The oceans are a vital element in our lives. They provide us with benefits such as purifying the air we breathe, are key factors in regulating the climate, are a source of food and medicine, and host a universe of biodiversity that we still need to know.
Mexico is a country where its territory is mostly marine, with 65% of our territory comprising an ocean surface. The country has significant wealth in the oceans, with benefits that we see reflected, for example, in the tourist activity linked to the seas and coasts; in the fishing that gives us food and is a source of income for many Mexican families, and it is also from that territory that minerals and hydrocarbons are extracted, in addition to the potential for generating renewable energy.
However, the oceans face multiple threats such as pollution, overfishing and the impacts derived from climate change, among the most relevant. Alerts about the need to act have led the world to move forward with initiatives that allow action for its conservation. Among the best known are the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), in particular SDG 14 for underwater life, which sets out a series of goals to conserve and sustainably use the oceans by the year 2030. [i] The success of achieving SDG 14, as well as other initiatives at the international and national levels, will depend to a large extent on the involvement of governments, the productive sector, civil society and the general public.
For this article, I would like to highlight the role that companies play in all this, being those that take advantage of marine resources or that depend on this territory to carry out their operations. They are direct actors both in the pressures that put the oceans at risk and in the possible solutions. However, this sector has shown little interest in contributing to ocean conservation.
In general, when talking about the preservation of the oceans, the productive sector tends to give it little importance or in any case it is addressed by companies highly identified with marine resources, such as the fishing sector. However, there are other sectors that also obtain benefits and that can have great impacts on the health of the oceans, and that therefore must be more present in their conservation. In particular, there is an elephant out there in the room, which we must bring to the table if we are serious about the productive sector contributing more to achieving healthier oceans within initiatives that focus on this.
If we analyze the current pressures faced by the oceans and that endanger their conservation, we can see it from the point of view of the footprint that industries leave in their production processes. In this regard, in 2019, the analysis of a team of researchers from the University of California at Santa Barbara and Stanford University on the “Accumulated Impact on Human Activities” on the oceans was presented. [ii] The study highlights that 59% of them experience an increase in cumulative impacts due to climate change, in the form of an increase in temperature, acidification of water and rising sea levels. Added to this are the other pressures of overfishing, land pollution and shipping, which are also experiencing a progressive intensification in many marine regions.
Following this line of analysis, the Climate Accountability Institute has in turn identified the 20 companies dedicated to the production of hydrocarbons, gas and coal that have been most responsible for climate change due to their historical emissions of carbon dioxide and methane in the period from 1965 to 2018. Among the top 10 on the list are companies such as Saudi Aramco, Exxon, Chevron, British Petroleum. In the case of Mexico, PEMEX is included as the ninth most important issuer in the world and the most important in Latin America. [iii] Another similar analysis was also carried out to identify which industries contribute the most to ocean acidification derived from carbon dioxide emissions. Once again, the oil, gas and coal sector and companies in this sector stand out, and once again, Pemex has been identified as one of the 10 companies with the highest carbon dioxide emissions, with the consequent impact on ocean acidification. [iv] PEMEX is in ninth place.
PEMEX has apparently taken some steps in the past few years to meet the challenge of being a more environmentally responsible company. In the last sustainability report that is publicly available on its website dated 2019 [v], PEMEX mentions that it is working on goals to reduce emissions and pollutants to the atmosphere, in accordance with Mexico's international commitments to mitigate climate change. Other actions mentioned include implementing the comprehensive use of water in refineries and petrochemical and gas complexes, in order to reduce its use and increase its reuse; reduce the generation of hazardous waste and promote the care of ecosystems.
However, the current energy policy of the federal government to increase PEMEX's participation, in particular to make greater use of fuel in the country, reducing the share of renewable energy, contravenes these goals. The State's productive enterprise is part of the federal government. This, by participating in the product sector via PEMEX and establishing asymmetric conditions that favor this company, as well as greater oil production against renewable energy sources, in practice goes against commitments to mitigate climate change, such as the Paris Agreement. Therefore, rather than contributing to achieving the goal of SDG 14 that helps to improve the condition of marine ecosystems, we would be going in the opposite direction.
The importance of the oceans in productive activities requires that PEMEX also be integrated into the strategy to achieve their conservation. Addressing the degradation of our oceans is a multifactorial problem where the actors in the productive sector working to mitigate climate change will have to be added to those who have to do with the other pressures of overfishing and pollution. An example of these interrelationships is how minimizing the sources of pollution that contribute to acidification will be key to avoiding damage to different marine species and ecosystems, with also direct effects on the fishing activity that supports many communities.
Globally, companies in the hydrocarbon sector are already taking action or the consumers themselves are pressing for this to happen. The most recent case is the oil company Shell. This same company that sold its stake in the Deer Park refinery, located in the United States, to PEMEX last month. That same week, Shell received a ruling from a court in The Hague in the Netherlands to reduce its global carbon emissions by 45% by 2030, compared to 2019 emission levels. [vi] The world is moving, and companies (private or state) in the area of hydrocarbons will increasingly find themselves on the road to taking greater environmental responsibility.
[1] United Nations Sustainable Development Goal 14.
[2] Halpern, B.S., Frazier, M., Afflerbach, J. et al. (2019) Recent pace of change in human impact on the world's ocean. Scientific Reports 9, No. 11609.
[3] Climate Accountability Institute (2020) Accounting for carbon and methane emissions, Top Twenty investor-owned and state-owned oil, gas, and coal companies 1965-2017
[4] R. Licker, B. Ekwurzel, S. C. Doney, S. R. Cooley, I. D. Lima, R. Heede and P. C. Frumhoff (2019) Attributing ocean acidification to major carbon producers. Environmental Research Letters, Vol. 14, No. 12.
[5] PEMEX (2019) Sustainability Report.
[6] The Guardian. Court orders Royal Dutch Shell to cut carbon emissions by 45% by 2030. May 26, 2021.
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