ENVIRONMENT: Mexico suffering drought and flood By Henry Tricks
There was a cruel irony barely noticed during the flooding tragedy in Mexico last week. While the south-east of the country was swamped by torrential rainstorms and mudslides, just 400 miles away one state was declared a disaster area because of drought.
It is a phenomenon that threatens to become more common in a country where nature's bounty is distributed about as unevenly as wealth. For though Mexico is one of the world's 13 wettest countries, water is scarce in most parts and is frittered away by misuse.
According to Julia Carabias, environment minister, a combination of global warming caused by greenhouse gases in the industrial world and rampant urbanisation and deforestation in developing countries means floods and droughts are increasing.
So far, at least 369 Mexicans have died in this month's rains, and more than 330,000 have abandoned their homes to mudslides and lethal torrents. A hurricane last year killed 180 in Chiapas, and the year before almost the same amount died as a storm hit Acapulco, the once plush Pacific resort.
Droughts, meanwhile, have parched the north of the country with increasing intensity, devastating livestock and crops. Last week the government declared the central state of Zacatecas an agricultural emergency because of the lack of rain.
"Regrettably, the first thing we have to recognise is that these episodes will happen again. We can't just fold our arms while things recover, we have to be quicker on prevention," says Ms Carabias.
Her principal response is to attack deforestation. The heavy rain dumped on the lush south-eastern state of Tabasco would have gone unnoticed 50 years ago, she says, before trees were chopped down to make way for grazing land. Now, she says, Mexico needs to triple in 10 years the 30m hectares of forest already under government protection.
Replanting forests is an option the private sector is eyeing with interest. Adolfo Aguilar Zinzer, a senator, says he has tapped top industrialists for an unprecedented study on the impact of deforestation on Mexico's water supply. He expects a boom in commercial forestry to follow.
But while environmentalists look to nature for solutions to Mexico's water woes, efforts on a more human scale have been sorely lacking.
As is typical in the developing world, this month's deluges hit Mexico's poorest, who are least likely to benefit from proper drainage, safe housing and urban planning. The victims lived in ramshackle shanties along riverbeds or perched on barren hillsides.
About 100 people were buried under an avalanche of mud in one town, Teziutlan. Many had flocked there for jobs in local textile factories, but authorities had barely spared a thought for the precarious zones where they built their homes.
In areas where water is in short supply, the negligence may not be as life-threatening, but it is becoming critical. Eighty per cent of Mexico's 100m population live in areas that receive only 20 per cent of the country's rainfall. Its six largest cities are located in zones where water is scarce.
That includes the capital, Mexico City, which, as its 20m residents drain the aquifer dry, is visibly sinking. Officials say one day it could conceivably crush the 7,500 miles of leaky water mains in its bowels.
Some 80 per cent of Mexico's water, excluding hydroelectric plants, is used in agricultural irrigation, and farmers are the most heavily subsidised beneficiaries in the country. According to Mexico's 1995-2000 hydraulic plan, about a third of the water used in irrigation is wasted through leakage and evaporation.
That enrages Ms Carabias. On Monday, she visited Aguascalientes, one of the driest states, and saw farmers sprinkling alfalfa crops - which require enormous amounts of water - in the midday heat amid billowing clouds of evaporation. "It was absolutely maddening," she says.
The northern industrial heartland around Monterrey, another parched city, is home to some of Mexico's most water-guzzling factories, such as beer, soft drinks and steel. Experts at the Monterrey Tech university say constraints on water supply are belatedly spurring a shift into higher-tech products such as computer software.
For the population at large, domestic use of water amounts to about 15 per cent of that used in irrigation, but waste is also endemic and some 15m still lacked drinking water in 1995, while 30m had no drainage.
In 1994, the previous government introduced new laws aimed at giving the private sector more scope to take part in water services. It also sought to put an economic value on water for users. Almost six years later, the average charge for household water is a paltry 1.3 pesos per cubic meter, whereas the cost to water authorities is 2.5 pesos, according to Ms Carabias.
Payment of water rates charges is sporadic. Senator Aguilar Zinzer says Mexico's bottled water industry reaps more each year than the government's entire water revenues.
Private water companies have also been left twiddling their thumbs after an enthusiastic entry in 1994, because state and municipal laws prevent them working with local water authorities, and because some lost fortunes during the 1994 peso crisis. With insufficient water revenues, funds to build waste water treatment plants have been available only when the cash-strapped state development bank, Banobras, steps in to provide co-financing.
Alain Biche, the French chief executive of Asim, a joint venture between France's Lyonnaise des Eaux and BAL of Mexico, says Mexico is trailing most of Latin America in its use of the private sector in water management because of the fear of a political backlash if prices go up.
"The political will is just not there to do anything about it. Ultimately, people have to stop thinking of water as a political tool," he says.