Climate Change Research and Policy in Mexico: Implications for North American Security

Abstract

Mexico has a host of environmental problems nowadays and others are piling up because of the expected impacts of climate change. This article discusses the main effects that global climate change is having on Mexico. President Felipe Calderon's current administration has designed a climate change strategy (Estrategia Nacional de Cambio Climático) toward the purpose of generating policies to mitigate emissions as well as to foster adaptation to global warming. We discuss the main effects of climate change on Mexico and describe two recent research endeavors, one related to identifying vulnerability and another that determines the costs to the economy of policies to mitigate greenhouse gas emissions. In the final part we discuss how climate change policies across North America are divergent and identify some methods that could potentially promote better cooperation among these neighboring countries.