Focus on Arts and Ecology

Initiative: Mexico City’s Environmental and Climate Change Program

Mexico City is one of the largest and most populated metropolises in the world. Despite having only an area of 1,494.3 km2, equivalent to 0.1% of the national territory (INEGI, 2020), it is home to 2% of world biodiversity and 12% of national biodiversity, 770 endemic species of plants and animals, and a great variety of species of corn, squash, chili, amaranth, and beans. This natural and cultural heritage comes both from urban areas (rivers, urban forests, ravines and parks), as well as from the more than 87 thousand hectares that are classified as “conservation land” that represent almost 60% of Mexico City’s territory (natural forests, thickets, rivers, wetlands and lands worked by rural communities).

Given the deterioration and loss of this heritage, caused by the disconnection with nature, the growth of the urban sprawl and factors such as overexploitation, pollution, changes in land use, invasive species and the effects of climate change that have generated, for example, conditions conducive to a greater incidence of fires, as of 2019 a comprehensive policy was launched to regenerate the ecological conditions of the city based on a vision of sustainability, innovation and rights, derived from the Government Program of Mexico City 2019-2024 and established in the Environmental and Climate Change Program (ECCP) 2019-2024.

The first of the axes of the ECCP refers to the “Revegetation of the countryside and the city”, which gave rise to the revegetation strategy called “Green Challenge”, within which the planting of 10 million trees and other plants between 2019 and 2020 was established as a quantitative goal, with a comprehensive approach that covers the following lines of work:

1. Rescue of nurseries to increase production and planting
2. Recovery of native species through seed collection and nursery production
3. Promotion of gardens for pollinators
4. Strengthening of public space with the opening of natural protected areas for public access and the creation and rehabilitation of parks
5. Improvement of soil and vegetation quality through comprehensive management, attention to pests and diseases, diversification of vegetation strata and training for public servants
6. Participation of citizens, civil society and companies in revegetation days and environmental education activities

Thanks to the Green Challenge, the increase in the annual production of plants went from less than 500 thousand in 2018 to more than 10 million in 2021, which has allowed the planting of 27,082,593 trees and plants. The creation and rehabilitation of 16 large parks located mainly in peripheral areas with the greatest lack of access to public spaces, benefiting 6.3 million inhabitants. Additionally, 4,155 inhabitants of rural communities are benefiting in return for their work as brigade members in reforestation and ecological conservation activities, such as the plantation of 16.9 million plants only on conservation land, including the reforestation of 16,505 hectares in forests and rivers.

Adressing the urban challenge

Addressing the urban challenge

Breadth of the issue – How are the problem(s) that are being tackled by your initiative affecting citizens/local businesses or a significant component of the local wildlife?

Due to its geographical location and orographic characteristics, Mexico City is a system exposed to various climatic and hydrometeorological hazards. Because of anthropogenic factors such as overexploitation, expansion of the urban sprawl, changes in land use, soil, water and air pollution (the city emits 27 million tons of carbon dioxide equivalent) and the effects of climate change, the city faces problematic situations caused and intensified by the deterioration of ecosystems and the loss of its biodiversity.

There is a large amount of evidence on the intensification of the effects of climate change and the deepening of the conditions of the environmental problem in the city, which led to the establishment of very ambitious goals in 2019 to reverse these conditions, such as a 10% reduction in CO2equivalent emissions, compared to those produced in 2018.

The most important effects that directly impact the inhabitants have to do with material and human losses due to extreme rains, floods and landslides (between the years 2000 and 2015 there were 51 events of this type that affected 52,331 people), urban heat islands and temperatures extreme high temperatures that, combined with changes in rainfall patterns, generate conditions for a greater incidence of fires that contribute to the loss of ecosystems (from 2019 to 2020, the area affected by fires in conservation land had been reduced by 50% thanks to the increased resources for its attention, but in 2021 the affected area doubled due to a severe drought condition linked to the ENSO-Niña climatic phenomenon).

Depth of the issue – How seriously are the problems being tackled by your initiative impacting the life of the citizens/businesses/wildlife concerned?

There is great evidence on the intensification of the effects of climate change and the environmental problems in the city that led to the establishment of much more ambitious goals in 2019 to reverse these conditions. Between 2000 and 2015, Mexico City registered a total of 66 hydrometeorological phenomena, whose impacts are the most costly and damaging due to the impacted extensions and the affected population. The most frequent were related to torrential rains and storms, landslides, low temperatures and strong winds, which caused damages of 1,173,876 million pesos (56 million dollars), affecting 11,107 homes and 64,655 people (Source: National Center for Disaster Prevention).

Also, from 1991 to 2020, 12,332 fires were registered in the city, 10.6% of the fires in the country (Source: National Forestry Commission) and the temperature in the urban area has increased up to 5°C with respect to the rural area in the dry season of the year and 4% with respect to its surroundings (mainly urban areas with cement and asphalt structures).

In the city there are 105 species in some category of risk and at the beginning of this century more than 70% of the extension of oak and pine-oak forests had already been lost (Source: CONABIO; http://200.12.166.51/janium /Documents/13054.pdf).

It’s estimated that for each urbanized hectare, the aquifers stop recharging 2.5 million liters per year, in a context in which the area built on conservation land from 2005 to 2015 increased an annual average of 2.67%, reaching 5,518.69 hectares in 2015 (Source: IG-UNAM/SEDEMA, 2017).

(Sources: AIPH aka International Association of Horticultural Producers)