Our state of Veracruz is potentially a major and tragic victim of climate change. If you look at the map below, you can easily see that it is a long, narrow place nestled against the Gulf of Mexico. You can click on it to enlarge it. Xalapa, the capital, is marked with a star in a circle. Coatepec is just under Xalapa, and we are just under Coatepec. Our friends and neighbors notice how the climate is changing. Whether all is due to Climate Change with capital "Cs" or not, it is hard to ignore. And since most people have heard of the threat of Climate Change, they frown when discussing how weirdly warm is in December, and shake their heads in dismay when their crops are pounded by too-hard-falling rains. Nowadays we get many more torrential downpours where we live and in the summer longer dry spells between them. There are fewer of the previously typical light rains and chipi-chipi, or mist and fog in fall and winter. We have higher temperatures: people complain of heat where they never used to. More irrigation is needed because the rain is not as steady and regular. As I've posted on the blog, landslides and flooding are common up here in the mountains. Flooding inland and along river banks is, too.
Predictions for Veracruz include loss not only of coastline but of coastal cities, including the city of Veracruz; massive flooding and rains for some inland areas, including ours as well as the coast and, on the other hand, desertification in already-dry areas. Our governor, Fidel Herrera Beltrán, although not always celebrated here, made a powerful presentation in Copenhagen as the respresentative of The National Conference of [Mexican] Governors on the threat of climate change.
According to an article in EnlaceVeracruz 212, the governor "insisted that it was time to pass from words to actions to put a break on climate change.
"He supported the idea that climate change and poverty were tightly related and said that climate change was one of the symptoms of the exhaustion of the economic system governed by the laws of the market which dominates the world and which has benefited only a few at the cost of the well-being of the majority.
"He said that this system seeks greatest benefits [for its leaders] with lowest costs, no matter what. That cost includes ignoring the limited capacity of the planet to support the unprecedented looting and pollution to which this system subjects it.
"He denounced the fact that this system promotes competition solely to gain markets, ignoring the possibility of undertaking projects for common growth which would benefit all.
"He maintained that this system has conceptualized progress as the pursuit of the accumulation of material goods, and that it tries, deceptively, to associaiate its products with a distorted concept of happiness.
"Governor Fidel Herrera Beltrán said, 'We are privileged because we've had the fruitfulness of the earth, until today; we have believed ourselves masters of the planet, but we have ignored that the first thing [responsible] masters do is to take care of their property: disgracefully, nothing good comes of one person taking care of where they live if the neighbor, no matter how far away, doesn't, take care of his property.'"
"He indicated that today nature has sent us the bill, and we are facing a critical crossroads: to continue on the present course, which will lead us irreversibly to famine, to inability to goverment, to ecological disaster, to chaos; or it we can follow a new vision of the world and find the will to accept new values such as shared culture and solidarity with all the living beings of the planet.
"He called on us to understand that we are interdependent and that what we do or what we leave undone will affect all of us in one way or another.
"'Unfortunately, starting in the 1970s with the so-called Washington Consensus it was agreed upon to restrict the state to its smallest role. The fever of neoliberalism and monetarism overcame the world with a blind faith in the market and its ability to automatically regulate the economy and society itself.'
"He said that this world acceptance of neoliberalism ignored, disgracefully, the need to preserve the environment by means of sustainable growth and development.
"He argued that it is not an exaggeration to affirm that the major failure of the market is the poverty which millions of human beings suffer, and above all, the accelerated degradation of our only dwelling place.
THE CASE OF VERACRUZ
"Governor Herrera Beltrán referred in his speech to the concrete example of his state, which has more than 700 kilometers of shoreline and large mountainous zones and is the state through which flows more than 30 percent of the runoff of the Republic of Mexico's fresh water.
"He revealed that according to a World Bank study, "Development with less Carbon: Latin American Answers to the Challenge of Climate Change" published in December of 2008, the coastal strip of the Gulf of Mexico where Veracruz is located is one of the most vulnerable of the continent, together with glaciers of the Andes, part of he Aazon and the coral reefs of the Carribean.
"He described the worsening impacts each time there are rains and droughts, which represent an enormous challenge for health and civil protection systems, as well as the high costs of maintaining and restoring damaged infrastructure rains and droughts have caused.
"The governor listed actions which his government has undertaken to contribute to the mitigation of the damaging effects of climate change.
"He emphasized the Veracruzano Program in the face of Climate Change, to whose development the National Institute of Ecology, the University of Veracruz, the Center of Atmospheric Sciences of UNAM [National Autonomous University of Mexico, the oldest university in the hemisphere], the Institute of Ecology, A: C: and the Fund for Global Opportunities of the United Kingdom, contributed.
"He also mentioned the Initiative ABC for the Sustainable Development of Veracruz, which [created?] a Fund for the Conservation, Restoration and Management of Water, Forests and Basins of the State of Veracruz.
"In addition, he described the Project for the Integration and Development of Central America, originally known as the Plan Puebla-Panama, a mechanism for dialogue and coordination which defines efforts for cooperation, development and integration among Central American countries with the object of improving the quality of life of the inhabitants of the region.
He let it be known that in his state, work is being done on a project for the planting of 20,000 hectares of bamboo, which in three years would capture 1.4 tons of carbon annually, and said that there is now a program called "You Decide" to answer urgent environmental problems.
"'In sum," he said, 'We resent the effects of cimate change and we assume responsibility and our obligation to see to guarantee the well being not only of those of us who presently live on the planet but also of future generations, of our children and those who will come after them.'"