Water security and national water law in Mexico

Abstract

This article develop analyses water security in Mexico, a country where global environmental change requires social, political and economic actors to protect natural resources and ecosystem services in order to reduce the tension between anthropogenic demands and natural availability. The paper asks: How can overexploitation and inequality in the access and control of water be assessed using an integrated model of water management and how could the existing water resources in each river basin and aquifer be sustainably distributed by a new National Water Law that would encourage participation in order to overcome the conflicts over access to and control of water? With a model of integrated water management the article reviews the current use of water among different social and production sectors. Agriculture still consumes 77 per cent of the water, especially in the arid north, an area greatly affected by climate change (CC). Industry uses ten per cent and domestic users thirteen per cent of water. The growing megacities are also overexploiting their aquifers, producing subsidence and water pollution together with changes in land use, thus reducing water infiltration into the aquifers during the monsoon. Regional and temporal water stress is further aggravated by unsustainable production processes, where mining and agribusiness hog the water needed by indigenous people and small farmers, forcing them to migrate to the urban centres or illegally to the US. Within this arena of conflict in the field of water management, the article offers several guidelines for a sustainable and participative National Water Law. Food security, including dignified life conditions for the small-scale farmers in rain-fed regions affected by CC, could be achieved with small scale irrigation system in the Southeast of Mexico, where water is available for a second crop. Their sustainable agriculture and preventive management of water pollution by organic agriculture are central activity for conserving and restoring the natural condition of water infiltration. Without an integrated water management, reduction of soil erosion, early warning and resilience-building among the exposed people, Mexico will not reduce the existing and future threats related to global environmental change and particularly to CC.