Mexico Underlines Transformation in Global Climate Change Debate Alejandro Encinas - Inter Press Service
go to original June 11, 2014

Alejandro Encinas (IPS)

In this column, Alejandro Encinas, Senator in the Mexican Congress and International Vice President for the Americas of the Global Legislators Organization (GLOBE), looks at the progress on climate change now being made worldwide.

It is now two years since Mexico passed the General Law on Climate Change, a landmark piece of national environmental legislation.

This was a truly significant move and came at a time when the country had also just approved a far-reaching REDD+ law that has set the benchmark for international best practice on tackling deforestation and forest degradation.

Passage of Mexico’s far-reaching climate law (which was supported, significantly, on a cross-party basis) highlights the progress on climate change now being made globally. Numerous national economies have passed landmark climate and energy-related legislation over the last few years.

These countries are advancing laws at a pace that contrasts sharply with the U.N.-brokered climate change talks that formally convene again in Peru in November.

This trend comes at a time of pivotal change in international relations with a period of economic downturn in recent years in the West being counterpoised with the increasingly rapid shift of power to some emerging economies.

Mirroring this is a fundamental repositioning of the center of gravity of the global climate change debate towards domestic climate change legislation. This is nothing less than game changing.
“Until now, it [the political debate on climate change] has been largely framed by the narrative of sharing a global burden – with governments, naturally, trying to minimize their share” – Alejandro Encinas

In the last two years, there has been substantive legislative progress right across the developing world.

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