What a disaster we will inherit to our descendants!

1 trillion 177 969 million pesos are a lot of pesos. In 2021 they represented 4.6% of the national GDP and 18.7% of the Federation Expenditure Budget. And all of them were literally thrown away.

That amount is what environmental depletion and degradation cost us Mexicans, according to figures from the Economic and Ecological Accounts of the National System of National Accounts of the Inegi (National Institute of Statistics and Geography).

As reported yesterday, December 1, by Ana Karen García in the newspaper El Economista, degradation is what cost us the most: 1 trillion 3604 million pesos or 3.9% of GDP. Depletion only cost us 174,356 million pesos or 0.7% of GDP.

According to the Inegi, the costs for environmental degradation were: for air emissions: 660,334 million pesos; due to soil degradation: 187,986 million pesos; for urban solid waste: 104,869 million pesos; and for untreated wastewater: 50,415 million pesos.

The worst of the case is that the cost could have been much lower if there had been good planning decades ago to deal with the problem and an adequate allocation of resources to invest in everything necessary to avoid the ecological and environmental disaster that affects us today.

And everything indicates that combating environmental degradation and exhaustion is not a priority for the government of President Andrés Manuel López Obrador because in 2021 public spending on environmental protection barely represented 0.45% of GDP while 10 years ago it was equivalent to 0.92%. of GDP.

The country’s situation is reflected in the 2022 Environmental Performance Index (EPI or 2022 Environmental Performance Index) prepared by the Center for Environmental Law and Policy at Yale University, in conjunction with the Information Network of the International Center for Environmental Sciences. Earth from Columbia University, the World Economic Forum and the Joint Research Center of the European Commission.

The EPI shows the state of sustainability around the world. Using 40 performance indicators across 11 thematic categories, it ranks 180 countries on performance on climate change, environmental health, and ecosystem vitality.

The first 10 places in the index are occupied by the countries that have been most concerned and engaged in maintaining their environmental sustainability and are, in descending order: Denmark, the United Kingdom, Finland, Malta, Sweden, Luxembourg, Slovenia, Austria, Switzerland and Iceland. .

Mexico appears in 73rd place, behind the United States (43), Canada (49), Cuba (60), Chile (65), Ecuador (66), Venezuela (67), Costa Rica (68) and Jamaica (72). .

It is unforgivable and unjustifiable that in the EPI Latin American and Caribbean countries appear above Mexico that do not even remotely have its economic strength or resources.

Our political and social leaders love to organize marches and rallies for or against the government or various causes. It is time for us to be summoned to demand that the federal, state, and municipal governments, as well as the federal congress and local legislatures, work to curb environmental degradation and depletion in Mexico.

If we don’t act, what a disaster we will inherit to our descendants!

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