Budget 2023, Environmental Tragedy

By 2023, President López maintains his obsession with dismantling and rendering useless the environmental sector of the public administration. He despises the subject, he does not understand it. That is why he punishes him, dismantles the sector’s institutions, and appoints ostensibly inept and incompetent characters to strategic positions. He too, since 2019, has cut the budget, to the so-called Branch 16 (Environment and Natural Resources), something unprecedented in Mexico and in the civilized world. This, while he allocates tens of billions of pesos (37 billion) to the onerous and perverse program “Sembrando Vida”, and more than 900 billion to patronage subsidies and absurd megalomaniac works (Mayan Train, Dos Bocas).

The budget drowning to which President López has subjected the government’s environmental institutions, is to cover up by 2023 with a notable increase of 102% (or 35 billion pesos) to the National Water Commission. This will be used for emergency hydraulic works for the metropolitan area of ​​Monterrey (El Cuchillo II aqueduct), arsenic-free water for the Laguna, rehabilitation of the Cutzamala system that supplies the Metropolitan Area of ​​Mexico City, for the El Zapotillo dam and aqueducts that will carry water to the Guadalajara Metropolitan Area, for flood protection works in Tabasco, and for irrigation works in Sinaloa, Sonora and Nayarit. Everything, by the way, strictly speaking, should not be included in the Environment and Natural Resources category. It serves in any way so that lying with the “truth”, the government and Morena affirm that there is a considerable increase in the environmental budget. CONAGUA takes almost 91% of the budget of the SEMARNAT sector (75 billion pesos).

The obvious thing is that, during this government, the environmental entities of the public administration have been strangled, without nominal marginal budget increases for 2023 being able to compensate for the enormous real loss suffered since 2019. The National Commission of Natural Protected Areas, which has at its charge 15% of the national terrestrial and marine territory in the form, mainly, of national parks and biosphere reserves (in fact, the most important part of Mexico’s environmental agenda), receives only 1.23% of the sector’s budget, the same as it has been reduced by 18% between 2018 and 2023 (36% real). The most valuable of the natural capital of the Nation has been abandoned. Only 1.1% of the sector’s budget is allocated to the Federal Attorney for Environmental Protection, responsible for inspection, surveillance and enforcement of the law, and this has been reduced by 16% in the same period (34% real). By the way, this government destroyed the Environmental Gendarmerie that was responsible for monitoring natural resources and protected natural areas. The National Agency for Industrial Safety and Environmental Protection of the Hydrocarbons Sector (ASEA) has had its budget cut by 46% during this period (58% real) – President López does not want environmental regulation, surveillance, or enforcement of the law in PEMEX. The National Forestry Commission, in charge of sustainable forest development and forest protection, has suffered a cut of 37% in the period (50% real). For its part, the Mexican Institute of Water Technology has had its budget reduced by 14%; (33% real) and the National Institute of Ecology and Climate Change at 16% (34% real). Functionally, CONAFOR’s resources for Sustainable Forest Development (Community Forest Management and Value Chains, Forest Restoration of Micro-basins and Strategic Regions, Payment for Environmental Services, and Forest Protection), are 60% less than what was allocated in 2018 (68% true). In parallel, the government of President López disappeared the strategic program of the National System of Protected Natural Areas, leaving it with a zero budget from 2021. The same fate has befallen fundamental programs that have been destroyed, such as the Conservation and Sustainable Use of Wildlife, the Recovery and Repopulation of Species at Risk, the Management of Natural Protected Areas, and the Protection and Restoration of Ecosystems and Species. Priorities. Worse, the trust that financed the operation of the National Commission for the Knowledge and Use of Biodiversity (CONABIO) was eliminated and looted, and its budget (world-renowned institution chaired by Dr. José Sarukhán) was totally stripped without that hardly anyone would shout to defend her. It has practically ceased to function, it only survives with a few donations, and it is now headed (so to speak) by an unknown and improvised pawn of President López. To gauge the magnitude of the environmental budgetary catastrophe, let us note that the combined total budget of all environmental entities (5,032 million pesos) represents barely 13% of the budget of the “Sembrando Vida” patronage program, which causes significant deforestation.

@g_quadri