Climate change and access to information

We are at a critical time due to climate change and Mexico, due to its geographical location, is particularly vulnerable to it.

There is only one planet Earth, that is all there is with the possibility of life continuing in this galaxy. According to World Bank figures for 2020, there are 7,753,000,000 million people in the world. All people, have the same needs for food, housing, health, transportation, basic infrastructure, work, among other things, education. Most of these basic requirements are affected by climate change, but they are especially the ones most at risk. Demand for health services and food.

There are more new diseases with bodies that are less resistant to fighting pathogens and parasites. Diseases go faster than the process of adaptation, which is why more superior medicines are needed to treat diseases as well as better health systems that have the latest medical technology and budget resistance to serve the entire population equally to serve the society. New health challenges.

There are those who believe that diseases are now being discovered by advances in medical science, early and so the percentages of some diseases are increasing. Perhaps it is worth clarifying this statement, since it is necessary to clarify that not all cases or all circumstances are the result of early detection. Other reasons are climate change, habitats changed. The result of a study published in June 2020, available on the website of the Autonomous University of Nuevo Leon, conducted by Dr. Roberto Mendoza Alfaro, researcher and professor at the Faculty of Biological Sciences, showed that climate change is real. A catalyst for emerging diseases, such as Ebola, Zika, Henipavirus, Nile virus, SARS, Lyme, and H1N1 influenza, among others. He points out that this is due to the fact that when ecosystems are affected, the ecological balance is broken, resulting in the pathogens and parasites responsible for emerging diseases not being controlled.

With regard to food, droughts, hurricanes and temperature extremes are becoming more frequent. This affects agriculture and livestock, where the food chain is necessarily compromised. The same researcher states in a different study published in October 2020 by UANL, that it will increase the rates of hunger and malnutrition by 20 percent by 2050. In addition, food prices by 2030 will be very expensive because they may rise between 50 and 90 percent percentage.

If immediate action is not taken for short, medium and long-term goals, and above all awareness of the shared responsibility of all sectors: industrial, public, private, social, consumers and producers, to stop and confront the increase in global temperatures, the outlook is very bleak.

It is necessary to repeat over and over with every human action that non-renewable natural resources, and even renewable ones, are finite. The latter are being exploited at a higher rate than they are being replenished, which is why they are also depleted. This leads to more pressure on the population, especially in matters of employment. Everything in nature is connected, but everything is also in the human chain. It is necessary to work for resources to obtain the remaining goods needed for survival, but the problem is that it is increasingly difficult to close the circle due to environmental conditions.

The next few decades determine the global situation in this regard. Mass migrations caused by environmental issues will do more damage to those regions of the world where the climate is more temperate, without the extremes of winter and summer temperatures.

What to do? The most important thing is to make visible and make all sectors of the problem visible, but above all it is necessary to have access to information and to create mechanisms for publicizing the situation in which one lives with objective data provided by scientists and experts.

Only with access to honest information can the damage from climate change be prevented, counteracted, reduced, mitigated, repaired, restored and compensated. We are in a time when it is not only necessary to protect and preserve the environment and various ecosystems, but to restore and repair them.

Mexico has, by law, a climate change information system, however, the information provided by their website is weak and basic. He points to a few YouTube videos with information provided by two teenagers, who are not contributing anything new. The situation is terrible. Researchers and scientists are required to submit their research findings in citizen language on the Climate Change Information System website. And leave a section for Kids and Youth where teens who provide data on this site can communicate across generations. We must be very serious about providing information in this information system, because tackling the problem of global warming as humankind will be one of the biggest challenges for the rest of the twenty-first century.

Likewise, it is necessary to have information available to the general public about net ecological domestic product, an indicator that quantifies the cost of “environmental pollution and natural resource depletion caused by economic activities”. The body responsible, along with Inegi, for providing this information is the National Institute for the Environment and Climate Change. However, rather than repeating the definition or, in Inegi’s case, giving figures for the environmental net product, it is more convenient to explain the figures and update them up to 2021 and have no statistical bias.

This is especially important if what is required is to educate the different sectors about the issue of global warming and the deep crisis in which the world finds itself.

For all of the above, even when it is alarming for the population to receive information of this kind, getting enough information is more important than predicting the environmental situation in which we find ourselves and only experiencing natural events such as recent floods, hurricanes, and droughts in Germany and Belgium. , tsunamis, landslides, and inexplicable eruptions, such as the one that occurred in Puebla in Mexico, without knowing their cause or what is happening.

Access to scientific information in the language of everyday life is in addition to a right enshrined in the Constitution, which is also found in the Common Law on Climate Change and its equivalent in each of the federal entities. Thus, information is essential for taking action to mitigate and adapt to climate change. In addition to publishing studies and research aimed at identifying the species of the animal and plant kingdom that are at risk of extinction, and taking action on the so-called priority population groups for conservation. With enough information, advertisements called critical habitats and refuge areas will be promoted. Titanic’s efforts must be made to mitigate climate change and try to preserve the largest number of ecosystems and life on the planet.

It is known that the planet cannot be allowed to increase its temperature to more than two degrees Celsius because it would be disastrous for different types of the animal and plant kingdom, including humans. This goal has already been codified, among other things, in the 2015 Paris Agreement and the General Law on Climate Change. The latter states that “the rules must be created so that Mexico contributes to the fulfillment of the Paris Agreement, among its objectives of which is to keep the increase in the average global temperature below 2 °C, with respect to pre-industrial levels, and to continue efforts to reduce this The increase in temperature to 1.5°C, in relation to pre-industrial levels.”

Just as all sectors are jointly responsible for the way in which climate change must be investigated, mitigated and adapted, so too are all nations.

Developed countries with high per capita incomes are morally obligated to help mitigate the effects of global warming on the lands of poorer countries. And if this is not out of moral obligation, they should help the least developed countries to avoid the unprecedented mass migration that is being warned of its occurrence in the coming decades. Developed countries are causing most of the global warming. Indeed, according to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change, it states in the preamble that:[t]Noting that most of the world’s greenhouse gas emissions, both historically and at present, originated in developed countries, that per capita emissions in developing countries remain relatively low, and that the proportion of total emissions originating in these countries will increase to enable them to . meet their social and development needs.” In this sense, they are also obligated to help those who can no longer yet achieve economic growth because they are constrained by climate change. It will not be possible to stop mass migration in different parts of the world, so it must be brought under control before it is too late. For the world to be a livable place and not an inhospitable place where people say “Save yourselves who can.” The Framework Convention is very clear in recognizing that “the global nature of climate change requires the greatest possible cooperation from all countries and their participation in an effective and appropriate international response, in accordance with to their common but differentiated responsibilities, their respective capabilities and their social characteristics. and economic conditions.” All countries are involved in this problem and must address it in a coordinated manner.