Welcome to the Earth.Org Global Sustainability Index, where Earth.Org examines the policies and actions regarding the environment of every nation on earth. Combining the most respected global indexes on pollution, climate change, policy, energy, oceans, biodiversity we have produced an overall Global Index, which will be updated annually. This is the Global Sustainability Index scorecard for Mexico.
The current administration has shown a lack of a short term plan for climate change mitigation through its blatant show of favouritism towards fossil fuels over renewable energy generation. The construction of a new oil refinery has come at the expense of a successful renewable energy programme.
Further, in October 2019, Mexico published the preliminary rules for its carbon market, which contains a trial phase of 30 months after which the formal start will begin in 2023. The official start was originally scheduled for 2021, however this has been delayed multiple times.
The country’s long term climate goals are to reduce emissions by 50% below 2000 levels by 2050 but it looks unlikely to achieve this under current policies.
- Mexico’s new administration under López Obrador has yet to develop or announce the third Especial Programme on Climate Change that is required under Article 66 of Mexico’s General Law on Climate Change. This indicates that Mexico has no climate change action plan in place for the short-term.
- The administration has shown favour for fossil fuels over renewable energy generation, including the construction of a new oil refinery and a new budget allocation for the ‘modernisation’ of coal, diesel, gas and oil-fuelled power plants, some of which the previous administration had already scheduled for retirement. It has also cancelled Mexico’s 2018 ‘long-term electricity auctioning’ round. The scheme was one of the nation’s main instruments to achieve its clean energy targets.
- Its Paris Agreement NDC aims to unconditionally reduce GHG emissions in 2030 by 22% below its business-as-usual baseline. However, under a number of conditions (a global agreement addressing international carbon pricing, carbon border adjustments, technical cooperation, access to low-cost financial resources and technology transfer), Mexico would increase this reduction target to 36%. Its 2030 targets include the nation reaching peak emissions ‘starting from 2026’, but the level of this peak is unclear
You might also like: Global Emissions (2016)
References:
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Biodiversity, Policy: Sachs, J., Schmidt-Traub, G., Kroll, C., Lafortune, G., Fuller, G. (2019): Sustainable Development Report 2019. New York: Bertelsmann Stiftung and Sustainable Development Solutions Network (SDSN).
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Oceans: Halpern, Benjamin S., et al. “An index to assess the health and benefits of the global ocean.” Nature 488.7413 (2012): 615-620.
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Pollution: Wendling, Z. A., Emerson, J. W., Esty, D. C., Levy, M. A., de Sherbinin, A., et al. (2018). 2018 Environmental Performance Index. New Haven, CT: Yale Center for Environmental Law & Policy. https://epi.yale.edu/
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Climate Change: Climate Change Performance Index; Jan Burck, Ursula Hagen, Niklas Höhne, Leonardo Nascimento, Christoph Bals, ISBN 978-3-943704-75-4, 2019
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Energy: Enerdata –World Energy Statistics – Yearbook.
World Energy Statistics
