breathed by the surrounding communities.

The initial findings of the air samples show high concentrations of benzene and toluene, both of which are carcinogenic.

“They also analysed the eggs from yard chickens and found a harmful substance called dioxin,” a highly toxic by-product of certain industrial processes, Rodríguez said.

In its 13 years of operation, APETAC has produced results. “In 1997 we were the first in the country to win a lawsuit for environmental damages against (the state oil monopoly) Petróleos Mexicanos,” for its constant oil spills and leaks.

“In the past, they were very common and nothing was done about it. They just covered the oil with dirt and quicklime and that was it,” he said.

These cases can be a threat to powerful private sector interests. According to UCCS, that is why there are efforts to sweep them under the rug.

That is what happened to the residents of the impoverished settlement of El Tigre II, in the municipality of Zapopan, Jalisco. El Nixticuil forest, a 1,800-hectare oak and pine wood, was threatened by a luxury real estate project.

One early morning in May 2005, municipal authorities sent machinery and workers into the forest, where they cut down 400 trees. When women from the settlement forced a halt to the logging, problems began.

“We had police dressed in civilian clothes hounding us outside our houses, and there are still signs saying that anyone who opposes the project will be written up,” says Sofía Herrera, a psychology student.

Herrera is part of El Tigre II Save the Forest Committee, made up of 10 families. Its greatest achievement so far has been getting 1,500 hectares declared a natural protected area. But pressure on the forest has not ceased.

The committee, a member of AAA, also works to care for the forest. “We have a brigade that collects and plants acorns, digs furrows (around the trees to maintain soil moisture), applies fungicides and fights fires,” said Herrera.

For some of these activities, the committee gets technical support from researchers at the University of Guadalajara.

If everything goes as UCCS plans, in a few years there will be a scientific tribunal in place, “of an ethical nature, that will judge the authorities for each one of the cases, based on the technical and scientific information gathered. Something like the Latin American Water Tribunal,” according to Espinoza.

Meanwhile, the AAA strategy is to maintain unity among its groups in calling public attention to the environmental problems they face. The focus now is to publicise the coalition’s next meeting.

The date has not been set, but the location has already been decided: Valle del Perote in Veracruz. The severely polluted area drew international attention in the past few months as home to the pig farms where the swine flu virus H1N1 may have originated.

*This story is part of a series of features on sustainable development by Inter Press Service (IPS) and the International Federation of Environmental Journalists (IFEJ), for the Alliance of Communicators for Sustainable Development (www.complusalliance.org).

Two worlds join forces in Mexico — academia and common folk — to confront environmental problems.
Graciela González answers phone calls, organizes meetings and gives interviews as part of her work to save a river from ecological disaster. Thousands of kilometers away, farmer Gonzalo Rodríguez helps take air samples in a region polluted by petrochemicals.

Neither of them had planned to become a defender of the environment. González left her job as a teacher to work for her cause in the western state of Jalisco. Rodríguez raises livestock in Veracruz, in southern Mexico.

Like them, more and more citizens have begun to alternate their jobs with work to stop the destruction of the environment in their communities.

Last year, around a hundred citizen groups formed the Assembly of the Environmentally Affected (AAA for its Spanish name), which is active in 12 of the 32 states in this country of more than 107 million people.

So far they have met four times to share experiences and plan joint strategies to call attention to their efforts.

In 2006, academics and researchers from across Mexico, dissatisfied with the national scientific policies of the last 30 years, founded the Union of Scientists Committed to Society (UCCS), and today has some 400 active members from fields like biology, physics, mathematics, economics, sociology, anthropology, political science and law.

Now, those two worlds have joined forces.

UCCS, based in the national capital, created the Socio-Environmental Observatory with the goal of “documenting the most serious cases of environmental deterioration in Mexico,” explained one of its members, economist Rolando Espinoza.

Its main source of information for drawing that map of socio-environmental problems is the AAA. Already it has registered 150 cases, most of them related to “mining and petroleum activities, hydroelectric projects, development of road infrastructure, construction of sanitary landfills, and waste disposal,” said Espinoza.

The most common have to do with water. For example, the Santiago River, situated in the municipality of El Salto, Jalisco, where González lives. “First we noticed that each time we had to go farther away to fish and to gather fruit,” she says.

“Then we realized there was disease and death. We couldn't find the origin of the cases of cancer, kidney failure, dermatitis, damaged lungs and spontaneous abortion,” recalls the founder of the community association “Un Salto de Vida” (A Leap of Life).

In the 1970s, metal manufacturers, pharmaceutical, food, construction, petrochemical and solvent companies set up shop there, with nearly 200 firms discharging contaminants into an environment its inhabitants used to refer to as “paradise.”

Today its notable characteristic is the odor of rotten egg.

In the last couple years, activists have sought clean-up of six kilometers of the river network, the contamination of which threatens the health of the 150,000 people who live in El Salto.

When they began to file complaints, the state authorities reacted by downplaying the activists' arguments.

“They told us: 'Show me how what you are saying has any relation to contamination, that you have cancer from the runoff',” recalls González.

According to economist Espinoza, that is a typical response from government officials.

In the southern state of Puebla, he says, it reached the absurd point of the government asking the residents to provide a study of the wind directions and speeds in an area affected by a company that recycled x-ray films and emitted toxic fumes.

“Citizens need information, they need someone from a public, educational, or scientific institution, an informed local person who will support and advise them in organizing the information and making it meaningful,” Espinoza said.

That is why “we invited the network of UCCS researchers to generate or share studies to provide scientific support to the arguments in defense of the environment and health,” he added.

The collaboration of UCCS and the AAA is perhaps the most prolific, but there are many partnerships between scientists and citizens in Mexico.

The defenders of the Santiago River are already working with researchers from the Western Institute of Technology and Higher Studies, in Guadalajara, capital of Jalisco. They plan to publicize the case in the international media and to carry out environmental monitoring of the area.

Meanwhile, students at the University of Guadalajara “are analyzing the water and biopsies from the animals we are eating and samples from the pastures that feed the cattle,” said González.

In Coatzacoalcos, Veracruz, the U.S.-based non-governmental group Global Community Monitor has been advising the Association of Tatexco Ecological Producers (APETAC). The group taught farmers to take air samples that are then sent for analysis by a U.S. laboratory.

According to farmer Rodríguez, in the Coatzacoalcos area there are 500 oil wells, four petrochemical complexes, 30 companies from other industries and a refinery. The result? Periodically, a toxic cloud forms, polluting the air breathed by the surrounding communities.

The initial findings of the air samples show high concentrations of benzene and toluene, both carcinogenic substances.

“They also analyzed the eggs from yard chickens and they found a harmful substance called dioxin,” a highly toxic byproduct of certain industrial processes, Rodríguez said.

APETAC, in operation for 13 years, has produced results. “In 1997 we were the first in the country to win a lawsuit for environmental damage against (the government-run) Petróleos Mexicanos,” for its constant oil spills and leaks.

“Before, they were very common and nothing was done. They covered it with dirt and quicklime and that was it,” he said.

These cases can be a threat to powerful private sector interests. According to UCCS, that is why there are efforts to sweep them under the rug.

That is what happened to the residents of the impoverished settlement of El Tigre II, in the municipality of Zapopan, Jalisco. El Nixticuil forest, 1,800 hectares of oak and pine, was threatened by a luxury real estate project.

One early morning in May 2005, municipal authorities sent machinery and workers into the forest, where they cut down 400 trees. When women from the settlement forced a halt to the logging, problems began.

“We had police dressed in civilian clothes hounding us outside our houses, and there are still signs saying that anyone who opposes the project will be written up,” says Sofía Herrera, a psychology student.

Herrera is part of El Tigre II Save the Forest Committee, made up of 10 families. Its greatest achievement so far has been getting 1,500 hectares declared a natural protected area. But pressure on the forest has not ceased.

The committee, a member of AAA, also works to care for the forest. “We have a brigade that collects and plants acorns, digs furrows (around the trees to maintain soil moisture), applies fungicides and fights fires,” said Herrera.

For some of these activities, the committee gets technical support from people at the University of Guadalajara.

If everything goes as UCCS plans, in a few years there will be a scientific tribunal in place, “of an ethical nature, that will judge the authorities for each one of the cases, based on the technical and scientific information gathered. Something like the Latin American Water Tribunal,” according to Espinoza.

Meanwhile, the AAA strategy is to maintain unity among its groups in calling public attention to the environmental problems they face. The focus now is to publicize the next Assembly meeting.

The date has not been set, but the location has already been decided: Valle del Perote, in Veracruz. The area is very polluted and rose to fame in recent weeks as home to the pig farms that may be the origin of the swine flu virus H1N1.

Many solutions for sustainable development in Mexico lie in the scientific and technological training of its younger generations, say academics. But students in this country, where everyone wants to be a doctor or accountant, are ignoring those fields.

UNAM's medical school Credit: Photo Stock

Until recently, Armando Guadarrama attended a class with just 15 students, but now “we joined with another group because we were so few, and now there are about 30 of us,” he says.

Guadarrama is in his eighth semester of petrochemical engineering at the National Polytechnic Institute (IPN) in Mexico City, and is enthusiastic about his future profession: “I would like to conduct research to improve refining processes in order to reduce air pollution.”

Although oil accounts for 10 percent of GDP in Mexico, it is the focus of many academic fields – mostly science and technology – that are largely ignored by young people in Mexico.

The other side of the story is the traditional fields, where students have filled university classrooms for decades: medicine, accounting, law, tourism, design, psychology, business administration, communications, architecture and dentistry.

With graphs in hand, David Jaramillo, IPN’s director of higher education, explains “this year 28 students competed for each of our openings in medicine.” In comparison, for each spot in petrochemical engineering, fewer than five competed.

Antonio Aguilar is information coordinator for another of the country’s leading universities, the Autonomous Metropolitan University (UAM). There, the 10 most popular fields of study account for 52 percent of student demand.

“It’s sad, because we offer 79 areas of study. In other words, the other 69 fight for the remaining 48 percent of students,” he says.

There’s a reason for the half-deserted classrooms: “When I go to chat with aspiring students, I conduct an exercise. I ask them to name 10 fields of study, but they have a hard time even coming up with eight. There is total ignorance,” he said.

Guadarrama says vocational guidance had nothing to do with his choice of career. “I have an uncle that works in this, that’s why I knew about it,” he explains.

His is not an isolated case. When officials from the three federal universities in the Mexican capital discuss the issue, “the surprise is that we are all in the same boat: science and technology are drawing few students,” says Aguilar.

And this situation reflects what is happening in Mexico at large, where just 0.4 percent of GDP is invested in science and technology, he adds.

It is strange, for example, that in “a country bordered by the Pacific Ocean and the Gulf of Mexico, with their great marine wealth, nobody wants to study marine biology,” says Aguilar.

“We have the most intense tides in the world, the northern hemisphere’s most important solar radiation zones, and we are full of petroleum – that is now running out – so it’s a shame that energy engineering is not a high-demand field.”

And in a country “where the south is drowning because the rivers flood, while in the north we are dying of thirst, nobody wants to study hydrologic engineering,” he adds.

Mexico needs more technicians, researchers and scientists in order to confront such pressing problems as global climate change.

“Climate change is creating areas of desertification, there are problems of rural productivity, and there are not enough professionals to come up with solutions,” says Roberto Rodríguez, an official at the National Autonomous University of Mexico (UNAM).

Jaramillo points out that Mexico is one of the “leading producers of silver, kaolinite, bauxite, cement and glass, but there is no value added to these materials.” At the same time, “all earth sciences, like geology, mining, metallurgy, have problems drawing enough students,” he says.

And without experts in math and physics – other neglected fields – “we will always have dependent technologies,” says Rodríguez, a member of the Mexican Academy of Sciences.

In astronomy, Mexico has made “contributions to the map of the universe and of black holes, which are up to the level of research in the rest of the world. And having astronomers comes from having physics as a field of study,” he notes.

There have also been significant Mexican contributions “to knowledge about coastal zones and farming, and exploitation of mangroves,” thanks to oceanography, he adds.

This is why the universities cannot shut down less popular departments, even if it is an effort to attract the minimum number of students to offer the courses.

These fields “offer employment, professional development, niche opportunities. In other countries they are exploding, but in this country of 106 million people, we barely have 15 young people who want to study them,” adds Rodríguez.

Guadarrama has high hopes. “If you go to the Pemex (Mexico’s state-run oil company) web site, you’re going to see that an engineering internship is paying about 20,000 pesos (1,400 dollars), and that’s for students who haven’t yet completed their degree,” he says.

Itzel Condado is in the second semester of chemistry at UNAM and believes most of her peers reject her chosen field because “they think they are going to earn more money in other areas, or there won’t be any jobs,” even though “there is a lot of research in ‘green’ chemistry, processes that help fight pollution,” she says.

Meanwhile, at the other extreme, the traditional areas of study at Mexican universities are seeing record numbers of applicants.

In March, UNAM rector José Narro reported for this year “the highest demand” in the university’s history: 114,000 young people took the admission exam, and just eight percent were admitted.

University officials explain that the higher education system only has space for 26 of every 100 Mexicans of university age.

In addition, Mexico is experiencing a “demographic dividend” – a favourable ratio between the population of dependent age and the population of working age. Historically, the country has had a higher percentage of children, but because of family planning policies in the 1970s, now there are more young adults – a situation that is expected to remain constant until 2025.

According to the United Nations, Mexico has 16 working age adults for every 10 children or elderly adults. But the benefits of this demographic dividend, warns the U.N., are not automatic. To make the most of it, young people must be educated in order to develop a more highly qualified labour force.

In Aguilar’s opinion, the key to filling science and technology classrooms is “state intervention.”

Scholarship programmes are successful in keeping young people studying and at the same time “giving preference to those seeking technological and scientific careers,” he says.

Condado is one example. She has continued her studies thanks to a scholarship from the Mexican Academy of Sciences, after she won the National Chemistry Olympics.

But in her class she is one of the few students truly interested in this science, she says. “There are 50 students, but many of my classmates are just there because they couldn’t get into medicine, and they’re the ones who will drop out. In the end just 20 per class graduate.”

Condado believes there needs to be more information about laboratory research projects and how they are applicable to everyday life. That would give pause to students who originally chose medicine “because they wanted to save lives.”

“You can save more lives in chemistry than in medicine,” she maintains, and is ready with an example: “A professor told us that if someone could find a way to convert carbon dioxide into acetic acid (vinegar), we’d solve the problem of global warming.”

*This story is part of a series of features on sustainable development by IPS – Inter Press Service and IFEJ – International Federation of Environmental Journalists, for the Alliance of Communicators for Sustainable Development (www.complusalliance.org).

The suspension of classes in Mexico due to the swine flu epidemic is not the only reason science and technology university courses have been nearly deserted.

UNAM's medical school. - Photo Stock

Until recently, Armando Guadarrama attended a class with just 15 students, but now “we joined with another group because we were so few, and now there are about 30,” he said.

Guadarrama is in his eighth semester of petro-chemical engineering at the National Polytechnic Institute (IPN) in Mexico City, and is enthusiastic about his future profession: “I would like to conduct research to improve refining processes so that they pollute the atmosphere less.”

Although petroleum provides Mexico with 10 percent of its gross domestic product (GDP), it is among many academic fields — mostly science and technology — ignored by young people in Mexico.

The other side of the story is the traditional fields, where students have filled university classrooms for decades: medicine, accounting, law, tourism, design, psychology, business administration, communication, architecture and dentistry.

With graphs in hand, David Jaramillo, IPN's director of higher education, explains “this year 28 students competed for each of our openings in medicine.” In comparison, for each spot in petro-chemical engineering, fewer than five competed.

Antonio Aguilar is information coordinator for another of the country's most important universities, the Autonomous Metropolitan University (UAM). There, the 10 most popular fields of study account for 52 percent of the student demand.

“It's sad, because we offer 79 areas of study. In other words, the 69 remaining fight for the 48 percent of the demand,” he said.

There's a reason for the half-deserted classrooms: “When I go to chat with aspiring students, I conduct an exercise. I ask them to name 10 fields of study, but they have a hard time coming up with eight. There is total ignorance,” he said.

Guadarrama admits that his choice did not involve vocational guidance. “I have an uncle that works in this, that's why I knew about it,” he explains.

His is not an isolated case. When officials from the three federal universities of the Mexican capital discuss matters, “the surprise is that it's the same situation. We are low in demand for sciences and technology,” said Aguilar.

And this situation “is a melting pot of what is happening in all Mexico,” where just 0.4 percent of the GDP is invested in science and technology.

It is strange, says Aguilar, that in “a country with the Pacific Ocean and the Gulf of Mexico, with their great marine wealth, nobody wants to study marine biology.”

“We have the most intense tides in the world, the northern hemisphere's most important solar radiation zones, and we are full of petroleum — that is now running out — and it's a shame that energy engineering is not a high-demand field,” he said.

In a country “where the south is drowning because the rivers flood, while in the north we are dying of thirst, nobody wants to study hydrology engineering.”

Mexico needs more technicians, researchers and scientists in order to confront such pressing problems as global climate change.

“Climate change is creating areas of desertification, there are problems of rural productivity, and there are not enough professionals to come up with solutions,” says Roberto Rodríguez, an official at the National Autonomous University of Mexico (UNAM).

Jaramillo points out that Mexico is one of the “leading producers of silver, caolinite, bauxite, cement and glass, but there is no value added to these materials.” At the same time, “all earth sciences, like geology, mining, metallurgy, have problems with demand.”

Without professionals in math and physics, other neglected fields, “we will always have dependent technologies,” says Rodríguez, member of the Mexican Academy of Sciences.

In astronomy, Mexico has made “contributions to the map of the universe and of black holes, which are up to the level of research in the rest of the world. And having astronomers comes from having physics as a field of study,” he said.

There have also been significant Mexican contributions “to the knowledge about coastal zones and farming, and exploitation of mangroves,” thanks to oceanography.

This is why the universities cannot shut down less popular departments, even if it is an effort to attract the minimum number of students to offer the courses.

These fields “offer employment, professional development, niche opportunities. In other countries they are exploding, and here, with 106 million inhabitants, we barely have 15 young people who want to study them,” adds Rodríguez.

Young Guadarrama has hopes. “If you go to the Pemex (Petróleos Mexicanos) page on the Internet, you're going to see that an engineering internship is paying about 20,000 pesos (1,400 dollars), and that's without having the degree,” he says.

Itzel Condado is in the second semester of chemistry at UNAM and believes most of her peers reject her chosen field because “they think they are going to earn more money in other areas, or that there won't be any jobs,” even though “there is a lot of research in 'green' chemistry, processes that help fight pollution,” she says.

Meanwhile, at the other extreme, the traditional areas of study at Mexican universities are seeing record numbers of applicants.

In March, UNAM rector José Narro reported for this year “the highest demand” in the university's history: 114,000 young people took the admission exam, but just eight percent were admitted.

The great number of rejections is a national constant. The university officials explain that the higher education system only has a capacity for 26 of every 100 Mexicans of university age to study.

In addition, Mexico is experiencing a “demographic dividend”, a favorable relationship between the population of dependent age and the population of working age. Historically, the country has had a higher percentage of children, but because of family planning policies in the 1970s, now there are more young adults — a situation that is expected to remain until 2025.

According to the United Nations, Mexico has 16 working age adults for every 10 children or elderly adults. But the benefits of this demographic dividend, warns the UN, are not automatic. To make the most of it, the youth must be educated in order to develop a more highly qualified labor force.

In Aguilar's opinion, the key to filling science and technology classrooms is “through state intervention.”

Scholarship programs are successful in keeping young people studying and at the same time “giving preference to those seeking technological and scientific careers,” he explains.

Condado is one example. She continued studying thanks to a scholarship from the Mexican Academy of Sciences, for having won the National Chemistry Olympics.

But in her class she is one of the few truly interested in this science, she says. “There are 50 students, but many of my classmates are just there because they couldn't get into medicine, and they're the ones who will drop out. In the end just 20 per class graduate.”

Condado believes there needs to be more information touted about laboratory research projects and how they are applicable to everyday life. That would give pause to students who originally chose medicine “because they wanted to save lives.”

“You can save more lives in chemistry than in medicine,” she says, and is ready with an example: “A professor told us that if someone could find a way to convert carbon dioxide into acetic acid (vinegar), we'd solve the problem of global warming.”

Antonio Moreno is the banquet manager of a four star hotel in the south-eastern Mexican resort city of Cancún, but for more than a year his duties have included digging through the trash.

Tourists at Le Méridien Hotel. Credit: Claudio Cruz/IPS

Why? To ensure that the waste has been properly separated out for recycling, he explains. The containers are “blue for plastics, yellow for cardboard, grey for metals and green for organic waste.”

With 213 rooms, Le Méridien Resort & Spa, where Moreno works, is one of the more than 60 hotels in Cancún and the latest to receive sustainable tourism certification. The seal is granted by the Australia-based Green Globe, says Alma Quiñones, head of human resources.

Three other hotels in the area are ready to begin the process to earn certification, and nine already have it, according to Green Globe’s representative in Mexico, Gustavo Ramos.

All are located on a 130-kilometre stretch of coastline in Quintana Roo state, which includes Cancún, Isla Mujeres, Playa del Carmen, Cozumel and Tulum – together known as the Mayan Riviera. Renowned for its turquoise waters and white beaches and coral reefs, the strip has more than 70,000 hotel rooms and receives three million tourists each year.

For the past three decades, this part of Mexico, home to the Maya culture and important archaeological sites, including the monumental pyramids of Chichén Itzá and Tulum, has been a magnet for visitors from the United States, Canada and Europe. Here they find sun, beaches and culture. In return, they bring in revenues totalling five billion dollars annually.

However, the lack of environmentally sustainable practices has led some of those tourists to turn their backs on Cancún.

“There are groups of tourists who research whether we are truly environmentally friendly before they make their reservations,” said Quiñones.

Hotel officials here estimate that they lost 260 million dollars in revenues last year for this reason. To their surprise, hundreds of tourists asked for their money back when they arrived in Cancún and did not find what had been touted in travel brochures and websites. The colourful reefs and broad beaches were victims of Hurricane Wilma in 2005, leaving in their place just a narrow strip of sand and many rocks.

According to Gabriela Mercado, tourism director for the national Secretariat of the Environment, Mexico is losing its competitive edge due to the lack of sustainable management of its natural resources, and in 2008 that was reflected in the decline of tourism from Europe, where many travellers choose their destinations based on environmentally and socio-culturally friendly practices.

According to the representative of the non-governmental Mexican environmental law centre, CEMDA, Alejandra Serrano Pavón, the Cancún hotel companies destroyed the mangrove forests to build their resort complexes, without taking measures to protect the sand dunes, which further accelerated coastal erosion.

To reverse this process, the federal government wants to recuperate the beaches through a 60-million-dollar project – but that doesn’t appear to be a real solution either.

Officials from the beach areas where the federal government plans to take sand complain that this now precious resource will be used in coastal areas by the same interests that destroyed them.

They also criticise what they see as the hotels’ indifference to the local community. There are doubts ranging from whether economic benefits from tourism remain in the region, as the Secretariat of the Environment official herself admits, to the fact that the residents of Quintana Roo no longer feel that the beaches are theirs, especially those in Cancún.

The hotels create a barrier that prevents public access to the sea. “Ten years ago, in the hotel area of Cancún, there were ‘ecological windows’ where we could still see the sea. But no longer,” says Moreno, of Le Méridien.

If someone wants to reach the water, she or he must pay the hotel, as publicist José Uriart does. “I pay my 20-dollar day pass and I can use the pool, showers, recliners and towels,” he said.

But if one were to use the beach without paying, the experience of crafts vendor Jaime García serves as a warning: “The guards are arrogant. They say the beach belongs to the hotel. Once I told them that the beaches are public, but they turned on the water hose and doused me until I left,” he said.

As a result, one never sees “a Maya Indian who works there go and lay out a towel on the beach outside the Hotel Presidente,” says CEMDA’s Serrano Pavón

Perhaps because of this, some hotels feel compelled to improve their image, and work to obtain sustainability certification voluntarily.

They set up water treatment plants and use the water to irrigate their golf courses, use biodegradable detergents, decorate their grounds with native plants, and make an effort to improve relations with the community by “adopting” schools and social services centres, giving talks about sustainable practices and donating the money they obtain through recycling metal and glass containers.

But it’s not just a question of image.

In one year, Le Méridien Hotel cut its electricity consumption five percent, water consumption four percent, gasoline 13 percent and gasoil 24 percent, reports facilities manager Cristóbal Gudiño Nava. Furthermore, the hotel went from an output of more than one kilo of garbage per day per person to just over half a kilo per person. Next year these numbers need to continue to improve in order to extend the certification.

In Playa del Carmen, the Mayan Palace Hotel, also certified by Green Globe, “set aside an area for a crocodile preserve and an island on a lake as a home to pink flamingos. We also have an area for composting and a nursery for native species,” says Erica Lobos, head of the certification project.

“We offer the tourists a bicycle tour through these areas and explain why we are working to protect the plants and animals, which are the fastest to recover after a hurricane,” she added.

But, Lobos went on, although these efforts are important, implementing a culture of sustainability is a slow process. “There is a bit of apathy. We advise about sustainable practices, and when there are just one or two hotels per month expressing interest in working this way, it is too few.”

Meanwhile, the Secretariat of the Environment is drafting national standards for sustainability requirements for the region’s tourism industry. It will include criteria to determine whether a hotel is sustainable or not and will be the basis for rankings. A hotel’s poor ranking in sustainability is likely to bring negative publicity.

According to CEMDA, even if the standards are well received, they are still not sufficient, because there are hotels that do not comply with existing regulations and yet continue to receive permits and authorisations from the federal authority.

The Secretariat of the Environment declined to comment on these criticisms.

The indifference of some hotel operations, especially the newer ones, when it comes to truly sustainable development of their business is due in part to the fact that they don’t see the economic benefits of taking care of the area, says Serrano Pavón.

They still believe that the environmental issue “runs counter to development and job creation, but it’s just not the case. It is quality of life for the resident, and it is going to allow them to continue with tourism and generate profits,” concluded the CEMDA spokeswoman.

(*This story is part of a series of features on sustainable development by IPS – Inter Press Service and IFEJ – International Federation of Environmental Journalists, for the Alliance of Communicators for Sustainable Development (www.complusalliance.org).)

Cancún, a resort destination in Mexico, began to lose tourists who were demanding a more natural vacation. As a result, several companies have set out on the path towards a more sustainable hotel industry.

Tourists enjoying Le Méridien Hotel. - Claudio Cruz/IPS

Why? To ensure that the waste has been properly separated out for recycling, he explains. The containers are “blue for plastics, yellow for cardboard, grey for metals and green for organic waste.”

With 213 rooms, Le Méridien Resort & Spa, where Moreno works, is one of the more than 60 hotels in Cancún and the latest to receive sustainable tourism certification. The seal is granted by the Australia-based Green Globe, says Alma Quiñones, head of human resources.

Three other hotels in the area are ready to begin the process to earn certification, and nine already have it, according to Green Globe's representative in Mexico, Gustavo Ramos.

All are located on a 130-kilometer stretch of coastline in Quintana Roo state, which includes Cancún, Isla Mujeres, Playa del Carmen, Cozumel and Tulum — together known as the Mayan Riviera. Renowned for its turquoise waters and white beaches and coral reefs, the strip has more than 70,000 hotel rooms and receives three million tourists each year. In the past three decades, this part of Mexico, home to the Maya culture and important archeological sites, including the monumental pyramids of Chichén Itzá and Tulum, has been a magnet for visitors from the United States, Canada and Europe. Here they find sun, beaches and culture. In return, they bring in revenues totaling 5 billion dollars annually.

However, the lack of environmentally sustainable practices has led some of those tourists to turn their backs on Cancún.

“There are groups of tourists who research whether we are truly environmentally friendly before they make their reservations,” said Quiñones.

Hotel officials here estimate that they lost 260 million dollars in revenues last year for this reason. To their surprise, hundreds of tourists asked for their money back when they arrived in Cancún and did not find what had been touted in travel brochures and websites. The colorful reefs and broad beaches were victims of Hurricane Wilma in 2005, leaving in their place just a narrow strip of sand and many rocks.

According to Gabriela Mercado, tourism director for the national Secretariat of Environment, Mexico is losing its competitive edge due to the lack of sustainable management of its natural resources, and in 2008 that was reflected in the decline of tourism from Europe, where many travelers choose their destinations based on environmentally and socio-culturally friendly practices.

According to the representative of the non-governmental Mexican environmental law center, CEMDA, Alejandra Serrano Pavón, the Cancún hotel companies destroyed the mangrove forests to build their resort complexes, without taking measures to protect the sand dunes, which further accelerated coastal erosion.

To reverse this process, the federal government wants to recuperate the beaches through a 60-million-dollar project — but that doesn't appear to be a real solution either.

Officials from the beach areas where the federal government plans to take sand complain that this now precious resource will be used in coastal areas by the very ones who destroyed them.

They also criticize what they see as the hotels' indifference to the local community. There are doubts ranging from whether economic benefits from tourism remain in the region, as the Secretariat of Environment official herself admits, to the fact that the residents of Quintana Roo no longer feel that the beaches are theirs, especially those in Cancún.

The hotels create a barrier that prevents public access to the sea. “Ten years ago, in the hotel area of Cancún, there were 'ecological windows' where we could still see the sea. But no longer,” says Moreno, of Le Méridien.

If someone wants to reach the water, she or he must pay the hotel, as publicist José Uriart does. “I pay my 20-dollar day pass and I can use the pool, showers, recliners, towels,” he said.

But if one were to use the beach without paying, the experience of crafts vendor Jaime García serves as a warning: “The guards are arrogant. They say the beach belongs to the hotel. Once I told them that the beaches are public, but they turned on the water hose and doused me until I left,” he said.

As a result, one never sees “a Maya who works there go and lay out a towel on the beach outside the Hotel Presidente,” says CEMDA's Serrano Pavón

Perhaps because of this some hotels feel compelled to improve their image, and work to obtain sustainability certification voluntarily. They set up water treatment plants and use the water to irrigate their golf courses; they use biodegradable detergents; they decorate their grounds with native plants, and make an effort to improve relations with the community by adopting schools and social services centers, giving talks about sustainable practices and donating the money they obtain through recycling metal and glass containers.

But it's not just a question of image.

In one year, Le Méridien Hotel cut its electricity consumption five percent, water consumption four percent, gasoline 13 percent and gasoil 24 percent, reports facilities manager Cristóbal Gudiño Nava. Furthermore, the hotel went from an output of more than one kilogram of garbage per day per person to just over half a kilo per person. Next year these numbers need to continue to improve in order to ratify the certification.

In Playa del Carmen, the Mayan Palace Hotel, also certified by Green Globe, “set aside an area for a crocodile preserve and an island on a lake as a home to pink flamingos. We also have an area for composting and a nursery for native species,” says Erica Lobos, head of the certification project.

“We offer the tourists a bicycle tour through those areas and explain why we are working to protect the plants and animals, which are the fastest to recover after a hurricane,” she added.

But, Lobos went on, although these efforts are important, implementing a culture of sustainability is a slow process. “There is a certain apathy. We advise about sustainable practices, and when there are just one or two hotels per month expressing interest in working this way,” it is too few.”

Meanwhile, the Secretariat of Environment is drafting national standards for sustainability requirements for the region's tourism industry. It will include criteria to determine whether a hotel is sustainable or not and will be the basis for rankings. A hotel's poor ranking in sustainability is likely to bring negative publicity.

According to CEMDA, even if the standards are well received, they are still not enough, because there are hotels that do not comply with existing regulations and yet continue to receive permits and authorizations from the federal authority. The Secretariat of Environment declined to comment on these criticisms.

The indifference of some hotel operations, especially the newer ones, when it comes to truly sustainable development of their business is due in part to the fact that they don't see the economic benefits of taking care of the area, says Serrano Pavón.

They still believe that the environmental issue “runs counter to development and job creation, but it's just not the case. It is quality of life for the resident, and it is going to allow them to continue with tourism and generate profits,” concluded the CEMDA spokeswoman.