The laying of the Mayan Train along 1500 kilometers through five states in the south and southeast of Mexico, mostly through the Yucatan Peninsula, will damage the fragile jungle ecosystem, with the removal of vegetation and animal species. The photo shows an area cleared of vegetation near the municipality of Valladolid, in the state of Yucatan. CREDIT: Emilio Godoy/IPS

By Emilio Godoy
MEXICO CITY, Nov 2 2022 (IPS)

A beige line slashes its way through the Mayan jungle near the municipality of Izamal in the southeastern Mexican state of Yucatán. It is section 3, 172 kilometers long, of the Mayan Train (TM), the most important megaproject of President Andrés Manuel López Obrador’s administration.

The metal scrape of the backhoes tears up the vegetation to open up arteries in the jungle for the laying and construction of the five stops of this part of the future railway network, which is being built at a cost currently estimated at more than 15 billion dollars, 70 percent more than initially planned."Everything that is happening in the Yucatán peninsula is affecting the Mayan people, damaging the trees, the water, the animals. It is a part of our territory that is being destroyed. Those who don't produce their own food have to depend on others." -- Pedro Uc

Pedro Uc, an indigenous member of the non-governmental Assembly of Defenders of the Múuch’ Xíinbal Mayan Territory, summed up the environmental impact of the TM in an area of milpa – a traditional system of cultivation of corn, squash, beans and chili peppers – and poultry farming.

“Everything that is happening in the Yucatán peninsula is affecting the Mayan people, damaging the trees, the water, the animals. It is a part of our territory that is being destroyed. Those who don’t produce their own food have to depend on others,” he told IPS from Buctzotz (Mayan for “hair dress”), in Yucatán, some 1,400 km from Mexico City.

Without land, there is no food, stressed the activist, whose organization works in 25 municipalities on the peninsula, which includes the states of Campeche, Quintana Roo and Yucatán, and is home to the second most important jungle massif in Latin America, after the Amazon.

Despite multiple complaints of environmental damage, the Federal Attorney’s Office for Environmental Protection (Profepa) has yet to resolve these complaints, more than two years after construction began.

“It has never carried out its role. It has not addressed the issue, it is merely ornamental. Profepa should attend to the complaints,” said Uc, whose town is located 44 kilometers southeast of Izamal, where one of the railroad stations will be located.

Profepa, part of the Ministry of the Environment and Natural Resources (Semarnat), received two complaints in 2020, one in 2021 and 159 in the first five months of this year for “acts or omissions in contravention of environmental laws,” according to public information requests submitted by IPS.

Profepa oversees the megaproject through its “Mayan Train Inspection Program, in the areas of environmental impact, forestry, wildlife and sources of pollution”, the results of which are unknown.

In December last year, the agency carried out an inspection of hazardous waste generation and management in the southern state of Chiapas, which, together with the states of Campeche, Quintana Roo, Tabasco and Yucatán, is part of the route for the railway.

In addition, in June and July, two other visits were made to verify measures to mitigate pollutant emissions and waste management. Profepa is still analyzing the results of these visits.

The environmental prosecutor’s office has carried out exploratory visits in nine municipalities of section 2, eight of section 4 and 16 of section 5. The laying of lines 6 and 7 began last April, but the agency has not yet inspected them. The megaproject consists of a total of seven sections, which are being built in parallel.

The TM, to be built by the governmental National Tourism Fund (Fonatur), will cover some 1,500 kilometers, with 21 stations and 14 stops, according to López Obrador, who is heavily involved in the project and is its biggest supporter.

To lay the railway, whose trains will transport thousands of tourists and loads of cargo, such as transgenic soybeans, palm oil and pork, 1,681 hectares of land will be cleared, involving the cutting of 300,000 trees, according to the original environmental impact study. The laying of sections 1, 2 and 3, which require 801 hectares, began without environmental permits.

The government sees the megaproject as an engine of social development that will create jobs, boost tourism beyond the traditional tourist attractions and bolster the regional economy, which has sparked controversy between its supporters and critics.

The construction of the Mayan Train has involved logging in several jungle areas in southeastern Mexico. The photo shows a breach opened by a backhoe on the outskirts of Playa del Carmen, in the state of Quintana Roo, in March 2022, without the required intervention by the environmental prosecutor’s office. CREDIT: Emilio Godoy/IPS

Free way

In November of last year, López Obrador, who wants trains running on the peninsula by the end of 2023, classified the TM as a “priority project” by means of a presidential decree, thus facilitating the delivery of environmental permits. On Oct. 25 the president promised that the test runs would begin next July.

This classification reduces Profepa’s maneuvering room, according to Carlos del Razo, a lawyer specializing in environmental cases, of the law firm Carvajal y Machado.

“Some of the early complaints could be filed for works where permit exemptions were issued because they were done on existing rights-of-way. But if it decides not to act, it has to argue that decision. The environmental prosecutor’s office will not have a particular interest in approving government works,” he told IPS.

In its authorizations, Semarnat ruled that Fonatur must implement programs for integrated waste management, soil conservation and reforestation, air quality monitoring, flora management and rescue and relocation of wildlife.

Profepa must supervise that these measures comply with the General Law of Ecological Balance and Environmental Protection, in force since 1988 and which environmentalists say has been violated.

López Obrador denies that there is deforestation, and promised the construction of three natural parks in eastern Quintana Roo and the reforestation of some 2,500 hectares in the vicinity of the railroad route.

In a tacit acknowledgement of logging in the project area, the Ministry of National Defense will plant trees, at a cost of 35 million dollars, according to an agreement between Fonatur and the ministry contained in the massive leak of military emails made by the non-governmental group Guacamaya and consulted by IPS.

Viridiana Mendoza, Agriculture and Climate Change specialist for Greenpeace Mexico, criticized “the lack of action” by Profepa.

“They had already deforested without an environmental impact assessment, which is a crime. We are not surprised, because it is part of the dynamic that has characterized the Mayan Train: illegalities, omissions, false information, violation of procedures. There is a conflict of interest because Profepa answers to Semarnat,” she said.

The international non-governmental organization has found “insufficient, false and inaccurate” information on sections 5, 6 and 7, so it is not possible to assess the dangers and damage to local populations and ecosystems.

Parts of the jungle of the Yucatan peninsula, in southeastern Mexico, have been cut down to make way for the construction of the Mayan Train. But the environmental prosecutor’s office, failing to comply with its legal duty, has turned a deaf ear to complaints of alleged ecological crimes. CREDIT: Guacamaya Leaks

Risks

The project is a paradox, because while the government promises sustainable tourism in other areas of the peninsula, it threatens the very attractions of this influx of visitors, such as the cenotes – deep, water-filled sinkholes formed in limestone – cave systems and the entire ecosystem in general.

The TM endangers the largest system of underground and flooded grottoes on the planet, a complex of submerged caves beneath the limestone terrain.

The porous (karst) soil of the peninsula sabotages the government’s plans, as it has forced Fonatur to change the route of the megaproject several times. For example, section 5 has experienced three modifications between 2021 and January 2022.

Faced with the wave of impacts, the last hope lies in organization by local residents, according to the Mayan activist Uc.

“Between the possible and the impossible, we inform people so that in their own community, they can make the decision they want to make. People do not have the necessary information. Let them take up the struggle from their own communities and make the decisions about what comes next,” he said.

But attorney Del Razo and environmentalist Mendoza said the courts are the last resort.

“The judiciary continues to be the most independent branch of power in Mexico. Interested parties could seek injunctions that order Profepa to correct the process. A strategy of specific details is needed to demonstrate the infractions. The effective thing is to go into the details of the challenges,” explained Del Razo.

Mendoza said there is a lack of access to information, respect for public participation and environmental justice.

“Profepa should have stopped the works for the simple fact of not having the environmental authorization when the removal of vegetation began,” she said. “We don’t see it as likely that it will seek to stop the construction, because we have seen its reaction before. Semarnat supports the project, regardless of the fact that it has failed to comply and is in contradiction with the laws.”

While its opponents seek to take legal action, the TM runs roughshod over all obstacles, which are dodged with the help of the Environmental Prosecutor’s Office, at least until now.

The Yucatán peninsula in southeastern Mexico has abundant solar and wind resources, but relies on fossil fuels for electricity generation. The photo shows a wind turbine belonging to the state-owned CFE next to a section of the power grid between Cancún and Puerto Morelos, in the state of Quintana Roo. CREDIT: Emilio Godoy/IPS

By Emilio Godoy
MÉRIDA, Mexico , Apr 18 2022 (IPS)

At home, Isabel Bracamontes uses gas only for cooking. “We try to prepare food that doesn’t need cooking, like salads,” she says in the southeastern Mexican city of Mérida.

The 20-kilogram cooking gas cylinder lasts her between three and four months, and by using it less she saves money, since the price has increased in recent months. The electricity in her home comes from plants fired by gas that is essentially methane, which has 86 times more capacity to absorb heat than carbon dioxide over a period of 20 years, hence the danger it poses to the climate.

An environmental activist and mother of one, Bracamontes lives in a middle-class neighborhood where other families face a similar situation to hers with regard to gas.

The southeastern Yucatán peninsula, home to 5.1 million people, contributes almost five percent of Mexico’s gross domestic product (GDP), thanks to agriculture, tourism and services.

Comprised of the states of Campeche, Quintana Roo and Yucatán, of which Mérida is the capital, Yucatán receives enormous amounts of sun and wind but depends on gas to meet its electricity needs.

Tied to gas

Quietly, this fuel is spreading throughout the peninsula, which is particularly vulnerable to droughts, intense storms and rising sea levels – symptoms of the climate crisis, one of the main causes of which is the burning of fossil fuels.

The peninsula receives gas through the Mayakán pipeline, a 780-kilometer pipeline owned by the Italian company Engie. The gas is injected from Ciudad Pemex, in the state of Tabasco, adjacent to the west of the peninsula, and the pipeline has been in operation since 1999.

In 2020, the Cuxtal I expansion also came into operation, with a 16-kilometer pipeline which connects to the Cactus Gas Processing Complex in the state of Chiapas, to the south of the peninsula.

The government’s Comisión Federal de Electricidad (CFE) purchases gas from the state-owned oil giant Petróleos Mexicanos (Pemex) to deliver it to its thermoelectric plants Lerma in Campeche, Valladolid and Mérida II in Yucatán, as well as to the private combined cycle plants Mérida III and Valladolid III, which operate with gas and steam.“The big problem is the direction the energy sector is headed. It's not what the transition needs. Climate action is full of false solutions, like trying to fight climate change with gas." -- Pablo Ramírez

The peninsula has a generation capacity of 2455 megawatts (MW), of which combined cycle thermoelectricity contributes 1463, turbogas 368, conventional thermal 314, wind 244, solar 50, and internal combustion 14, according to the U.S. government’s National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL).

According to official Mexican data, five solar and wind farms are operating in the state of Yucatán alone. But communities opposed to renewable initiatives have managed to block at least six other projects of this type, due to their environmental impact and the failure to carry out consultations with local indigenous residents.

In December, the state of Yucatán was the sixth of the 32 Mexican states with the highest number of contracts for the installation of residential solar panels of less than 0.5 MW, with 12,458 producing a total of 89 MW. Quintana Roo had 3969 that produced 27 MW, while Campeche was the state with the fewest, with 1515 producing 11 MW, according to figures from the official Energy Regulatory Commission.

The national total amounted to 270,506 producing 2,031 MW.

In the entire peninsula, the CFE requires about 340 million cubic feet of gas per day for its plants in this region, while total demand is about 500 million, including 160 million for industry and commerce, according to the Confederation of National Chambers of Commerce, Services and Tourism.

A map of the Yucatán peninsula on the Caribbean Sea in southeastern Mexico shows the route of the 780-kilometer Mayakán pipeline, which carries natural gas from the state of Tabasco to the three states of that region. CREDIT: Sener

Running against the current on fossil fuels

Pablo Ramírez, Energy and Climate Change specialist with environmental watchdog Greenpeace Mexico, questioned the expansion of gas in Yucatán and the rest of the country.

“The big problem is the direction the energy sector is headed. It’s not what the transition needs. Climate action is full of false solutions, like trying to fight climate change with gas,” he told IPS from Mexico City.

Mexico is the 12th largest oil producer in the world and the 17th largest gas producer. In terms of proven reserves, it ranks 20th for crude oil and 41st for natural gas, but its hydrocarbon industry is declining due to the scarcity of easily extractable deposits.

In February, 75 percent of electricity generation was based on fossil fuels, followed by wind energy (7.5 percent), hydroelectric (7.0 percent), solar (4.94 percent), nuclear energy (4.23 percent), geothermal (1.56 percent) and biomass (0.07 percent), according to data from the non-governmental Energy Transition Observatory in Mexico.

In decline

Gas production has been declining in Latin America’s second largest economy. In February 2020, according to official data, extraction totaled 4.93 billion cubic feet per day, and had dropped to 4.83 billion 12 months later, and to 4.67 billion in February 2022.

The shortfall forces the country to import gas, especially from the United States, from which it has imported a maximum of 904.6 million and a minimum of 640 million cubic feet every February over the last three years.

For its distribution over a territory of almost two million square kilometers, a network of gas pipelines has been laid in this country of 131 million inhabitants, with 27 state and private pipelines. In addition, the construction of three others has been halted due to opposition from the communities through which they would run.

The recipients of the gas are 50 thermoelectric, combined cycle and turbogas plants, both state-owned and private. In addition, six more combined cycle plants, using two thermal sources, gas and steam, are under construction.

This shows how Mexico has tied itself to gas, despite its climatic effects, and the difficulties of abandoning it in the future, since this infrastructure has a useful life of decades. It also raises questions regarding the increase in international gas prices, due to the Russian invasion of Ukraine.

The use of solar energy is still limited on the Yucatán peninsula, despite the high levels of solar radiation. The photo shows a hotel with solar panels on its roof in the city of Playa del Carmen, in Quintana Roo, one of the three states of Mexico’s southeastern region. CREDIT: Emilio Godoy/IPS

Transition halted

In Mexico, the energy transition has been paralyzed since 2019 due to the policies of the government of President Andrés Manuel López Obrador, which have favored fossil fuels and hydroelectric power plants, to the detriment of new clean energies.

In September 2021, López Obrador presented a legal proposal to annul the 2013 reforms that opened the power industry up to domestic and foreign private participation, so that the public sector would resume the direction of strategic planning in the industry.

The projected changes favor the CFE and prop up gas as the preeminent source of electricity.

At the national level, in January, the CFE directly awarded the construction of six combined cycle plants that would come into operation in 2024, to provide a total of 4,000 MW, with an investment of 3.4 billion dollars.

In the case of the Yucatán peninsula, the CFE would need 200 million cubic feet of gas per day for two new combined cycle plants in Mérida and Valladolid, with a capacity of 1519 MW, considering the projected annual growth in demand of between 3.2 and 3.5 percent.

Meanwhile, the peninsula is wasting its available renewable resources.

The US-based NREL reports that Campeche has a solar potential of 727,502 MW and wind power of 1599 MW; Yucatán, 757,820 and 6125, respectively; and Quintana Roo, 168,029 and 2035.

For the peninsula, the NREL suggested organizing regional clean energy auctions based on competitive renewable energy zones, introducing energy efficiency programs for government buildings and small businesses, designing energy procurement mechanisms for government buildings, and encouraging the deployment of renewable energy in local communities.

Bracamontes, the Mérida environmentalist and representative of the global youth movement Fridays for Future Mexico in Yucatán, criticized the waste of renewable energy potential.

“There are many alternatives to take advantage of the sun and wind and solid waste, the disposal of which the state has not solved,” she said. “We ignore all that potential. We must analyze what is best for us and what has the least impact. If we are still married to the idea that fossil fuels are the only way, we are wrong. Sunshine is free.”

The local population also faces energy instability under the current energy scheme. For example, the neighborhood where Bracamontes lives, in western Mérida, suffered three short blackouts in one week.

Like other cities on the peninsula, Mérida also has high electricity rates, even with public subsidies, and unstable electricity generation.

Greenpeace’s Ramírez said the winners of the electricity counter-reform are Pemex and the gas companies.

“The possibility of making a transition to renewable sources and distributed generation is erased,” he said. “We are talking about a model that has serious implications for health, air, soil and water pollution, and climate externalities, which are not in the equation.”

In the photo, people in several vehicles inspect a section of the Mayan Train, the flagship megaproject of Mexican President Andrés Manuel López Obrador, near the city of Valladolid, in the southeastern Yucatán peninsula, seat of the second most fragile jungle massif in Latin America, after the Amazon rainforest. CREDIT: Emilio Godoy/IPS

By Emilio Godoy
PLAYA DEL CARMEN, Mexico , Apr 8 2022 (IPS)

Along the wide slash of white earth in southwestern Mexico there are no longer trees or animals. In their place, orange signs with white stripes warn visitors: “Heavy machinery in motion,” “No unauthorized personnel allowed”.

Five tractors spread over the terrain, like intimidating metallic guards with sharp teeth. Two blue portable toilets keep them mute company, two white cans overflow with garbage, and a white and solitary awning attempts to protect them from the punishing sun.

The metal teeth tear up the jungle carpet on land in the Río Secreto ejido – an area of communal land used for agriculture – south of the city of Playa del Carmen. With a population of 305,000, Playa del Carmen is the seat of the municipality of Solidaridad, in the southeastern state of Quintana Roo, some 1,600 kilometers from Mexico City, on the Yucatán peninsula.

The new 90-meter gap in the jungle opens the way for the 120-kilometer southern route of Section 5 of the Mayan Train (TM), the most ambitious megaproject of the government of President Andrés Manuel López Obrador, who wants at all costs for the locomotives to blow their horns by late 2023."Hundreds of hectares are being deforested. We are going to end up with new cities or existing ones are going to grow. This could be a tragedy of enormous proportions, because the ecosystems are being disturbed. Simply by removing vegetation cover, the capacity of water systems to capture and filter water is altered.” -- Lorenzo Álvarez

Mina Moreno, an independent environmental conservationist, describes Section 5, one of the seven sections of the project, as “illegal and opaque”.

“There are no studies, there is no information as to why the route was changed, what is behind the new route. The problem is what the railway will bring with it: it’s a Trojan horse for what is coming behind,” she told IPS.

The project, under the responsibility of the government’s National Tourism Development Fund (Fonatur), has suffered delays and cost overruns since construction began in 2020 and will have environmental, social, cultural and labor impacts, as IPS saw during a tour of several areas along the route.

With seven sections running through the Yucatan peninsula and part of the southeast, the plan is for the Mayan Train, with 21 stations and 14 stops, to cover a distance of some 1,500 kilometers. The railroad will pass through 78 municipalities in the southern and southeastern states of the country: Campeche, Quintana Roo, Yucatán, Chiapas and Tabasco, which are home to a combined total of more than 13 million people.

The first three are located in the Yucatan Peninsula, which has one of the most important and fragile Mexican ecosystems and the second largest jungle massif in Latin America, after the Amazon rainforest.

It is here that around 80 percent of the TM railway will run, whose locomotives will pull wagons carrying thousands of tourists and cargo, such as transgenic soybeans, palm oil and pork, the main agricultural products from the peninsula.

The Mexican government is promoting the president’s flagship megaproject as an engine of social development that is to create jobs, boost tourism beyond the traditional attractions and bolster the regional economy. But these arguments have sparked conflicts between its supporters and critics.

UN Habitat, which is providing technical advice on the project’s land use planning, believes that the railway will create one million jobs by 2030 and will lift 1.1 million people out of poverty in an area with 42 municipalities with high rates of poverty and marginalization. (The estimates were made prior to the COVID-19 epidemic that hit Latin America’s second-largest economy hard.)

The Mayan Train, which will run 1,500 kilometers through five states in southern and southeastern Mexico, threatens ecosystems and tourist attractions, such as subterranean caves and cenotes. The photo shows tourists swimming in the cenote Azul, on the outskirts of Playa del Carmen, in the southeastern state of Quintana Roo on the Yucatan Peninsula. CREDIT: Emilio Godoy/IPS

One land, two faces

The TM, built with public funds, requires 1,681 hectares of land, which implies the cutting of 300,000 trees, according to the original environmental impact study. The construction of the first three sections, which require 801 hectares, began without environmental permits.

The western route is causing social, cultural and land-ownership conflicts, while the eastern route will cause greater environmental damage.

López Obrador denies that the railway will lead to deforestation, and promised the creation of three natural parks in eastern Quintana Roo and the reforestation of some 2,500 hectares.

But available information shows that the megaproject is moving ahead with construction while leaving environmental management plans behind.

This is seen in a close look at the 2020 public accounts of the Chief Audit Office of Mexico – the comptroller of the public treasury – on the budget and execution of the TM. The office concluded that the project lacks a master plan and the necessary resources to guarantee sustainable development and environmental protection.

It also documented an increase in cost from 7.3 billion dollars in 2019 to 8.8 billion the following year, and found that there was no explanation for the expenditure of about 13 million dollars.

Moreover, the megaproject only advanced one-fifth of what was planned in 2019 and 2020, a bad omen for the president’s plans, although the rate of progress in 2021 and the first quarter of 2022 is not known.

But it is clear that Fonatur decided to step on the accelerator to fulfill the president’s promise and that the last two sections may be built with the participation of the army in the middle of the jungle. It is also clear that López Obrador does not want to inaugurate the TM until the entire line is completed.

The Federal Prosecutor’s Office for Environmental Protection (PROFEPA) did not inspect the works in 2020, nor has it done so for section 5, as stated in a request for access to public information filed by IPS.

The porous karst soil of the peninsula has sabotaged the government’s plans and deadlines, as it has forced Fonatur to change the design several times. For example, section 5 underwent three modifications from January 2021 to January 2022.

In the Mexican municipality of Solidaridad, whose municipal seat is Playa del Carmen, on the Yucatán peninsula, the construction of one of the seven sections of the Mayan Train has deforested at least 10 kilometers of jungle. CREDIT: Emilio Godoy/IPS

The megaproject contains contradictions, because while the government promises sustainable tourism in other areas of the peninsula, the railway threatens the local sustainable tourism attractions, such as the cenotes, the caves and the entire ecosystem.

In the Yucatan Peninsula there are some 7,000 cenotes – freshwater sinkholes resulting from the collapse of limestone bedrock that exposes groundwater. Between Playa del Carmen and Tulum, cities only 61 kilometers apart, there are 13 of these ecosystems.

In the entire state of Quintana Roo there are at least 105 flooded caves over 1,500 meters in length and 408 underwater caves.

The TM threatens the largest system of subterranean rivers and flooded caves on the planet, a complex of submerged caves more than 340 kilometers long beneath the limestone floor.

From land to sea

Lorenzo Álvarez, a researcher at the Academic Reef Systems Unit of the Institute of Marine Sciences and Limnology at the public National Autonomous University of Mexico, says that as a regional development project, the railway will be “catastrophic”.

“Hundreds of hectares are being deforested,” he told IPS. “We are going to end up with new cities or existing ones are going to grow. This could be a tragedy of enormous proportions, because the ecosystems are being disturbed. Simply by removing vegetation cover, the capacity of water systems to capture and filter water is altered.”

The consequences: water with more sediment in the reefs, waste, leachates and more pollution.

That is the vision that the visitor gets looking at the map from inland to the coast in Puerto Morelos, in the north of Quintana Roo, which has suffered a real estate invasion, to the extent that the reefs have been mortally wounded. They are part of the Mesoamerican Reef, the second largest in the world, after Australia’s Great Barrier Reef.

The fear in this former fishing village, which is now the largest port on the so-called Riviera Maya with 27,000 inhabitants, is that the TM will exacerbate the real estate boom. But most locals are unaware of the danger.

The Mayan Train will run through the outskirts of Puerto Morelos, seen in the distance in the photo. Located 38 kilometers from Cancun and forming part of the so-called Riviera Maya, this former fishing village is now a port city with real estate encroachment that has damaged the reefs off its coast. The railroad could spell the end for the fragile ecosystem. CREDIT: Emilio Godoy/IPS

“Construction hasn’t started yet,” Fabiola Sánchez, an activist with the non-governmental group United Voices of Puerto Morelos, told IPS. “There has been no tangible damage here, as in other municipalities, but we know the environmental implications. Our aim is prevention, because we are going to suffer the same environmental effects.”

The activists’ concern is focused on the 2020-2030 Urban Development Program, which they accuse of favoring hotel and real estate interests to the detriment of citizen participation and sustainable planning on a coastline already stressed by excessive tourism.

And, above all, they accuse it of favoring construction of the new railway.

Through legal appeals, opponents of the program have managed to bring it to a halt, but they are witnessing construction without land use planning in other municipalities.

The Mayan Train megaproject includes the construction of sustainable cities (formerly called development poles) around the stations, which include businesses, drinking water, drainage, electricity and urban equipment.

The Ministry of the Environment and Natural Resources (Semarnat) itself warns that these poles may represent the greatest environmental threat from the railway line.

The sustainable cities should promote “well-managed urban planning” and should help reduce the backlog of local and regional services, according to the official website.

“Considering climatic conditions, efficient use of water, energy and integrated management of solid waste…and respecting natural conditions, affecting ecosystems as little as possible,” are essential, Semarnat stated.

But the construction work on the ground and the lack of urban development plans contradict these precepts.

In any case, the railway’s route does not seem to be set up for the benefit of excursionists and local workers, as its planned stations are far from tourist sites and work centers. Passengers would have to use other means to travel to these places.

In addition, the popular perspective values supposed future returns, such as jobs and income, over current and potential harms, like deforestation.

There have also been labor abuses. Section 5 workers earn about 39 dollars a week – less than the minimum daily wage of 8.5 dollars – and work without protective equipment and without signed contracts, as IPS learned.

Furthermore, there has been arbitrary treatment of “ejidatarios” or local residents of ejidos, since in Campeche the authorities paid about 2.5 dollars per square meter of expropriated land, while in Quintana Roo the price rose to about 25 dollars.

The threat of collapse is not merely an apocalyptic proclamation, environmentalists insist. They quote the closing line of the novel La vorágine (1924), by Colombian writer José Eustasio Rivera, a Latin American classic: “The jungle swallowed them up”, in allusion to the fate of its characters, and they say the same thing could happen to the TM.

The Mayan Train, the flagship megaproject of leftist President Andrés Manuel López Obrador in Mexico, seeks to promote the socioeconomic development of the south and southeast of the country, with an emphasis on tourism and with the goal of transporting 50,000 passengers per day by 2023. The fear is that the mass influx of tourists will damage preserved coastal areas, such as Tulum beach in the state of Quintana Roo on the Yucatan Peninsula. CREDIT: Emilio Godoy

By Emilio Godoy
Mexico City, Aug 25 2020 (IPS)

Mayan anthropologist Ezer May fears that the tourism development and real estate construction boom that will be unleashed by the Mayan Train, the main infrastructure project of Mexican President Andrés Manuel López Obrador, will disrupt his community.

“What we think is that the east of the town could be affected,” May told IPS by phone from his hometown of Kimbilá.

“The most negative impact will come when they start building the development hub around the train station,” he said. “We know that the tourism industry and other businesses will receive a boost. There is uncertainty about what is to come; many ejidatarios [members of an ejido, public land held in common by the inhabitants of a village and farmed cooperatively or individually] don’t know what’s happening.”

This town of 4,000 people, whose name means “water by the tree”, is in the municipality of Izamal in the northern part of the state of Yucatan, about 1,350 km southeast of Mexico City. The district will have a Mayan Train station, although its size is not yet known, and the prospect awakens fears as well as hope among the communities involved.

In Kimbilá, 10 km from the city of Izamal, there are 560 ejidatarios who own some 5,000 hectares of land where they grow corn and vegetables, raise small livestock and produce honey.

“These ejido lands are going to be in the sights of tourism and real estate companies, real estate speculation and everything else that urban development implies. We will see the same old dispossession and asymmetrical agreements and contracts for buying up land at extremely low prices; we’ll see unequal treatment,” said May.

The government’s National Tourism Fund (Fonatur) is promoting the project, which is to cost between 6.2 and 7.8 billion dollars. Construction began in May.

The plan is for the Mayan Train to begin operating in 2022, with 19 stations and 12 other stops along some 1,400 km of track, which will be added to the nearly 27,000 km of railways in Mexico, Latin America’s second largest economy, population 129 million.

It will run through 78 municipalities in the southern and southeastern states of the country: Campeche, Quintana Roo, Yucatan, Chiapas and Tabasco, the first three of which are in the Yucatan Peninsula, which has one of the most important and fragile ecosystems in Mexico and is home to 11.1 million people.

Its locomotives will run on diesel and the trains are projected to carry about 50,000 passengers daily by 2023, reaching 221,000 by 2053, in addition to cargo such as transgenic soybeans, palm oil and pork, which are major agricultural products in the region.

A map of the Mayan Train’s route through the Yucatan Peninsula in Mexico. Construction began in May and it is expected to begin operating in 2023. CREDIT: Fonatur

Pros and cons

The Mexican government is promoting the megaproject as an engine for social development that will create jobs, boost tourism beyond the traditional attractions and energise the regional economy.

But it has unleashed controversy between those who back the administration’s propaganda and those who question the railway because of its potential environmental, social and cultural impacts, as well as the risk of fuelling illegal activities, such as human trafficking and drug smuggling.

The megaproject involves the construction of development hubs in the stations, which include businesses, drinking water, drainage, electricity and urban infrastructure, and which, according to the ministry of the environment itself, represent the greatest environmental threat posed by the railway.

U.N. Habitat, which offers technical advice on the project’s land-use planning aspects, estimates that the Mayan Train will create one million jobs by 2030 and lift 1.1 million people out of poverty, in an area that includes 42 municipalities with high poverty rates.

The region has become the country’s new energy frontier, with the construction of wind and solar parks, and agribusiness production such as transgenic soy and large pig farms. At the same time, it suffers from high levels of deforestation, fuelled by lumber extraction and agro-industry.

The environmental impact assessment itself and several independent scientific studies warn of the ecological damage that would be caused by the railway, which experts say the Mexican government does not seem willing to address.

The crux: the development model

Violeta Núñez, an academic at the public Autonomous Metropolitan University, told IPS that there is an internal contradiction within the government between those seeking a change in the socioeconomic conditions in the region and supporters of the real estate business.

“You have to ask yourself what kind of development you are pursuing and whether it is the best option,” she said. “The Mayan Train is aimed at profits and these stakeholders are not interested in people’s well-being, but in making money. What some indigenous organisations have said is that they never asked for a railway, and they feel that the project has been imposed on them.”

The railroad will cross ejido lands in five states where there are 5,386 ejidos totalling 12.5 million hectares. The ejidos would contribute the land and would be the main investors. To finance the stations, Fonatur has proposed three types of trusts that can be quoted on the Mexican stock market and that entail financial risks, such as the loss of the investment.

The undertaking was not suspended by the appearance of the COVID-19 pandemic in Mexico, as the government classified its construction as an “essential activity”.

In Calakmul, in the southeastern state of Campeche, the Mayan Train will make use of the right-of-way that the Federal Electricity Commission has for its power lines. But on other stretches construction of the new 1,400-km railway will lead to the eviction of families. CREDIT: Emilio Godoy/IPS

To legitimise its construction, the leftwing López Obrador administration organised a consultation with indigenous communities through 30 regional assemblies, 15 informative and 15 consultative, held Nov. 29-30 and Dec. 14-15, 2019, respectively.

These assemblies were attended by 10,305 people from 1,078 indigenous communities in the five states, out of a potentially affected population of 1.5 million people, 150,000 of whom are indigenous.

But the consultation was carried out before the environmental impact assessment of the megaproject was even completed.

The Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights in Mexico questioned whether this process met international standards, such as the provisions of International Labour Organisation Convention 169 on Indigenous and Tribal Peoples, to which the country is a party.

The railway will also displace an undetermined number of people, to make room for the tracks and stations, although U.N. Habitat insists that this will be “consensual”.

Fears of a new Cancún

The government argues that the project will not repeat the mistakes of mass tourism destinations, symbolised by Cancún, which wrought environmental havoc in that former Caribbean paradise in Quintana Roo. But its critics argue that the major beneficiaries appear to be the same big tourism, real estate and hotel chains, and that it will cause the same problems as a result of the heavy influx of visitors.

In Kimbilá, the local population already has firsthand experience of confrontations over megaprojects, such as a Spanish company’s attempt to build a wind farm, cancelled in 2016. But the difference is that now the opponent is much more powerful.

May said the railway “is an attempt to transform indigenous peoples and integrate them into the tourism-based economic model. They want us to imagine development from a global perspective, because it is a sign of socioeconomic progress. They believe that tourism is the source of progress, that cities bring development and that this is the best way to go.”

In Izamal, home to more than 26,800 people, construction of the development hub would require 853 hectares, 376 of which belong to ejidos.

Núñez warned of the disappearance of the campesino (peasant farmer) and indigenous way of life. “People have survived because of their relationship with the land and now this survival is being thrown into question and they are to become workers in the development hubs. This is not an option, if we are to defend the rural indigenous way of life,” she said.

The researcher suggested that an alternative would be the appropriation of the megaproject by the communities, in which “the ejidatarios themselves, in a joint association, present an alternative proposal other than the trusts on the stock market.”

The Mayan Train is a link in a plan that seeks to integrate the south and southeast of Mexico with Central America, starting with the government’s “Project for the territorial reordering of the south-southeast” and linked to the “Project for the integration and development of Mesoamerica”, which has been modified in appearance but not in substance since the beginning of the 21st century.

Its aim is to link that region to global markets and curb internal and external migration through the construction of megaprojects, the promotion of tourism and the services entailed.

In the 2000s, the government of the southern state of Chiapas fomented “Sustainable Rural Cities”, with aims similar to those of the Mayan Train, and experts argue that the failure of that project should be remembered.

Ecosystems such as the Síijil Noh Há (where water is born, in the Mayan tongue) lagoon, in Felipe Carrillo Puerto on the Yucatán peninsula, are suffering the impacts of climate change in one of the most vulnerable of Mexico's municipalities to the phenomenon. Credit: Emilio Godoy/IPS

By Emilio Godoy
FELIPE CARRILLO PUERTO, Mexico, Jan 17 2019 (IPS)

“I couldn’t plant my cornfield in May, because it rained too early. I lost everything,” lamented Marcos Canté, an indigenous farmer, as he recounted the ravages that climate change is wreaking on this municipality on Mexico’s Caribbean coast.

The phenomenon, caused by human activities related especially to the burning of fossil fuels, has altered the ancestral indigenous practices based on the rainy and dry seasons for the “milpa” – the collective cultivation of corn, pumpkin, beans and chili peppers, the staple crops from central Mexico to northern Nicaragua.

It has also modified the traditional “slash and burn” technique used to prepare the land for planting.

Canté, a representative of the Xyaat ecotourism cooperative, told IPS that “climate change affects a lot, the climate is changing too much. It’s no longer possible to live off of agriculture.” As he talks, he prepares for the new planting season, hoping that the sky will weep and water the furrows.

The farmer lives in the Señor eijido in the municipality of Felipe Carrillo Puerto (FCP) in the southeastern state of Quintana Roo. Señor is home to about 450 “ejidatarios” or members of the ejido, a traditional Aztec system of collectively worked lands that can be sold.

This state and its neighbors Campeche and Yucatán comprise the Yucatán peninsula and are highly vulnerable to the effects of climate change, as are the states of Tamaulipas, Veracruz and Tabasco, on the Gulf of Mexico which, along with the Caribbean Sea, make up Mexico’s Atlantic coast.

These consequences include rising temperatures, more intense and frequent hurricanes and storms, rising sea levels due to the melting of the Arctic Ocean, droughts and loss of biodiversity.

The Yucatan peninsula has a population of 4.5 million people, in a country of 129 million with a total of 151,515 square kilometers and a Caribbean coastline of 1,766 square kilometers.

In addition, this peninsular region suffers the highest rate of deforestation in the country, and government subsidies have failed to change that, according to the report “Forest subsidies without direction,” released in December by the non-governmental Mexican Civil Council for Sustainable Agriculture.

The peninsula is home to the largest remaining tropical rainforest outside of the Amazon, and is a key area in the conservation of natural wealth in Mexico, which ranks 12th among the most megadiverse countries on the planet.

María Eugenia Yam, another indigenous resident of FCP, a municipality of 81,000 inhabitants, concurred with Canté in pointing out to IPS with concern that “the rains are no longer those of the past and it is no longer possible to live off of the milpa.”

Yam, an employee of the Síijil Noh Há (where water sprouts, in the Mayan tongue) cooperative, owned by the Felipe Carrillo Puerto ejido, in the municipality of the same name, lamented that agricultural production is declining, to the detriment of the peasant farmers in the area who also grow cassava and produce honey.

A trail in the Síijil Noh Há (where the water is born, in the Mayan tongue) community reserve in Felipe Carrillo Puerto, in the southeastern state of Quintana Roo, part of the Yucatán peninsula in Mexico. The conservation of the jungle is a climate change adaptation measure, because it contributes to maintaining steady temperatures and curbing the onslaught of hurricanes. Credit: Emilio Godoy/IPS

The three states of the peninsula produce a low level of greenhouse gas emissions (GHG). The biggest polluter is Campeche, producing 14.5 million tons of GHGs, responsible for global warming. It is followed by Yucatán (10.9 million) and Quintana Roo (3.48 million), according to the latest measurements carried out by the state governments.

In 2016, Mexico emitted 446.7 million net tons of GHG into the atmosphere, according to the state-run National Institute of Ecology and Climate Change (INECC).

Within the peninsula, the state of Yucatan has 17 municipalities vulnerable to climate change, Campeche, 10, and Quintana Roo, three, including FCP. In total, 480 Mexican municipalities are especially vulnerable to the phenomenon, out of the 2,457 into which the country is divided, according to an INECC report.

In Campeche, the State Climate Change Action Programme 2030 predicts a temperature increase of between 2.5 and four degrees Celsius between 1961 and 2099, with impacts on communities, economic activities and natural wealth.

Also, the 2012 study “Impacts of the increase in mean sea level in the coastal area of the state of Campeche, Mexico”, prepared by the World Bank and the state government, warns that vulnerability to the rising sea level affects 440,000 people, more than half of the local population.

“Climate change will increase flooding and coastal erosion in the future” and the probability of extreme storm surges on the coasts will increase, according to the study, which predicts a rise in water level between 0.1 to 0.5 meters in 2030 and from 0.34 to one meter in 2100.

In Quintana Roo, annual rainfall will become more and more irregular. The rainy season will be shortened by five to 10 percent in 2020, while it will range from a 10 percent increase to a 20 percent drop in 2080. In addition, the temperature will rise between 0.8 and 1.2 degrees Celsius in 2020 and between 1.5 and 2.5 degrees Celsius in 2080.

The state of Yucatan faces a similar scenario, with the average annual temperature rising between 0.5 and 0.8 degrees for the period 2010-2039. Annual rainfall will alternate drops of up to nearly 15 percent and rises of one percent in that period.

Although the three states have instruments to combat the phenomenon, such as climate change laws -with the exception of Campeche-, special programmes and even a regional plan, the situation varies widely at a local level, as many municipalities lack such measures.

The Climate Change Strategy for the Yucatan Peninsula, drawn up by the three state governments, aims for the development of a regional adaptation strategy, the implementation of the regional programme to reduce emissions from deforestation and forest degradation, and the creation of a climate fund.

The plan seeks to reduce emissions from this region by 20 percent by 2018 and 40 percent by 2030, based on 2005 levels.

The region launched the Yucatan Peninsula Climate Fund in September 2017, but it is just beginning to operate.

So far, the scrutiny of the implemented actions has been a complex task.

The “Strategic Evaluation of the Subnational Progress of the National Climate Change Policy,” published by INECC in November, which investigated three municipalities on the peninsula, concluded that state and municipal authorities report multiple adaptation actions, but without clarifying how vulnerability is addressed.

For this reason, it considers the creation and promotion of capacities to face climate change to be an “urgent need”.

“We have to make everything more sustainable, but it’s a local effort. If those who govern and make decisions had more awareness, we would be able to do it,” said Canté.

Yan proposed reforesting, reducing garbage generation, conserving biodiversity and educating children about the importance of environmental care. “Maintaining the forest is a good adaptation measure. But the municipalities should have climate programmes and appoint officials who know” about the issue, he suggested.

The Mayan Train megaproject in southern Mexico will affect key ecosystems of the Yucatan Peninsula, which is home to 25 protected natural areas, such as this lake in the SíijilNohá community reserve, next to the Sian Ka'an protected area. Credit: Emilio Godoy/IPS

By Emilio Godoy
FELIPE CARRILLO PUERTO, Mexico, Dec 17 2018 (IPS)

“If thousands of people flock to this town, how will we be able to service them? I’m afraid of that growth,” Zendy Euán, spokeswoman for a community organisation,said in reference to the Mayan Train (TM) project, a railway network that will run through five states in southern Mexico.

Euán, a Mayan indigenous woman living in the municipality of Felipe Carrillo Puerto (FCP), told IPS that they lack detailed information about the megaproject, one of the high-profile initiatives promised during his campaign by the new leftist President Andrés Manuel López Obrador, popularly known by his acronym AMLO.

“It’s not clear to us. We don’t know about the project,” said Euán, who also questioned the benefits promised by the president, who was sworn in on Dec. 1, for the local population, as well as the mechanisms for participation in the project and the threats it poses to the environment."They are violating our indigenous rights. We don't agree with how the consultation was carried out, and we don't see the benefits for the local communities. This is aimed at tourist spots. Those who will benefit are the big businesses." -- Miguel Ku

“What will be the benefit for the local community members, for the craftswomen? As ecotourism communities, will we be able to promote our businesses and goods?” said the spokeswoman for the Community Tourism Network of the Maya Zone of Quintana Roo, one of the states in southeastern Mexico that share the Yucatan Peninsula, on the Atlantic coast, with 1.5 million inhabitants.

The network, launched in 2014, brings together 11 community organisations from three municipalities of Quintana Roo and offers ecotourism and cultural tours in the area, its main economic activity.

In the municipality of FCP, home to just over 81,000 people, there are 84 ejidos,areas of communal land used for agriculture, where community members own and farm their own plots, which can also be sold.

One of them, of the same name as the municipality, FCP, covering 47,000 hectares and belonging to 250 “ejidatarios” or members, manages the ejidal reserves Síijil Noh Há (“where the water flows,” in the Mayan language) and Much’KananK’aax (“let’s take care of the forest together”).

Euán’s doubts are shared by thousands of inhabitants of the peninsula, which receives almost seven million tourists every year.

IPS travelled a stretch of the preliminary TM route through Quintana Roo and the neighboring state of Campeche and noted the general lack of detailed information about the project and its possible ecological, social and cultural consequences in a region with high levels of poverty and social marginalisation.

The government’s National Tourism Fund (Fonatur) is promoting the project, at a cost of between 6.2 and 7.8 billion dollars. The plan is for it to start operating in 2022, with 15 stations along 1,525 kilometers in 41 municipalities in the states of Campeche, Chiapas, Quintana Roo, Tabasco and Yucatán.

The locomotives will run on biodiesel -possibly made from palm oil- and the trains are projected to move about three million passengers annually, in addition to cargo.

Zendy Euán, spokesperson for a community tourism network, explains in the Mayan Museum of the municipality of Felipe Carrillo Puerto, in the state of Quintana Roo, that the Mayan Train will run through key environmental areas of southern Mexico. Social and indigenous organisations question the benefits of the megaproject, one of the star projects of the new president, Andrés Manuel López Obrador. Credit: Emilio Godoy/IPS

The new government argues that the project will boost the region’s socioeconomic development, foster social inclusion and job creation, safeguard indigenous cultures, protect the peninsula’s Protected Natural Areas (PNA), and strengthen the tourism industry.

Ancient ecosystems

The railway will cut through the heart of the Mayan jungle, an ecosystem that formed the base of the Mayan empire that dominated the entire Mesoamerican region – southern Mexico and Central America – from the 8th century until the arrival of the Spanish conquistadors in the 16th century.

This is the most important rainforest in Latin America after the Amazon region and a key area in the conservation of natural wealth in Mexico, which ranks 12th among the most megadiverse countries on the planet.

The region belongs to the Mesoamerican Biological Corridor consisting of habitats running from southern Mexico to Panama, the southernmost of the seven Central American countries, and is home to about 10 percent of the world’s known species.

In the Yucatan Peninsula, shared by the states of Campeche, Quintana Roo and Yucatan, there are 25 PNAs, with a total area of 8.5 million hectares.

In fact, two TM stations will be contiguous to the 725,000-hectare Calakmul Biosphere Reserve and the 650,000-hectare Sian Ka’an Biosphere Reserve.

“What’s going to happen? We don’t know the route, we don’t have information. We have to study this closely,” Luís Tamay, the indigenous president of the Commissariat of Common Assets of the Nuevo Becal ejido in the municipality of Calakmul, in Campeche, told IPS.

Like Euán, Tamay fears the arrival of crowds of tourists, for which Calakmul “is not prepared; this is a high-impact project” for a municipality of just over 28,000 people.

Nuevo Becal has 84 landowners, covers 52,800 hectares and carries out six projects of timber exploitation, agroforestry, seeds and environmental conservation.

Although the TM will not pass through the immediate vicinity of Nuevo Becal, the megaproject will have impacts on the area.

In Calakmul, the government will carry out technical and environmental impact studies in 2019, with the idea of starting construction the following year in the locality.

To build the railway network, the government must negotiate with the ejidatarios, who own most of the land in the five states along the planned railway, as there are 385 in Campeche, 279 in Quintana Roo and 737 in Yucatán.

The government has already asked for 30 hectares in the Felipe Carrillo Puerto ejido to build a station, as a contribution to the project, which was first proposed in 2007 by the then governor of Yucatan, Yvonne Ortega, who projected the Transpeninsular Rapid Train in 2007.
Shortly after taking office in December 2012, AMLO’s predecessor, conservative Enrique Peña Nieto, adopted it as a national plan to connect the region. But public spending cutbacks in 2015 put the project on hold.

To the original project which will be added more than 300 kilometers of rundown railroads that functioned between 1905 and 1957, first for military transport and then also for passenger traffic.

On Nov. 24-25, before AMLO took office, his team obtained support for the railway network, along with a new refinery in the state of Tabasco and the execution of other projects, during a National Consultation on 10 Priority Social Programmes.

But this support, in a consultation that was only carried out in certain localities through a process that was not very representative, did not appease the criticism of the TM in the region.

On Nov. 15, a group of academics asked López Obrador to stop the works because of their ecological, social, cultural and archaeological impacts.

Three days later, a collective of indigenous organisations rejected the project, demanded respect for their forests and jungles, and called for free, prior, informed and culturally appropriate consultation.

“They are violating our indigenous rights. We don’t agree with how the consultation was carried out, and we don’t see the benefits for the local communities. This is aimed at tourist spots. Those who will benefit are the big businesses” in the sector, Miguel Ku, representative of the Network of Environmental Service Producers, told IPS.

This organization brings together 3,756 ejidatarios from 33 agrarian communities in the municipality of José María Morelos, and three more in the municipality of FCP, all of which are in Quintana Roo. Together, they own 257,000 hectares that are used for forestry, agriculture, beekeeping and livestock.

Local organisations are seeking another socioeconomic model. “We have shown that conservation allows for good development. We have natural resources, let us take advantage of them, that’s how we can support ourselves,” said Tamay.

Ku protested what he called a repeat of what has happened with previous projects. “We are sick and tired of others taking the benefits even though we own the land. The government could do something else. We want the ejidos to develop their own projects,” he said.

But López Obrador appears to be in a hurry to move forward with the Mayan Train, and on Dec. 16 he laid the first stone in the city of Palenque, Chiapas, without waiting for Fonatur to present the environmental impact assessment to the environment ministry.

Rainforest in the southeastern Mexican state of Campeche. Credit: Emilio Godoy/IPS

By Emilio Godoy
MEXICO CITY, Jul 16 2013 (IPS)

Jungles, forests, mangroves, swamps and lagoons are natural carbon storehouses or “sinks” in the Caribbean regions of Mexico. But now studies are being conducted to measure their capacity for absorbing carbon dioxide from the atmosphere.

These ecosystems are typically found along the strip of coastline that includes the southeastern states of Veracruz, Tabasco, Yucatán, Campeche and Quintana Roo.

“The recommendation to avoid deforestation and forest degradation is a measure aimed at the mitigation (reduction) of the roughly 20 percent of greenhouse gas emissions resulting from these causes,” said researcher José Andrade of the Yucatan Centre for Scientific Research (CICY), a government institute.

However, “at the same time, emissions from industry and transportation need to be reduced with alternative energy sources. (Forest conservation) alone is not a solution for reducing global emissions,” he told Tierramérica*.

As part of the research study “Las hojas: parte fundamental del almacenamiento de carbono en una selva de Yucatán” (Leaves: A fundamental part of carbon storage in a Yucatán rainforest), Andrade and four of his colleagues assessed factors such as air currents, biomass and carbon fluxes in the ecosystem of the Kiuic Reserve, which covers 1,800 hectares in the state of Yucatán.

Of the plant species studied, gumbo-limbo or copperwood (Bursera simaruba) trees were found to absorb 730 grams of carbon dioxide (CO2) per square metre, Florida fishpoison or Jamaican dogwood (Piscidia piscipula), 680 grams, and kitinché (Caesalpinia gaumeri), 1.32 kilograms. The last two are native to Mexico.

“The data suggest that the species of the area use water efficiently to promote the regeneration of new leaves, which allows them to continue absorbing CO2 and thus to store carbon in the form of biomass,” explained Andrade.

The Mexican Caribbean is exposed to increasingly destructive hurricanes and storms and the threat of rising sea levels, which would flood wide strips of the coastline, specialists warn. The area’s biological wealth is also endangered by the expansion of the tourist industry, deforestation, cattle grazing and oil industry activities.

Mexico’s emissions of CO2, one of the greenhouse gases that contribute to global warming, total some 748 million tons annually. Agriculture is responsible for 12.3 percent of these emissions, industry for 8.2 percent, and changes in land use and forestry for 5.3 percent, according to the Ministry of Environment and Natural Resources.

“Climate change heightens our uncertainty about the future of forests. We aren’t sure about what is going to happen,” Richard Birdsey of the U.S. Forest Service, an agency of the U.S. Department of Agriculture, told Tierramérica*.

“In some places forests are growing more, in others they are growing less. This is influenced by many factors that we need to study,” added Birdsey, a member of CarboNA, a joint government-level initiative between Canada, the United States and Mexico for carbon cycle research throughout North America.

CarbonNA projects, including one being undertaken in Yucatán, are aimed at CO2 monitoring and modelling in the region through remote sensing and mapping.

“It’s difficult to calculate the CO2 in the soil, but we are trying to measure it. We process ecosystems on a small scale to generate emission factor curves,” said Birdsey.

In 2011, a group of scientists created the MexFlux network in Mexico, to study water and carbon fluxes based on the same methodology as the AmeriFlux network in the United States. At least seven sites have been established in Mexico to study these mass and energy exchanges between the land and atmosphere.

The ecosystems of the Mexican Caribbean provide valuable services for the environmental equilibrium of the region and serve as protection against climate and weather phenomena such as droughts, storms, storm surges and flooding.

But the Yucatán peninsula “is highly degraded. There is a great deal of pressure on the ecosystems. The areas that act as carbon sinks need to be analysed. Tropical rainforests fix more carbon dioxide than they release,” Rodrigo Valle, a postgraduate student and researcher at CICY, told Tierramérica.

Valle and two colleagues are working on the study “Estimación de la distribución espacial de la biomasa forestal en la Península de Yucatán, usando percepción remota y datos de campo” (Estimation of the spatial distribution of forest biomass in the Yucatán Peninsula using remote sensing and field data).

Their research found 229,000 tons of biomass per hectare in the area studied, by measuring the electromagnetic radiation reflected by green matter.

Using data from the 2009-2013 National Forests and Soils Inventory, two government agencies, the National Forests Commission and the Mexican Carbon Program, estimated that there are 9.146 million tons of carbon stored in Mexico’s soils.

The Yucatán peninsula is the region with the highest levels of buried CO2, due to its chalky soil.

This year, greenhouse gas concentrations in the atmosphere reached 400 parts per million, which is considered a critical level for the effect it will have global temperatures. It also demonstrates that the measures adopted up until now are not working, and that the only solution is to drastically cut emissions of these gases.

Given the amount of carbon dioxide stored in plants, “one alternative is to reduce deforestation and promote the management and conservation of jungles and forests as carbon reservoirs,” Luisa Cámara of the public Juárez Autonomous University of Tabasco told Tierramérica.

Cámara is heading up a study in Huimanguillo, Tabasco to measure the carbon stored in a tropical lowland forest of Quercus oleoides, a type of oak, and plantations of Eucaliptus urophylla, a species of eucalyptus, and Gmelina arborea, a fast-growing deciduous tree, neither of which is native to Mexico.

In the areas studied, Cámara and her research team measured 14.75 tons of CO2 per hectare in the eucalyptus trees, 15.54 tons in the Gmelina arborea and 63.51 tons in the oaks. These figures indicate that the creation of industrial tree plantations does not represent a solution for capturing CO2 from the atmosphere.

* This story was originally published by Latin American newspapers that are part of the Tierramérica network.

Excerpt:

On the water in the San Crisanto mangroves. Credit: Emilio Godoy/IPS

By Emilio Godoy
SINANCHÉ, Mexico, Mar 6 2013 (IPS)

The residents of San Crisanto, a small communal village nestled in an idyllic setting in the southeastern Mexican state of Yucatán, have learned that valuing and protecting natural resources can generate employment and income.

The San Crisanto initiative, which combines ecotourism and other economic activities, is a model for other communities located along Mexico’s Caribbean coast, which is rich in biodiversity but exposed to unpredictable weather hazards.

Visitors to San Crisanto can take boat tours, swim in the crystal-clear waters of “cenotes” or sinkholes, stay in environmentally friendly “eco-cabins”, and purchase locally produced crafts and sweets made from coconuts. In 2012, the community received 12,000 visitors, although it has the capacity for 50,000 annually, according to the residents.

In addition, “we work a great deal on education. The majority of the people are very much aware of the importance of taking care of the natural resources. We must take care of them because of climate change, to protect them from hurricanes,” said Reyes Cetz, 44, one of the 35 registered landholders in the “ejido” or communal village of San Crisanto.

There is as yet no incontrovertible scientific proof that the extremely powerful and destructive hurricanes of recent years are caused by climate change. But it is highly probable that atmospheric warming has had an impact on the intensity and frequency of extreme weather events.

In 1995, Hurricanes Opal and Roxanne devastated the mangrove forests of San Crisanto, located 1,400 kilometres southeast of Mexico City. First the residents organised to repair the damages. Then they proceeded to strengthen the ecosystem against future threats by clearing channels through the mangrove, to allow water to flow through freely.

“The mangrove forests recovered quickly, because the water currents carried nutrients to them. The more mangrove forests there are, the more birds, fish and crocodiles there are,” said José Loria, 56, the operations manager of the ejido, which created the San Crisanto Foundation in 2001.

The ejido system dates back to the Aztecs, and was re-established in Mexico in the 1930s. It is based on the communal tenure and farming of public lands. The San Crisanto ejido was established by a group of farmers who requested land from the state government for growing coconuts in 1957, although its creation was not authorised until 1973.

The community jointly holds 850 hectares of mangrove forests and 100 hectares of coconut groves. In addition to ecotourism, they use these communal resources for agriculture, craft production and salt extraction.

Today they earn a living from “selling scenery,” Loria told Tierramérica. “We have created a company to make use of the resources. We aren’t fighting poverty here, we are improving the quality of life.”

The average income of each “ejidatorio” or communal landholder is 6,000 dollars a year, earned from ecotourism, salt extraction, and payments for environmental services like reforestation and protection of the mangrove forests. These various activities provide employment for 300 people.

“During these months – between February and May – we concentrate on extracting salt and preparing for the tourist season,” Cetz told Tierramérica. This year they have already produced 250 tons of salt, which the ejido sells for 39 dollars a ton.

Since 2001, the community has restored 11,300 metres of canals in the mangrove forests and 45 cenotes fed by underground water sources. While these efforts have reduced the risk of flooding, they have also led to growth in the populations of endemic species.

The area around San Crisanto, home to 570 habitants, is exposed to hurricanes and storm surges caused by an increase in sea level, which means there is an urgent need here to adapt to weather variations.

But the state of Yucatán, highly vulnerable to these problems and extensively studied by scientists, has still not developed a plan to confront climate change.

Mexico loses 10,000 hectares of mangrove forests of year. There are currently more than 770,000 hectares of these coastal ecosystems remaining in the country, according to the National Commission for the Knowledge and Use of Biodiversity (CONABIO).

If the current rate of destruction continues, by 2025 Yucatán will have lost almost 30 percent of the mangrove forests it had in 2010, according to projections by the National Institute of Ecology and Climate Change.

Mangrove forests, made up of numerous tree species adapted to swampy, saline soils, provide a habitat for a wide range of fauna, serve as a natural water filter, and protect coastal areas from storm surges, hurricanes and erosion. As they grow, the trees absorb large volumes of carbon dioxide.

Their destruction in Yucatán is largely the result of urbanisation and the expansion of tourism, particularly the hotel industry. Other threats include pollutants from fertilisers, pesticides and wastewater that are washed into the mangroves by rivers and streams.

In this region “there are two fundamental elements” that need to be protected: the coastal barriers provided by coral reefs and mangrove forests, said Lorenzo Rosenzweig, executive director of the non-governmental Mexican Fund for Nature Conservation.

“The best way to protect the coasts is to protect the mangroves,” he told Tierramérica.

The Mexican NGO participated in the creation of the Mesoamerican Reef Fund, established in 2004 to protect the coral reefs off the coasts of Mexico, Belize, Guatemala and Honduras, and between 2009 and 2012 it designed adaptation programmes for four ecosystem areas in southeast Mexico, including the Caribbean coast.

The success of San Crisanto’s efforts has attracted national and international attention. In 2010, the United Nations Development Programme awarded the community its biennial Equator Prize, and the following year, it received a national prize for forest conservation.

The community has also been the subject of a study, “Campesinos-pescadores de Yucatán: uso de la biodiversidad y apropiación de recursos naturales costeros” (Peasant farmers-fishers of Yucatán: Use of biodiversity and appropriation of coastal natural resources), published in 2010 by Luis Arias and Salvador Montiel of the Centre for Research and Advanced Studies at the National Polytechnic Institute.

The study identified 144 species used for livelihood purposes in San Crisanto and noted that ecotourism has become the leading economic activity, due to both the revenues it brings in and the “social recognition” that it earns the community.

The ejido’s strategic plan for 2009-2029 foresees an increase in this trend. “We see ourselves as a community that lives from tourism,” said Loria. “We need to diversify and improve our offerings, to reach a bigger market,” he added.

However, he warned, “if the mangrove disappears, it will be good-bye, San Crisanto.”

* This story was originally published by Latin American newspapers that are part of the Tierramérica network.