Towards Open Government in Natural Resources

Open government is a fundamental part of good governance of fisheries, water or forests, in which management decisions are made with transparency, participation and accountability. This both in the search for its conservation and in the generation and distribution of economic and social benefits from its use.

During the current administration, which is in its final year, progress in implementing open government for natural resources is full of contrasts. In 2016, Mexico ranked first in the Global Classification of the Right to Information ¹ in terms of better legislation in terms of transparency. In the legislative area, commitments are made under the Alliance for Open Parliament by the House of Senators and Deputies to do their work under the principles of transparency and participation, as well as to pass laws that strengthen open government. ² At the international level, Mexico chaired the Global Alliance for Open Government in 2015, signing commitments in this area also for the area of natural resources. ³

While this has represented an important advance in the institutional structure that can support this approach to governance, its results in practice have so far been limited. Government institutions can comply with the legal requirements set out in the legislation in transparency and still be deficient in this area. An example is the case of fishing where, although the National Aquaculture and Fisheries Commission (CONAPESCA) complies with legal requirements in the area of transparency, the Federal Audit Office found that by 2014 it was not possible to have information to evaluate its performance, due to poor planning in programs or in its monitoring and evaluation indicators. ⁴ This indicates a more fundamental problem, in terms of the planning itself and the implementation processes that come with it.

In relation to the exercise of citizen participation through institutional spaces, there are important problems. For the environmental case, there are the Advisory Councils for Sustainable Development (CCDS) of the Secretariat of Environment and Natural Resources that have operated very limited in the present administration or the fishing and aquaculture councils for fishing activities, which do not work in many states because they are not even installed. In general terms, in the case of fishing, there is a lack of inclusion of civil society organizations, both in the National Council for Fisheries and Aquaculture, led by CONAPESCA, and in the state ones, all of which are dominated by the presence of governmental actors and the fishing sector.

On the other hand, there are also trends towards improvement. In fishing, the process called Open Boat is currently taking place, ⁵ where a plural group of citizens from the private, social, academic and civil sectors have promoted, together with the Senate Fisheries Committee, changes to both national and state councils to make them more open to participation and more transparent. Although this has run into the perspective of some fishing groups opposed to the inclusion of civil environmental organizations that are perceived as radical. We hope that this position will not prosper and deprive openness, as it would go against the rights to participation and a vision of public interest in the management of such resources.

The federal government recently issued general guidelines and guidelines that provide a minimum floor for the design and implementation of mechanisms for citizen participation in open government, partly linked to the commitments made by the country in the Global Alliance for Open Government. ⁶ The reforms to legislation on transparency and access to information in 2015 and 2016, strongly promoted by civil organizations, have also expanded the obligations of State agencies in this area. This means that government institutions responsible for making decisions affecting fishery resources, forests, water or the environment in general will now have to adjust to that legal framework. It remains to be seen how much this is implemented in practice.

Finally, it has been seen that a large part of the changes depend a lot on the capacity of civil society to push the legislative and executive branches to modify institutions and to move from paper to implementation with an impact on our current reality. As civil society, we must continue to promote that reforms for open government make it possible to address in practice the pressing problems we have in the country: strong inequality, marginalization, the fight against corruption and respect for the law, while maintaining our natural resources in a sustainable way, a continuous process that is in addition to building and strengthening democracy in everyday public decisions on resource management.

Quotes:

^{1. See Right to Information Index, Expansion, DatosMacro.com, http://www.datosmacro.com/estado/indice-derecho-informacion 2.}

Open Parliament Alliance, http://www.parlamentoabierto.mx

^3. Open Government Alliance Mexico at http://gobabiertomx.org

^4. Supreme Audit of the Federation, Report on the Results of the Supreme Audit of the Public Account 2014, Evaluation of the Public Policy for Fisheries and Aquaculture, Audit Study: 14-0-08100-13-1646, DE-001.

⁵. ^{See barcoaperta to.org 6.}

See “GUIDELINES for the promotion, formation, organization and operation of citizen participation mechanisms in agencies and entities of the Federal Public Administration” DOF: 11/08/2017; Government Openness and International Cooperation Policies Unit, Open Government Guide, Secretariat of the Public Service.