Embedding Municipal Green Bonds in Mexico City's hydrosocial cycle: 'Green' debt and climate action narratives

Abstract

Mexico City's municipal "green" bonds (MGBs), issued in 2016 and 2018, financed two water infrastructure projects embedded in the city's hydrosocial cycle (the reciprocal transformation of water and society). The issuance of the MGBs created an entanglement of "green" debt and water circulation, which the city government touted as a successful "green" intervention for climate action. However, this article argues that the MGBs also masked climate injustices and colonial legacies that were already prevalent in Mexico City's water circulation infrastructure, affecting aspects including socio-economic and gender issues. To substantiate this claim, this article adopts climate coloniality and climate justice as analytical lenses and urban political ecology as a methodology to critically examine the "green" label epistemologies and climate action narratives that justify the issuance of MGBs linked to water infrastructure projects.