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Cancun, certainly a snake pit
Hopes on climate change summit Luis Hern?ndez Navarro (*)
This week, Mexico is hosting the UN convention on climate change, in Cancun. It is ironic that such an important conference on the environment are made in a country whose environment has been devastated, and in a city that exemplifies everything not to do if you want to protect natural resources.
Cancun is the perfect illustration of the lights and shadows of uncontrolled development, is an emblem of modernity and backwardness. Cancun - "nest of snakes" in Mayan, was born four decades ago from a government decision. A place of great natural beauty, a deserted island, separated from the mainland by narrow channels, a number of gaps, and a stretch of coastline surrounded by virgin forest and pristine beaches, it was decided that should be transformed into the most important tourist center in the country .
Hundreds of tons of concrete, steel and glass were used to create "the dream of bankers, with a massive participation of developers, politicians and multinational hotel chain that financed the construction of more than 27,000 hotel rooms and a town center with more of 700.000 inhabitants. The project has proved ecocide, besides hosting thousands of people without the minimum public services.
That city, which accounts for almost half of Mexico's tourism industry, is both a symbol of poverty. A growing city in a nation without enough jobs attracts all types of fortune-seekers: "scrubbers" money, sex traders and drug dealers.
There are actually two cities linked by a broad avenue, which share the same name. One is the city the privilege and pleasure, the other rather than scarcity.
The lack of environmental care is not limited to Cancun. It is no exaggeration to describe Mexico as a devastated environment. It has become a huge dump. Its groundwater is contaminated, much of their best land is contaminated and eroded, and its forests have been destroyed. Industrial plants and opencast mines discharge their waste without a precaution while they devour the mega tourist beaches and forests.
Everywhere there are tons of toxic and non-biodegradable waste such as plastics, batteries, tires, hazardous chemicals and industrial waste. Although now banned, there are still illegal dumping of chemicals, especially PCBs, a highly toxic substance once used as an insulator and coolant in transformers and electrical equipment. Its effect is chronic, cumulative, and bioaccumulate as they may cause cancer and affect the hormone system.
Along with the environmental crisis is a massive crisis of sanitation. The emergence last year of the H1N1 influenza virus in pig farms of Perote, Veracruz, was perhaps a warning sign. The hundreds of municipal waste landfills are the incubators of the most serious diseases. Proliferation, unregulated industrial development are a breeding ground for genetic mutations, leukemia and anencephaly. Toxic waste dumped in the river Atoyac, in the state of Tlaxcala, and have killed the local fauna and now is causing cancer in local population, according to a study conducted by Mexican researchers in the journal Mutagenesis, Oxford.
Weak environmental regulations and corrupt officials, and trade agreements that allow impunity to destroy the environment, that multinational corporations are licensed to kill.
The entry of China into the World Trade Organization in 2001 robbed Mexico of its comparative advantage in attracting capital, the supply of cheap labor. In reality, though no public announcement, the Mexican government has offered to multinationals total deregulation of the environment, closing their eyes to violations of environmental laws.
This has accelerated the trend already visible in the country since the implementation of the Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) in 1994. In Mexico, federal laws regarding the disposal of solid waste are in fact a dead letter. There is almost no municipalities to fulfill their obligation to separate, recycle and reuse waste. At the same time, the privatization of collection and disposal of garbage has increased.
This invisible environmental degradation has led to protests from those living with it day by day.
But the defense of the environment can be a dangerous business: it can cost you your life. It is believed that Ruben Flores Hernandez, a forester in the state of Morelos, was killed last April by the people causing havoc in the forest. And not alone. In recent years more than 30 environmentalists have been murdered.
The Cancun conference will provide a window on the resistance to environmental destruction taking place in Mexico.
That, at least, is the hope of those affected by it. They want to make the conference an opportunity to show the world the seriousness of the situation they are living and expose a government that talks about protecting the environment while doing everything possible to ensure their destruction .- London
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*) Collaboration for the British newspaper "The Guardian