[NYTr] Bali Meeting Ends; Mexico Emerges as a Leader on Climate Change

[All the News That Doesn't Fit]

sent by tsimonds - activ-l

Wired - Dec 14. 2007
http://www.wired.com/science/planetearth/news/2007/12/mexico_climate


Bali Meeting Ends; Mexico Emerges as a Leader on Climate Change

Europe is known as a champion of combating climate change. But a
developing country famous for its capital's polluted air is also a
surprising front-runner: Mexico.

Mexico ranked fourth on the Climate-Change Performance Index, which
scores countries on their greenhouse-gas emissions and policy. The
policy group Germanwatch released the report this week during the U.N.
climate-change conference in Bali. Only Sweden, Germany and Iceland
outscored Mexico, with its 110 million people. The United States ranked
55th out of 56 countries, ahead only of Saudia Arabia.

"I don't think any developing country has spelled out as comprehensive a
strategy as Mexico," said Pankaj Bhatia, director of the Greenhouse-Gas
Protocol Initiative of the World Resources Institute, a sustainability
think tank. "I think it's a great example for developing countries like
China, Brazil and India."

With much of the wrangling at the international level occurring among
the European Union, China and the United States, the strides of some
smaller, non-European countries have been overlooked. Known for its
manufacturing and natural-resource extraction industries, Mexico is not
typically considered a paragon of environmental planning.

Recent years, however, have seen a marked change in government policy.
The government adopted a comprehensive climate-change mitigation
strategy in May, and the new mayor of Mexico City, Marcelo Ebrard, has
received international acclaim for his $550 million plan to reduce the
capital's emissions. Mexican companies were also the first in the
developing world to begin voluntarily inventorying their greenhouse-gas
emissions along World Resources Institute guidelines.

Germanwatch attributed Mexico's jump from No. 16 in last year's rankings
up to No. 4 this year to "constructive international and national
climate policy and its relatively favorable emissions trends."

Ned Helme, president of the Center for Clean Air Policy, said Mexico's
aggressive direction on climate change stems from the country's new
president, Felipe Calderon, who was sworn in last December.

"Calderon had come out of the ministry of energy and is really committed
to moving on climate change," Helme said.

According to the World Resources Institute, Mexico produced 415.3
million tons of carbon dioxide in 2004. Helme's think tank believes
Mexico's new policies, which include increasing renewable energy and
energy efficiency as well as planting forests, will reduce the
country's greenhouse-gas emissions by 110 million tons by the year
2020. The United States, starting with 10 times the emissions that
Mexico creates, would only reduce emissions 180 million tons based on
current policy.

"The Mexican government has been very courageous," Bhatia said. "Their
success is inspiring similar programs in other countries."

In fact, the development of Mexico as a leader in the battle to reduce
greenhouse-gas emissions has already proven to be a valuable model that
other developing nations are looking to follow.

"When we went to China, the authorities said, 'We'd like to see how
other developing countries have done,'" Bhatia said. "We provided the
Chinese with the Mexican success story, and that enabled us to get a
program started there."

Other Latin American countries have made strides to reduce their
contributions to global warming. Costa Rican President Oscar Arias
declared that his country would be carbon-neutral by 2020, even as he
admitted the goal would be difficult to reach.

Both Mexico and Costa Rica have engaged in ambitious tree-planting
efforts. A far cry from the community efforts often seen in the United
States, Mexico wants to put 250 million trees in the ground by the end
of 2007, and Costa Rica's goal is 6.5 million. The trees are a natural
way to sequester carbon dioxide through their normal metabolic
processes.

Mexico's vigorous activity domestically has also given it a new voice
internationally. At the Bali climate-change conference, Helme said the
Mexican delegation became a leader among developing nations.

"Stay tuned. Mexico is going to be very aggressive in the next year," he
said. "They're saying, 'We're actually doing more than the Europeans,
and it's time we beat our chests and asked the (developed world): What
are you doing?'"