POVERTY AND CLIMATE CHANGE

"Hoy comparto parte de la experiencia  de México en la lucha contra el Cambio Climático, el articulo lo escribió una compañera de UC Berkeley exclusivamente para el Blog.." 

By Ana Herrera.

I received formal training in economics at the Economics Faculty of the National Autonomous University of Mexico (UNAM). I have worked on Poverty and Climate Change issues for 5 years at the Economics Research Institute as a research assistant. I became a research assistant when I was a bachelor student. At the beginning, I worked only in macroeconomics and statistics issues. However, I gradually became interested in environmental and poverty issues and the impacts that climate change has on the most vulnerable people. Specifically, I have worked through the use of household data base of Mexico with a combination of spatial data. Over the last years I have been working with an NGO in Oaxaca State (Mexico). This has been a wonderful experience in my career, where I have closely collaborated with some indigenous communities. Recently, I was part of the work group for Developing a Mexican Norm Draft Project for the Certification of Carbon Forestry Projects in Mexico. Also, I participated in the work group for Mexican Climate Change Report.

My current work is related to some communities in Oaxaca. We have been working on a proposal in order to get funds for our initiative. The main objective of this project is to get a better organization among the local stakeholders in the area. Communities in the area have already done activities related with the mitigation and adaptation of climate change. Nowadays they have a good management of the forest, and they have developed good ecological practices in their land. Over this time, the understanding of social organization among environmental activities made me think about the importance of the participation of local communities in all the activities related with the mitigation and adaptation of climate change. At the same time, it made me conscious about the importance of studying the effects that climate change produces in human life.

Based on my experience I really believe that it is necessary that everybody should be involved into mitigation and adaptation climate change actions. We need collaborative actions because climate change needs an interdisciplinary vision to combine natural, economic and social sciences. At the same time, I believe that is necessary strengthen capacity building in young people, more specifically in children. On the other hand, it is important changing some roles of women into the society, we should involve them in the environmental actions and making decision. I have understood that one of the most important element to combat the social, economic and environmental problems is the social collaboration so I would like to see this in a near future.