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Natural hazards and economic stressors

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Natural Disasters, Foreign Trade and Agriculture in Mexico

Part of the book series: SpringerBriefs in Environmental Science ((BRIEFSENVIRONMENTAL))

Abstract

This chapter explains the mechanism by means of which natural disasters and some past economic policy decisions have turned into hazards in Mexico. Natural disasters occurrence is increasingly producing severe damages to the so-called traditional agriculture, highly exposed to climatic events due to its predominating rainfed cropping practices as well as its high marginalization conditions, which together tend to amplify the negative effects from hazards. In the frame of the economic reforms implemented from the middle of the eighties, trade liberalization has led some economic sectors to increase more remarkably their exposure to international markets. The negative impact of trade liberalization on rural livelihoods has been evidenced over the past two decades through price drops of agricultural grains, the main crop of subsistence farmers. It has undermined their incomes given their limitations to increase neither productivity nor cropping land, as well as their inability to re-orientate production.

No cabe duda que es preciso superar el liberalismo del siglo XIX.

ORTEGA Y GASSET, La rebelión de las masas

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Notes

  1. 1.

    It is analyzed in more detail in Chapter 4, which models it with coping- and adaptability-related variables.

  2. 2.

    More deeply analyzed in Chapter 5.

  3. 3.

    Over 1,000 fatal victims in Central America.

  4. 4.

    The Southeast of Mexico shares with Central America and Caribbean countries not only the above presented high hurricanes and earthquakes affectation, but also the fact that disaster-vulnerable population is highly poor. Affected population in Mexico are usually located in southeast states, which, like in Central American and Caribbean countries, are subsistence farmers without access to credit, low crop insurance coverage, and work small farms. However, most the times these countries are hit by the same hurricane, relative higher economic losses and calamities occur in Central America and the Caribbean compared to Mexico. It is so particularly due to differences in coping and adaptive capacity among them. It suggests the potential applicability of this thesis approach of vulnerability reduction to these other countries.

  5. 5.

    However, losses in Mexico compared to national GDP are equivalent to 0.002%, while in Guatemala it reached 3.5% of GDP.

  6. 6.

    As in the arid region of Monterrey in 1998 (CENAPRED 2001).

  7. 7.

    With data from La Red.

  8. 8.

    In geomorphologic terms, the Trans-Mexico Volcanic Belt defines the boundary between the North American Rocky Mountains-Sierra Madre Occidental system, and the Mesoamerican Sierra Madre del Sur- Sierra Madre de Chiapas.

  9. 9.

    In large cities –such as Puebla, Cuernavaca, and Mexico City, over 40 kilometers away from Popocatepetl-, the effects of an eruption are likely to be limited to falling volcanic ash.

  10. 10.

    This data basis has been created by Desinventar (DesenRedando, La Red 2004) by collecting reports from media, especially from three Newspapers for the Mexican case: El Universal, La Jornada, and Excelsior. Given that fact, data arising from Desinventar must to be carefully employed, since in detailed analysis some data may be incomplete, leading to either over- or underestimated losses due to its journalist nature. However, it is helpful to get general pictures of disasters. It also provides good approaches on magnitudes and disaster frequency. Amount of losses are still controversial, since they vary widely from observation to observation, and rarely coincide with other sources.

  11. 11.

    In fact, most of the increase in weather-related disasters may be linked to El Niño phenomena (Vatsa and Krimgold 2000: 131; CENAPRED 2001: 145)

  12. 12.

    Instituto Nacional de Estadistica, Geografia e Informatica (INEGI), Aguascalientes, Mexico.

  13. 13.

    Country assistance strategy of the World Bank Group for the Mexican United States (World Bank 2002).

  14. 14.

    Losses reached 9.3% of Chiapas GDP in 1998.

  15. 15.

    Experts on demography used to name this socio-economic distribution as The Bell of Income, due to its geographic shape: poor from south-west to the north, each time narrower; rich from north to south-east, each time wider; and a mixture of middle, high and low income in the middle.

  16. 16.

    15.6 million people live alone in Distrito Federal, plus 5.1 in neighbour municipalities, which have been integrated into the metropolis. Sources: World Resources Institute 1996-1997: The urban environmental (New York: Oxford University Press) tab. 1.1; United Nations, World Urbanization Prospects. See Appendix B for income distribution.

  17. 17.

    A frequent questioning of globalization is about its innovation. Helleiner (1997) considers globalization to be not only a phenomenon of the modern age, but placed in the context of a secular trend of world historical development. So, one can find similar globalization patterns connecting the second half of the 19th century (Victorian era of the English empire, la belle epoche in France), with the Spanish colonialism in the centuries 17th and 18th (i.e. Galeon Manila-Acapulco-Cadiz) and even with the ancient Silk Route.

  18. 18.

    A conventionally admitted aspect of globalization is its growing magnitude or intensity of global flows such that states and societies become increasingly inserted in world systems and in networks of interaction based on continuously improving communications facilities.

  19. 19.

    In terms of flows of people (legal and illegal), the trend is very similar too. Unlike some negligible programs on temporary work, Mexico has not signed trans-boundary labor agreements with the USA, and despite that fact, over 90% of international emigration goes to that country.

  20. 20.

    Quiroz (2002) reckons that 60% of foreign direct investment in Mexico arose from the USA in 1995 –the rest from Germany (5%), Japan (4.5%), etc. There is widespread criticism of the fact that most FDI in Mexico is comprised of investments of multinational companies in their existing branches in Mexico, rather than of new business implementation and incorporating new economic agents to the benefits of foreign trade (Dussel 2000). In addition, capital and exports concentration in very few hands is taking place following trade liberalization in this country (Saldaña-Zorrilla 2003).

  21. 21.

    Trade triangulation is considered a kind of documented smuggling, since it consists of importing merchandise from a non-NAFTA country, but presenting false purchase bills from a NAFTA area country in order to get the tariff exemption agreed in NAFTA.

  22. 22.

    More detailed discussion in Chapter 4 of this work

  23. 23.

    Subsistema de Informacion Agricola, Ministry of Agriculture.

  24. 24.

    Obtained by multiplying weighted production prices ($/ton) by weighted agricultural yield (ton/ha).

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  1. Risk, Policy and Vulnerability Program, International Institute for Applied Systems Analysis (IIASA), Laxenburg, Austria

    Sergio O. Saldaña-Zorrilla (Research Scholar)

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Saldaña-Zorrilla, S.O. (2015). Natural hazards and economic stressors. In: Natural Disasters, Foreign Trade and Agriculture in Mexico. SpringerBriefs in Environmental Science. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-17359-7_3

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