Yet another major emerging economy is planning to come to the table in Copenhagen ready to contribute. Mexico aims to bring CO2 cut plan to climate talks reports Reuters. Adrian Fernandez, the president of the National Ecology Institute, said “If Mexico can bring a plan for cuts through 2020 to the table with a detailed description of what will be mitigated it would set a positive precedent for the other big emerging economies.” And how!
One big problem for Mexico, as in other oil-producing countries, is gas flaring. The article notes “…Mexico allowed carbon dioxide emissions from the oil industry to soar in 2008 as massive amounts of natural gas were flared off in a bid to keep aging oil fields in production.” The World Bank has an initiative underway to get at this problem: the Global Gas Flaring Reduction Partnership. Unfortunately, Mexico, along with some other culprits like Russia – number one on the list of gas-flaring countries – has not joined the partnership. (See this interactive map.) Altogether, gas flaring has a global impact on climate change by adding about 400 million tons of CO2 annually.
Mexico’s President Felipe Calderón attended the summit in Italy early in July and signed the declaration of the Major Economies Forum on Energy and Climate (MEF). The declaration said “Developing countries among us will promptly undertake actions whose projected effects on emissions represent a meaningful deviation from business as usual in the mid-term, in the context of sustainable development, supported by financing, technology, and capacity-building.” (My emphasis.)
There are obstacles ahead for Mexico, as for other rapidly industrializing economies, political and otherwise, but the will really does seem to be evidencing itself. Significant action by our friends in Congress and down the street at the White House, prior to Copenhagen, will certainly boost the efforts of the major developing nations.
