Mangroves, monarchs and the end of a world

On a journey through Mexico’s landscape,Tiahoga Ruge brings us face to face with the country’s diverse environment – and its challenges and opportunities.

As I write I am travelling on a three-week adventure through Mexico, from the US border, or ‘La Linea’, as Mexicans know it, through the northern deserts and on to the southern rainforest of the Yucatán peninsula. Leaving San Diego and crossing into Tijuana, it’s at once intriguing and charming to see US law and order blend into the mixture of chaos and beauty that characterises so much of Mexico. Dry and dusty… rich and poor, but always alive and, these days, always booming.

‘La Linea’ begins as a high wall, but as you travel east and follow the line, the wall turns into a fence and, finally, hardly an obstacle at all. For the seven million or so illegal immigrants from Mexico now estimated to reside in the US, the border has been the starting point for a new life. Forced out of their home towns by poverty, lack of employment and environmental degradation, half a million jump the wall every year as the first part of a long and dangerous journey in which many die of thirst, exhaustion and fear of being hunted down.

The landscape and the light

Bridging the gap between rich and poor is one of the greatest challenges facing Mexico on its journey to becoming a sustainable country. In this border country it’s easy to forget there are plenty of others. Though air pollution and water shortages are still a problem, much of the smog and smoke that blighted the area even a few years ago have diminished. Along with rising awareness of environmental issues, environmental policies, law enforcement and education have all been brought together in the US-Mexican environmental border programme, with impressive results. The rubbish that used to lie along the highway has disappeared, and big signs alert drivers to the fines for fly tipping and littering.

So as we drive along the Sonora-Chihuahua border it’s now possible to focus on the sheer beauty of the landscape and the light. The great planes and big skies remind me what a vast country Mexico is, its green and yellow rocky bones poking through and turning pink in the sunset, and the air filled with fresh smells of the earth and flowering plants and the sounds of invisible creatures.

Turning south towards the city of Chihuahua, where the Mexican Revolution started, we pass through the arid territory of northern Mexico. It’s hard to imagine how these dried out rivers and dams will fill up for a short while and turn the yellow desert green. When it rains, the flora and fauna bloom and grow, and you can see why Mexico is the fourth most biodiverse country in the world. Nearly 12% of the country is now protected, with a total of 164 separate sites in the national system co-ordinated by the National Commission of Natural Protected Areas. The Commission’s professional teams oversee the conservation and sustainable management of these areas, in a strategy that has proved an effective means of slowing the loss of habitats and diversity. Encouraging ecotourism, building local capacity and creating sustainable economic activities have been the mainstays of the approach.

“Energy reforms could open the door to solar and wind power”

In central Mexico the landscape supports a larger population, and agriculture and crops have led in many places to overexploitation of the aquifers. Agriculture is the main consumer of water in Mexico. Water extraction is increasingly difficult and expensive in energy terms, so joint efforts between the Agriculture Ministry and the National Water Commission are being directed towards more efficient irrigation systems and alternative energy sources. Pumping and transporting water is still largely powered by fossil fuels, although Mexico’s newly approved energy reforms also include laws promoting sustainable energy. This should open the door for small-scale power generation based around solar power and wind, as well as the development of biofuels; the jatropha plant that recently fuelled one of the engines of an Air New Zealand jet is now being cultivated in Mexico.

A new scheme of payments for environmental services has proved an effective conservation tool in the Sierra Gorda Biosphere Reserve in Querétaro. Here, 18 years of community education and partnership work by local conservation organisation Grupo Ecológico Sierra Gorda and its commercial arm Bosque Sustentable have helped regulate logging and develop microbusinesses based in the forest, showing how sustainable development can be achieved ['Bringing back the trees'].

As we continue our journey south we climb high mountain ranges covered with pine trees, and I’m surprised and delighted by the sight of millions of monarch butterflies flying like golden streams against the sun. Saving the monarch means halting illegal logging in the forest, and repairing the damage done. Although the forest looks healthy now, it’s been a huge effort to get it to this state, with decades of legislation and resource required to create a new balance between nature conservation and an expanding human population [see 'A sanctuary for butterflies']. Much of the work has been done by the National Forest Commission and through ProÁrbol, the national reforestation campaign launched by President Calderón to mitigate climate change and reduce soil erosion [see 'Greening Quetzalcóatl']. With millions of trees planted by NGOs, businesses, schools and community groups, this kind of collective effort gives me hope that together we can restore what’s been lost in Mexico.

Crucial coastlines

The road south takes us through Mexico City, then on to Veracruz, Oaxaca, Tabasco and Campeche. The wetlands and mangroves that once lined the Gulf of Mexico have been in retreat for decades. Their biological value as nurseries for marine species and the sponge effect they offer when hurricanes hit is at last being recognised by public policy, with mangrove protection at the heart of new legislation.

Achieving such protection has been difficult, with the powerful tourism industry seeing mangrove coastline as the perfect place for development, on the sun-drenched stretches of the Pacific and Caribbean coasts. Alternative development models have started to offer a new approach to managing these areas in a sustainable way, such as in La Ventanilla on the coast of Oaxaca, where local communities have developed new ways to combine mangrove restoration, capacity building and ecotourism – a vision which has at last caught the eye of the mainstream industry.

On to Cancún, where the beautiful turquoise ocean laps against white sand beaches. Hundreds of hotels have turned the Riviera Maya into one of the most popular destinations for millions of US and British tourists, and also for countless Mexicans, who head here to join the booming tourist economy. South from Cancún are ecotourism resorts and developments including Xcaret and Xel-Ha, offering a new way to enjoy the natural and cultural diversity of Mexico[see 'Sun, sea… sustainability']. Mayan archaeological sites such as Chichen Itza and Cobá bring tourists inland, sometimes as far as the higher rainforest where older Mayan sites such as Palenque, Bonampak and Yaxchilan also hold the key to the conservation of the surrounding rainforest, with natural and cultural heritage jointly protected.

Beneath the Yucatán Peninsula lie the largest underground freshwater reserves in Mexico. Conserving this fragile resource requires co-ordinated efforts over a vast area, including action to protect what remains of the rainforest above. As previously untouched forest succumbs to ‘environmentally friendly’ development all across the land between Cancún and Tulum, the area left as the main provider of environmental services for the region is shrinking fast. As in so much of Mexico, the challenge to retain what is best and yet provide for the population is both urgent and enormous.

“Mexicans know nature is worth more than money”

But not impossible. Rising awareness, through formal education in schools and large environmental campaigns by NGOs and mass media, the growth in clean technologies, better design and planning, enforcement of environmental law, the trend towards sustainable tourism and agriculture, greater public participation and, above all, sustainable social and economic policies, can still make the difference and put Mexicans on the path to sustainability. Mexicans know that nature is worth more than money: the trick is to start living in a different way.

My journey ends on the beach in Tulum – one of the most beautiful places I have ever visited. I snorkel through the crystal waters to the gap in the reef through which the Maya first passed to settle this paradise. The Mayan calendar ends its 5,000-year cycle in the year 2012, when the Katun prophecy forecasts the end of the world.

Is the world ending, or is it just the end of the world as we know it today? In September last year, President Calderón announced that Mexico would be hosting World Environment Day on 5 June 2009. This is a fabulous opportunity for the country to set itself on track to become an exemplar of sustainable development, and show how a new world can begin.

Mexican environmentalist and film-maker Tiahoga Ruge is the former Director of Mexico’s Centre of Education and Training for Sustainable Development, (CECADESU) and Consultant Editor of Viva la vida verde.

This article is part of the Green Futures Special Publication Viva la vida verde, in which weset out the key sustainability challenges facing Mexico, and showcase some of the innovative green breakthroughs under way. Read more articles here.