One of our readers asked us, “How can Mexicans pressure the federal government to follow the Paris Climate Agreement?” Yale Climate Connections contributor and journalist Tree Meinch, who lives in Mexico, answered this question for us. Here is their answer:
In terms of international treaties and cooperation, today’s climate goals and objectives are facing significant resistance in North America.
On his first day back in office on Jan. 20, 2025, U.S. President Donald Trump committed to withdraw the U.S. from the Paris Agreement once again, while the country was already falling short on its climate goals.
Mexico is also lagging behind in its international commitments to curb climate change. Officially speaking, “Critically Insufficient” is Mexico’s latest rating from Climate Action Tracker.
The independent science project assesses the commitments and progress of each country participating in the Paris Agreement, which is an international treaty to confront climate change as a global emergency. The central goal of this agreement is to reduce heat-trapping emissions from fossil fuels and other sources enough to limit the global rise in temperature to less than two degrees Celsius.
Within the past few years, Mexico’s federal policies and economy have moved in the opposite direction, favoring fossil fuel investments over renewable energy, sparking concern from climate advocates and some institutions.
In contrast, climate change is a growing concern among many Mexican citizens, meaning that many readers likely share the concern of the reader who asked this question.
A 2023 Yale survey with more than 1,700 Mexican participants revealed that 61% of respondents in the country think climate change will harm them personally a great deal. (Editor’s note: The survey was conducted by the Yale Program on Climate Change Communication, the publisher of this site.)
Even more Mexicans surveyed, 88% said climate change should be a very high or high government priority. By comparison, just 58% of U.S. respondents said it should be a very high or high government priority.
So how do everyday citizens create pressure for the government to act on this international issue?
Think small and local
Arguably, trying to move a national government to action is an oversized burden for any individual to carry. But that’s not the end of the story.
“I believe that if the pressure does not come from the international level, the federal government will do little,” said Rogelio O. Corona-Núñez, an atmospheric scientist at the Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México who specializes in climate change and communications.
On the brighter side, this potentially disheartening answer hardly means individuals are powerless. They just need to redirect their attention.
The key to climate resilience and sustainable solutions, according to Corona-Núñez and many climate-minded leaders across national borders, is to think smaller, act locally, and grow collectively.
“[We need to] start making changes locally. Start providing knowledge and training to the communities and to the general population,” Corona-Núñez said, speaking in Spanish.
When you do that effectively, it sparks visible, inspiring change that impacts the daily life of the individual and those nearby. As it spreads, it also carries the potential to influence federal and even international efforts.
The eco movement of Huatulco
Corona-Núñez points to the community of Huatulco in Oaxaca as a shining example of a local green movement sparking big change in Mexico.
Over the past 30 years, Huatulco has grown into a bastion of eco-minded travel and development on Mexico’s South Pacific coast. The tourism region encompasses more than 20 miles of coastline with nine scenic bays and a protected ecological reserve covering more than half the landmass.
As hotels and tourism infrastructure sprang up over the past three decades, the growth demonstrated a different approach to development. This now includes operating on a 100% clean-energy grid.
One of the leaders of the local sustainability movement, Lorenzo Alfaro Ocampo, said he moved from Cancun and Playa del Carmen to Huatulco after taking a vacation in the mid-1990s and falling in love with the pristine landscape.
Working in the hotel industry, he quickly committed himself to sustainability in Huatulco, dismayed by the excessive and invasive development he witnessed in the travel mecca of Cancun.
“My idea was: We have to keep this,” he said, noting that he had no background in sustainability at the time. “We have to find a way to ensure that Huatulco does not change – that it remains preserved.”
He said the seeds of this green movement were planted by a group of investors who advocated for a sustainable Huatulco before tourism took off in the 1990s. That grew into a formal investment council guiding tourism development.
“We are not thinking about whether the [federal] government complies or does not comply. We are thinking about what we can do,” Alfaro Ocampo said when asked about how to pressure the national government.
Building a green team
In 2005 Alfaro Ocampo co-founded Equipo Verde Huatulco, a nonprofit civil group that would oversee a long list of sustainable priorities across the community. This work helped secure the community’s first sustainability certificate from EarthCheck Environmental Management System. The global organization and advisory group provides consulting services and certifications for tourism destinations dedicated to sustainability.
Huatulco’s certification involved a community-wide carbon-neutral commitment, sustainability auditing, plus annual reporting of water and energy use, carbon emissions, waste disposal, and other ambitious environmental benchmarks.
The key to success, Alfaro Ocampo said, was to include people from all sectors of the community.
In 2015 Huatulco was named the first tourism community in the Americas and the second in the world to receive a platinum certification from EarthCheck, and it now claims the highest honor of master certification from the agency.
The movement quickly spread from hoteliers and small businesses to highway planning and the growth of the Bahías de Huatulco International Airport, which became the first EarthCheck-certified airport in Latin America.
Other Mexico destinations such as the city of Loreto in Baja California Sur and Sierra Gorda Biosphere Reserve have now replicated Huatulco’s model for sustainability and acquired their own sustainable certification. A city in Portugal invited the Equipo Verde Huatulco to share their story and model.
Corona-Núñez said the story of Huatulco demonstrates the power and reach that local individuals hold in Mexico when they coordinate through a nongovernment entity.
“After organizing with the hotels, they organized with the communities, then with the international airport. Afterward, since there was so much interest, the federal government wanted to implement the strategy they were using,” Corona-Núñez said. “Then the government integrated and adopted the methodologies and approaches of Huatulco to bring to other tourism destinations.”
Others pressing for federal action
When it comes to the Paris Agreement and Mexico’s commitment to reduce emissions, part of the problem is the lack of consequences or penalties for noncompliance, Corona-Núñez said.
One national nonprofit and civil organization, The Mexican Center for Environmental Law, or CEMDA, has dedicated itself since 1993 to defending the right to a healthy environment in Mexico. Its work has included filing climate cases against the federal government to ensure it upholds its commitments. The nongovernmental agency operates mostly on donations, and it welcomes contributions both big and small from individuals and larger organizations.
“From civil society, as CEMDA, we will continue to insist that, in order to achieve these [climate] objectives, Mexico must stop betting on fossil gas and stop investing in refineries and gas pipelines, since this goes against the aforementioned climate objectives,” Margarita Campuzano, director of communications at CEMDA, wrote in an email in Spanish to Yale Climate Connections.
On the individual level, advocating for a greener future can also look like voting for local, state, and federal political candidates who speak openly about climate resilience and present a track record that demonstrates this value.
While CEMDA did not offer specific advice for individuals seeking to pressure the federal government, Campuzano voiced some optimism about the administration that took office in the fall under President Claudia Sheinbaum, who contributed to reports from the U.N.’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change.
“For CEMDA, the profile of the president and the commitments that the secretaries responsible for environmental and climate issues have made publicly are a good sign that compliance with the Paris Agreement will be taken seriously,” Campuzano said.
Corona-Núñez voiced a more skeptical take on the federal will to deliver.
He shared multiple examples of national efforts – such as the widely controversial Tren Maya megaproject – that have been presented internationally as environmental or sustainable while the local impact might deliver opposite effects. In 2023, the federal government even revised its definition of “clean energy” to include certain technologies that remain more reliant on fossil fuels.
“Mexican politics is focused more than anything on filling out paperwork that simulates that things are being accomplished, but in reality, they aren’t being implemented,” he said.
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