The president of Mexico, Andrés Manuel López Obrador, during the Summit of Leaders on Climate.HENRY ROMERO / Reuters
Andrés Manuel López Obrador's participation in the Summit of Leaders on Climate has passed without surprises.
As he had already announced this week, the president of Mexico focused his message on promoting the
Sembrando Vida
program
, one of the axes of its social policy and of its main proposals to solve the migratory crisis in Central America. "It is probably the largest reforestation project in the world," said the president on Thursday, urging Joe Biden, his US counterpart, to give work visas and finance the strategy in Honduras, Guatemala and El Salvador. In the intervention of the head of state of the Latin American country with the most greenhouse effect emissions, there were no concrete commitments to reduce polluting gases or new goals for the future on sustainable development, but rather an exhortation to turn the fight against climate change into a solution to the structural causes of migration.
López Obrador started his presentation by talking about oil. The president commented that the country had discovered three important hydrocarbon deposits, but said that their use was going to be used exclusively to cover the demand for fuels in the domestic market. The reasoning of the president, who has taken energy sovereignty as one of his main political flags, is that if Mexico aims for self-sufficiency and does not buy from other countries, it will contribute to combat global warming. The measures that the president has promoted under the pretext of not depending abroad have been harshly criticized for their effects on the environment, such as the construction of refineries and a series of reforms that undermine clean energy, in the hands of private and foreign companies , to shore up the role of the state."We need to accept that the era of fossil fuels is over," Xiye Bastida, a 19-year-old Mexican-born activist who is also participating in the summit, said in a recorded message.
Renewable energies were practically left out of his speech.
López Obrador assured that his Government was modernizing hydroelectric plants to reduce the use of fuel oil and coal in the production of electricity, although in fact it has sought to shore up the Federal Electricity Commission (CFE), the state company in the sector, which focuses generation on coal and hydrocarbons.
Around 60% of electricity in Mexico is generated with natural gas imported from the United States, while coal does not exceed 10%, but it is the third most important source.
The hydroelectric plants, therefore, are far from being able to meet the needs of the population on a realistic horizon.
The bulk of the intervention focused on
Sowing life,
a program that since López Obrador came to power in December 2018 has planted around a million fruit and timber trees. The program has given support of 5,000 pesos a month (250 dollars) to some 450,000 peasants who have chosen to repopulate their lands. The idea is that productive opportunities can be given to the rural population through reforestation. The proposal, however, has been criticized by environmentalists for causing the opposite effect: the deforestation of forests and the introduction of species that are alien to local ecosystems, but more profitable. The World Resources Institute, which has an agreement with the Government to measure the impact of the program, published in 2019 that 73,000 hectares had been deforested with the program.
The López Obrador Administration, which allocates 29,000 million pesos to
Sowing life
every year, has proposed to promote the program in Central America to prevent more and more people from deciding to migrate to the United States. In June 2019, it delivered $ 30 million to the Government of Nayib Bukele in El Salvador. A year later, an investigation by the
Animal Político
portal
revealed that the program was not operating in the Central American isthmus and that the money had not reached its recipients. Mexico's intention is for Washington to allocate 4,000 million dollars to promote the program in the region, although the resources are for now only a promise from the White House and have not been approved by Congress.
"The migratory phenomenon is not resolved with coercive measures but with justice and well-being," said López Obrador, during the summit that is held virtually. Mexico's exhortation is that the US also consider temporary work visas in a first tranche and that later the possibility of granting residency or dual nationality to Central American participants be evaluated. "With migrants, those exceptional beings, the great nations have been made," added the president. Migration has been a problem in Biden's so-called "honeymoon," which took office last January, with record numbers of migrants at his southern border. More than 171,000 migrants were registered in March, the highest number in 15 years.
A day earlier, representatives of the White House ruled out that Biden would accept the deal proposed by López Obrador and were surprised that the Mexican president sought to introduce the immigration issue at the summit this Thursday and Friday, in which more than 40 chiefs participate. of State and Government. "This is not a conversation about migration, but a conversation about climate change," said a senior US official about the proposal that the Mexican president advanced on Sunday on social networks. "For us, the climate agenda must be considered on its own, on its own merits and how to advance it," he added.
Despite the comments from Washington, the Mexican government stuck to his speech and did not go into exposing concrete environmental measures, one of the weakest points of this Administration.
López Obrador remains firm in his commitment to strengthen the CFE and the state-owned Petróleos Mexicanos, build refineries, promote the Mayan Train megaproject and close the door to clean energy.
The question is whether it has a plan against climate change in accordance with the country's international commitments, one of the greatest concerns of the younger generations.
His speech at the summit did not dispel those doubts.
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