Can Felipe Calderón make Mexico a leader in combating climate change?

With its oil industry, heavy use of road transport, and 110 million people, Mexico accounts for 1.5% of global emissions

Jo Tuckman, Mexico City
guardian.co.uk, Wednesday 24 June 2009 12.15 BST

Mexico's president, Felipe Calderón, has impressed many on the world stage with his oft-repeated aim of turning his country into one of the first developing nations to take a leading role in combating climate change.
With its heavily polluting oil industry, heavy use of road transport, and 110 million people – few of who have much awareness about the issue – Mexico accounts for about 1.5% of global emissions. Not much when compared to China or India, perhaps, but big enough to make Mexico a leading player in the rest of the developing world.
On the flip side, Mexico and its extraordinary biodiversity is also very vulnerable to the impacts of global warming. Long Atlantic and Pacific coastlines, much of which have been stripped of the natural protection afforded by mangroves, are especially susceptible to increasingly violent hurricanes. Deforested mountainsides are prone to collapse under unusually heavy rains. Massive river deltas are threatened by major floods, and huge swaths of semi-arid land are at risk of tipping into desert.
Calderón insists that Mexico is an ideal bridge between rich and poor nations immersed in bitter arguments over emissions targets in industrialised countries and financing for adaptation measures and green technology in the developing world. To this end he has been vigorously promoting a financing mechanism called the Green Plan which he claims will shift the paradigm away from "mutual reproach" to one of "shared responsibility."
To prove his point Calderón stunned the world last December in Poland when he promised that Mexico would cut its own emissions by 50% from 2002 levels by 2050. This was followed up earlier this month with a commitment to reduce emissions by 50 million tonnes a year between now and 2012 when he leaves office. The Mexican president said this would be achieved by more efficient cars and power plants, as well as reductions in gas leaks and flaring by the oil industry.
The problem is that while such talk may excite European diplomats, local activists often dismiss it as little more than well-meaning rhetoric.
In particular they cite a massive reforestation programme that has involved planting 250m trees a year since 2007. The campaign won high praise from the UN Food and Agriculture Organization but a Greenpeace Mexico study of the 2007 season concluded that 74% of the trees had died and another 17% were sick.
According to the activists the whole idea is misguided. They say that tree cover in a nation where about half the population live in poverty can only be protected by community-based projects on sustainable forest management.
Activists also complain that Calderón legislation that nominally bans the destruction of coastal mangroves is only partially applied. They add that renewable energy investment is both insufficient and almost entirely restricted to the private sector.