In 2012, droughts in the community of Mapastepec, Chiapas, affected farmers who relied on corn crops. From there, 14-year-old José Villalobos had to see his parents migrate to the United States in search of better opportunities.

In 2011 and at the beginning of that year, there were the worst droughts in five decades and the authorities recognized losses of 9 billion pesos for corn farmers (equivalent to 710 million dollars today).

Like a pendulum that returns with force, the harsh effects of the climate had hit the town of José seven years ago, when the excess of water caused in October 2005 by Hurricane Stan flooded the town. That event turned his house into a temporary shelter with a dozen children.

Three years ago Villalobos joined Friday for the Future Mexico, an international youth movement backed by Swedish media activist Greta Thunberg in search of climate justice. He began to read about climate change and “put the pieces together” about what had disrupted his life.

“And I said that I had to do something and it was a totally new response and I think that for me it was full of anger, in what I could do against the climate crisis and political inactions,” he explained.

Today he, like 30 million young people, live in a country that has shifted towards generating energy based on fossil fuels in recent years.

“What it means is the lack of action, ambition and vision, Mexico could really become a country that could face the climate crisis. It also means that the authorities do not know the reality in which people in the most vulnerable situations live, as they continue to bet on this type of energy, instead of transitioning to cleaner ones that mitigate the climate crisis,” said Villalobos, who from Tapachula on the border with Guatemala appreciates the migratory flows that are also fleeing hunger.

Climate change has had severe effects on Mexico. From 2001 to 2013 alone, there were 2.5 million people affected by meteorological phenomena, while the costs amounted to 338.35 billion pesos (about 24 trillion dollars), according to the report Commitments to Mitigation and Adaptation to Climate Change for the period 2020-2030 of the National Institute of Ecology and Climate Change (INECC).

Despite robust evidence, the federal government is looking forward to the next United Nations Conference on Climate Change (COP27), to be held in November in Egypt, without yet knowing the methodology of the previous goals or a clear route to clear up doubts about the commitments made in the Paris Agreement.

Multiple indicators highlight the purpose of reducing the generation of Greenhouse Gases by 22% by 2030 and increasing the generation of green energy to 35% by 2024.

Adrián Fernández, executive director of the civil organization Climate Initiative of Mexico (ICM), explains that there are two elements at play for Mexico ahead of COP27. The first is to regain prestige in climate matters. And the second, to avoid a lag in economic competition with respect to countries that consider climate and environment in their development plans.

Along with Brazil, Mexico is an emerging economy in the region that has ceased to have an understanding of climate policies, he said. “Even worse. Some policies that the current administration has led, and is determined to pursue, are counterintuitive to anyone who reviews what is happening in Mexico, because the entire energy agenda in Mexico suddenly changed.”

Since its inception in December 2018, the administration of President Andrés Manuel López Obrador changed the energy policy of his predecessor in office Enrique Peña Nieto and maintains a legislative pulse to reduce private participation in energy generation and to strengthen the government's role in this work through the State's productive company Federal Electricity Commission (CFE), which uses infrastructure that largely requires fossil fuels.

“It's a fact that the countries that make the most progress in combating climate change in a way that optimizes benefits for their own country are those where the head of state understands the problem, it's not a problem of the future, it's a problem that has everything to do with the possibility of development,” Fernández said.

On March 10, a reformed Electricity Industry Act came into force at the proposal of the president, which has received a barrage of amparos that have prevented it from working, which has meant that part of the focus on what will happen in the future is focused on the courts.

The significance of the energy issue would lie in the fact that it is key to reducing greenhouse gases in Mexico. 

 In 2015, the energy sector contributed 70.41% of emissions. At the same time, it grew by 66% between 1990 and 2015, according to the National Inventory of Emissions of Greenhouse Gases and Compounds.

Despite its commitment to the energy transition, the country lost strength in the race to increase green energy generation when the fourth round of a series of long-term auctions was canceled on February 29, 2019, said Oscar Ocampo, energy coordinator of the Mexican Institute for Competitiveness (IMCO), a system in which contracts were given to domestic and foreign investors since 2016. 

 “If Mexico had followed the pace it brought in 2016 and 2017, it would have met that goal (of the Paris Agreement) without any problem. On the other hand, we are now in 2022 and we have a percentage of renewable energy ratio more or less depending on the month of 27 or 28%, meaning we are still significantly below what we should be to achieve the goal for 2024. There is a very specific reason and it is called the obstacle to the development of new wind farms, of new solar parks,” said Ocampo.

At this rate, Mexico will reach 31% by 2024, according to a new forecast from a government office, taken up by the IMCO Energy Monitor.

Towards a Just Transition

A tense calm floods the indigenous Zapotec community of Unión Hidalgo, which has recently emerged victorious in a legal battle against Gunaa Sicarú, a wind farm of more than 4,000 hectares that intended to install 300 MW by the French company Electricité de France (EDF) in its territory since 2017.

The inhabitants of the community of around 10,000 inhabitants already live with the Piedra Larga wind farm owned by Desarrollos Eólica Mexicanos (Demex), a project through which the Spanish company Renovalia Energy is the owner of a capacity of 227.5 MW.

Two subsidiary projects, Demex I and II, generate electricity for Grupo Bimbo de México and Walmart. This park was inaugurated in October 2012, at the time the second largest wind power plant in Mexico.

_{The wind corridor of the state of Oaxaca is concentrated in the southern part of the Isthmus of Tehuantepec. Photo: Saúl López/} Cuartoscuro

In this environment, 60-year-old community defender Rosalva Fuentes argued that the uncontrolled presence of these greed-driven projects in the area threatens the natural resources of the youngest.

“Good thing for those of us who have already reached the 60s and 70s, but already the kids where are they going to live. It is something that has worried us. They have felled trees, they have dried up the earth, they have killed birds that used to come to our community. It doesn't affect us but our entire country. It affects the environment, the earth, human relationships,” said the defender about the limits of natural resources,” Fuentes said.

The community pointed out that when talking about the need for renewable energies, we must also consider the ways in which these energies are installed, so as not to affect communities and their ways of life.

“The detail is the way in which it is applied and the modes. I think that a wind farm is enough because even with that they have dug up the earth, they have violated it because they have placed thousands of tons of cement where it no longer allows moisture in the mountains, for the aquifers to arrive as before, and in our case our palmar and lagoon will dry up as well,” said the activist.

Convention 169 of the International Labour Organization (ILO) grants indigenous communities the right to consult about what is happening on their land. In 2018, a consultation was held in which there were reports of anomalies.

After a 5-year legal battle waged by the community and the civil organization Economic, Social and Cultural Rights Project, in June the Federal Electricity Commission (CFE) canceled energy supply contracts to EDF, leading to the Ministry of Energy notifying a judge of the cancellation of the consultation. This is the end of this wind power project.

Young people against global warming

On March 24, 2021, a group of young people appeared in the immediate vicinity of the Supreme Court of Justice of the Nation (SCJN) to protest against changes in the Electricity Industry Act, promoted by the federal government and which came into force on March 10.

The reason for being before the Judiciary was to support a series of amparos against the Law, presented by the civil associations Our Future and the Youth Alliance for Sustainability.

_{Photo: Ajuves}

This legal fight between youth citizen initiatives and President Andrés Manuel López Obrador is still awaiting a resolution from the SCJN.

“We helped create a movement called Youth for Our Future, 30 organizations and hundreds of young people who at the time opposed the reform of the Electricity Industry. We did an analysis and various situations of the reform were regressive and I returned to betting on fossil fuels and were holding back the efforts of previous years to promote clean energy and we believe that one of the most efficient ways was the imposition of protection,” said the young coordinator of Ajuves, Alfonso Ramos, who was optimistic about the result they could obtain.

For Ramos, talking about actions to curb the climate crisis is also about considering that we are in a race against time, since regardless of the current government, there will be no time left to “promote measures that truly succeed in curbing global warming and its effects”.

The climate crisis directly appeals to young people. In Mexico, 30.7 million young people between 15 and 29 years old live, and they represent 24.6% of the total population, according to the National Survey of Demographic Dynamics of the National Institute of Statistics and Geography (INEGI).

Mexico depends on its youth, 67.7% of young men and 40.5% of young women are part of the economically active population. Ramos believes that it is a key population group, with a minimum of experience and enough energy to act.

“I think that global warming concerns young people. First of all, because statistically, life expectancy will mean that we live longer. And if the planet is in crisis, it will affect us for a longer time of life, this also affects our delimitation of the life plan, if we are going to start a family, what we are going to work on, where we are going to have our home,” Ramos explained.

Youth at COP 27

The COP is a space of convergence. This was stated by Villalobos, who attended the conference held in Glasgow last year as part of the first Friday for Future Mexico delegation.

Despite how stressful it can be to call representatives to action, where young people know that capitalist interests weigh, it was also an opportunity to meet other young people with similar struggles, he explained.

Outside activist circles, Villalobos says that young people in Mexico are aware of the climate issue. However, a key part is knowing how to approach it so they can react.

“(At the COP) I learned from activist communities around the world Bangladesh, Egypt, Kenya, the Philippines... the moment you position an issue, the struggle of your community, your country and the people who are being most affected you begin to have perspectives on different struggles and how to replicate them in your community.”

For his part, Ramos de Ajuves noted that there are high expectations for what will happen at COP 27 in Egypt.

“It is always important for world leaders to meet to discuss what they are doing and to set an agenda for action that results in actors at the national level and then more locally there are concrete actions. Since 2015 when the Paris agreement was concluded and until Glasgow last year, these types of events have set important guidelines, and it is necessary that what is discussed there be implemented and not left in empty promises, but there are improvements that have been seen in other events of this nature, so if we have faith in this type of conferences,” Ramos said.

Although the opinions of organized young people are well received and in the case of Ajuves they have managed to participate in different open parliaments, forums and congresses, there is still a way to go for them to have a more direct participation in environmental policy decisions.

“These spaces (of listening) have been won by civil society itself, which has struggled to be heard and to be able to express its concerns, it is important that they continue to be generated and that decision-making is more directly related to execution and not just to the very ethereal and abstract definition stage,” Ramos concluded.