▲ Former holders of the organization claim for the defense of the right to a healthy environment.Photo Cristina Rodriguez
Angelica Enciso L.
Newspaper La Jornada
Sunday, February 6, 2022, p. 9
Former presidents of the National Institute of Ecology and Climate Change (Inecc) called on legislators to avoid legal changes for their disappearance and on society to defend the environmental institutions that have been developed for decades; They also pointed out that the federal government cannot separate the right to a healthy environment from social justice, although it considers it an obstacle to development.
Legislators and society in general must be made to see that environmental deterioration cannot continue, since the viability of the country in the long term is called into question, said Exequiel Ezcurra, who was head of the institute during the six-year term of Vicente Fox. and is now an academic at the University of California at Riverside, during the virtual forum Disappear the Inecc
, convened by the UNAM University Seminar on Society, Environment and Institutions.
The General Law on Climate Change establishes the creation of the Inecc, so it must be modified to eliminate it and it is in the hands of legislators to maintain it, said Julia Carabias, Secretary of the Environment in the six-year term of Ernesto Zedillo, who was previously head of the Institute. You have to bet that the Chamber of Deputies does not accept his disappearance
.
He argued that, if the Inecc disappeared, the dismantling of Mexican intelligence on the matter would take place. It has been part of a citizen effort that began in the seventies, continues prevailing the economic agenda, economic growth over the environmental agenda, is a neoliberal trait and is done by the federal government
, he pointed.
Adrián Fernández, who worked for 17 years at the institute and later became its president, referred to the fact that it is going through the worst moment in history for the environmental institutions of the country, not only with the fall in the budget, but also the reduction of environmental capacities and the number of high-level positions occupied by people without knowledge of their areas
. Given this, he called on the academic and environmental communities to reflect.
For his part, Guillemo Haro, head of Profepa for the past six years, recalled that from 2015 to date the budget has fallen by more than 60 percent, so the weakening is not new. The Inecc is essential to make decisions with the best available science, it is urgent to change the path to strengthen and not dismantle environmental institutions, which were the effort of many generations, he pointed out.
