The importance of adaptation to Climate Change for Mexico
Adaptation measures are essential to cope with the already inevitable effects of climate change.
Ana Paola De la Vega, Camilo de la Garza
21 of April, 2020
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Mexico is highly vulnerable to climate change due to its geographical location, topography, and socioeconomic characteristics. Adaptation measures are essential to face the already inevitable effects of climate change, which have the greatest impact on the country’s most vulnerable populations and main productive activities.
According to data provided in the PECC 2014-2018, 13% of municipalities in Mexico present the highest degree of vulnerability to climate change. About 25% of the population lives in irregular settlements and flood risk areas; while droughts in the north of the country are increasingly recurrent and threaten the population’s food security. This translates into the restricted adaptive capacity of a large majority of inhabitants in the face of potential severe hydrometeorological events.
Credits: Shutterstock. Irregular settlements on the Acapulco coast.
Likewise, Mexican ecosystems provide essential environmental services to combat climate change. However, changes in land use, urbanization trends, and rising temperatures have caused a reduction in the adaptive capacity of these ecosystem services, instead increasing the vulnerability of the population and the country.
In the Mexican legal framework, the importance of adaptation to climate change is acknowledged in solving the climate crisis in the country. However, in practice only 7% of the international financing Mexico receives to implement projects that benefit the climate is directed towards adaptation solutions.
Adaptation measures are understood as initiatives aimed at reducing the vulnerability of natural and human systems. These provide an opportunity for building synergies between society, different productive sectors, and federal and local governments, in order to achieve a new model of resilient development based on sustainability.
In the Mexican-German Climate Change Alliance, a project promoted by the GIZ, efforts are being made to accompany the Mexican government in the fulfillment of the Nationally Determined Contribution (NDC), positioning adaptation measures to climate change as a priority to achieve the established goals, alongside mitigation measures for greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions.
