In order to generate an instrument that contributes to increasing Mexico’s resilience to climate change and compliance with the NDCs on adaptation, the process of preparing the National Adaptation Policy (NAP) must be participatory, representative, and use the regionalization perspective.
The July 2018 reforms to the General Law on Climate Change sought to harmonize the national legal framework with the commitments that Mexico took on in the 2015 Paris Agreement. One reform on the subject of adaptation considers the creation of a NAP, under the framework of the National Climate Change System, which strengthens and facilitates synergies between the various international, national and sub-national mandates on the matter.
With the intention of guiding the preparation phase prior to the formal NAP preparation process, the Mexican-German Alliance on Climate Change project, implemented by the Deutsche Gesellschaft für Internationale Zusammenarbeit (GIZ) GmbH, coordinated and supervised the preparation of the document “Support in the Design of a Roadmap for Planning the National Policy on Adaptation to Climate Change of Mexico (NAP)” (January 2019), for the Ministry of Environment and Natural Resources (SEMARNAT).
The document reviews the institutional, legal and political frameworks that underpin adaptation climate action in Mexico, to generate the proposal for a roadmap that can indicate the specific components and activities necessary for the formulation of the NAP. Among the most important elements of the roadmap is the relevance of carrying out a broad participatory process – with governmental and non-governmental, national and local actors – which can facilitate the collection of experiences and initiatives to generate a successful public policy that reflects the concerns and real priorities of the population.
Given Mexico’s ecosystem and climatic diversity, a regionalization perspective is an indispensable feature in the process of preparing the NAP. In this way, it is intended to address the diversity of vulnerabilities and the differentiated impacts – present and future – that occur in the country. This proposal would facilitate the adoption of different types of adaptation approaches that respond to the priorities of each area and the sectors involved.
Tracing a common axis on adaptation using a holistic, decentralized and representative National Adaptation Policy will enable the adoption of concrete and effective measures that increase Mexico’s resilience through climate policy at a subnational level.