Sustainable Resource Management: Lessons from Canada for Mexico?

“Doctora!”

It was a shout from one of the men picking up people from the hotel to take them to the conference. I’d come out of the hotel and was quite sure no one else was around. He must be talking to me. Dressed in a black skirt and black jacket I might have looked the part of a professor, but in reality I was still adjusting to my new moniker as “Master.” Rather than correcting him, I just replied and let him keep his impression that I had a doctorate. I was still unsure how I was going to pull off the role of distinguished visitor, here to contribute to this conference on Environmental Governance: Lessons for Canada in Mexico, given that I was neither Canadian nor particularly distinguished. But they had invited me here so I was going to assume that I had something to contribute, and with that confidence hopefully be able to.

At the University of Veracruz conference room at least 200 chairs were set up facing the front of the room. Behind the table was a large white banner with the conference logo on it: a map of Canada, and, appropriately positioned below it, a map of Mexico, but just empty space where the United States should be and a symbol of water field and forest. The blatant absence of representation of my home country seemed a poke at US arrogance, and a reflection of anti-US sentiment likely kindled recently by one of our states’ heightened immigration laws. But such things shouldn’t prohibit intercultural learning in an academic setting such as this. Even on the first day of the conference I wasn’t quite sure why the conference just involved Canada and Mexico.

The answer was presented to me later. An academic organization formed about the time of the signing of NAFTA, to promote understanding between countries to facilitate trade. It since evolved to include all types of knowledge transfer between the two countries. Gradually, the environment became one of those subjects.

The conference started with a presentation by the Canadian Ambassador in Mexico. He was introduced as “El Excelentisimo Embajador” which caused me and my seat-mate to giggle. The ambassador talked of all the great environmental treaties Canada had signed, and of the great trade relations with Mexico. I didn’t hear him talk of environmental “lessons” for Mexico, or how Canada was going to help Mexico in improving environmental governance. Maybe he could have gotten some ideas on such things had he stayed for the conference, but he left right after his speech, followed by clicking cameras and anxious journalists with video-recorders.

As the conference progressed people told their stories. Complaints and raves. Some about successes and failures in getting environmental protection projects off the ground, some about the nature of the problems themselves. As for particularly “Canadian” experiences that might be worth learning from, the main talking point was around a presentation by the only other non-Mexican at the conference, Barbara, from the Grand River Watershed in Ontario.

They’d had about 70 years of watershed protection to learn from, and dozens of success stories in restoration, education etc. But could any place in Mexico repeat this experience? At a basic level, the government structures are quite different. Mexico has a very centralized government with laws radiating from Mexico City, whereas Canada’s laws and government are dominant at the Provincial level. Most of Canada’s land are State owned and lightly populated, where as in Mexico lands are mostly privately held by a few landowners.

As conversations progressed, more key differences were revealed. One audience member asked “but how do you deal with corruption?” Barbara’s response, “well, that’s not really an issue for us.” The basic building blocks of governance, having a functioning government structure, are still fissured in Mexico. What good does money for projects do if it disappears into the pockets of leaders? What good are laws if no one enforces them?

The strongest alternative proposed, repeated many times on the third day of the conference, was smaller, community-based projects. But even there corruption can bring down a project if the wrong people get ahold of money or direction of projects. “It’s just that we don’t have a culture of participation” said one conference-goer.

I recalled my field trips to indigenous communities in Oaxaca, with their mandatory “tequeo” or community service. Lands in those villages were still held communally. The mayors and treasures rotated their term of service. The presence of these systems shows that even in impoverished regions communities can get organized to implement good works. But in most of Mexico, where land is held privately by a few owners this tie between people, land, and each other has been severed. With seemingly insurmountable challenges from local-scale to national-scale, it might seem that nothing can work.

Yet here we were, over 100 people, talking about environment, governance, and change. Barbara’s observation of everyone’s passion about the subject – despite the fact that she didn’t understand a word of Spanish - was right on. These people care about their communities and environment, and are surely on their way to implementing change.

As I talked with people one on one after my presentation I started worrying less and less about being a “distinguished” visitor. They’d had that in the “Excelentismo” ambassador. What this conference was about was making connections, one by one. I found myself talking about not just my presentation theme of ecosystem services, but my experiences in Costa Rica, my memories of Oaxaca, things happening in B.C. and even on Guemes Island. I referred people to other students in my program doing work they might find interesting. I tried to emphasize that things aren’t perfect in Canada (or the U.S.!) and we face similar challenges in terms of getting people to care about the environment, and to work together to protect it. The networks formed through events such as this conference serve to transmit ideas, but more importantly, lend support for the work of individuals in their own communities.

At the end of the conference a student commented: “This was a good conference, we had visitors from Canada here to share ideas, showing outside interest in what is happening here. But we need to invite more students, more politicians, people from more countries. We need to make this a wider conversation.” And hopefully it shall be.