International Cooperation for the development and sustainable management of water in Mexico City

Water is one of the essential natural resources both for the healthy life of ecosystems and for humanity. Historically it has been a resource that has determined how and where the human being has been able to inhabit as a civilization. However, the amount of potable water on earth is limited and its quality has been constantly under pressure and exploitation thanks to environmental changes within the Anthropocene in the 21st century.

Mexico City, despite having more rainy days than London, suffers from shortages comparable to those in a desert, making each liter of drinking water extremely expensive and with no guarantee of quality. The international press has even cataloged it, since 2018, as the 9th city at risk of running out of water.[1] The causes lie in the geographical area of difficult access to the resource, the population density; the economic activities that are developed; the delays in replacing networks, waste of rainwater, piped water leaks and overexploitation of aquifers.[2]

The United Nations Report on the Development of Water Resources (2019)* estimates that renewable water resources for the whole world average or average 7,453 m³ per person[3], however, the demand for its industrial use in urban areas in countries with economic growth has grown over domestic use, which represents 12% in Latin America against 19%. These figures are higher in those cities where large demographic areas are supplied, such as the Valley of Mexico, whose water consumption is 60% urban.[4]

More than 25% of the water in the Valley of Mexico is economically inefficient, which leads to the depletion of the aquifer, costly soil sedimentation in many areas of the city, as well as the need to bring water from other hydrographic basins[5]. In social terms, there is social inequity in the distribution and access to the service, since the coverage indicators do not contemplate that the population with fewer resources and located in more vulnerable areas receive a service of lower quality and quantity of water.

Article 4 of the Political Constitution of the United Mexican States establishes that the State has the obligation to provide water and sanitation services to the entire population since it is a human right and designates municipalities in article 115 the attribution of distribution to provide this service[6].

However, the water policy based on a growing extraction from external sources to meet the needs of society has reached its limit, so it is urgent to reflect on its unbalanced and unequal management. The problem in this city, then, is not only scarcity but also the inefficient, inequitable and uncoordinated government management of the resource, since each institution empowered to urban water management operates in a disjointed manner due to the natural geographical positions of each water basin, which crosses entities and each one watches over its particular interests.

The inhabitants of the municipalities of Tlalpan and Iztapalapa store pipe water as they do not have 24/7 availability.

On the other hand, there is no transversal vision of sustainability as stipulated in the Brundtland Report, from 1987, that is, where there is awareness that “the available water is not all that we are capable of capturing or extracting; the available water is only what we can extract without deteriorating the state of the ecosystems and aquifers”[7]. The complexity of this management requires a huge coordination effort between social and governmental, scientific and technical actors. It is here, where new forms or dynamics of cooperation between actors are required that serve as a kind of amalgam to bring together all these elements in a coherent way.

The Mexican International Cooperation and the water sector

In the foreign policy agendas, problems related to the environment and cities rarely have resonance, however, with the adoption of the 2030 Agenda and the New Urban Agenda of the UN-Habitat III[8] as a frame of reference, it has led our officials to opt for a more transversal and broad vision of this type of problem that directly impacts the development of the Mexican people. So, what can the Mexican International Development Cooperation (CID) do to help solve this problem in Mexico City?

The institutional actor that executes the CID policy in Mexico is the Mexican Agency for International Development Cooperation (AMEXCID) dependent on the Ministry of Foreign Affairs [9] which in terms of water policy has formalized, in 2016, together with the National Water Commission, the body dedicated to this policy in the country, a Technical Council dedicated to promoting cooperation actions in regions such as Mesoamerica, South America and Africa.[10]

The Technical Water Council allows feedback on cooperation actions between AMEXCID, the Mexican water sector and other stakeholders.

This council represents a great advance for the CID in the water sector and especially for the local governments of the cities, since it allows their involvement in dialogue and project proposals. In terms of CID, Mexican local governments have the difficulty of exercising a greater role in activities related to international cooperation due to the legal framework that governs this policy.

However, there are certain laws that give them attributions in the matter: the Law on the celebration of treaties that gives it the power to carry out "Inter-institutional Agreements" that covers decentralized government agencies and agencies, including states and municipalities or the Organic Law of the federal public administration that attributes to the SRE to coordinate foreign policy actions that enhance the entities of the federal public administration.[11]

In this sense, the fact that Mexican municipalities can bring these global issues into their local international relations agendas between cities and municipalities has taken great interest and work in this regard. Currently, what happens in the cities of developing countries will design the paths of the future of the planet in terms of economic growth, reduction of poverty, inequality, demographic stabilization, environmental sustainability and the exercise of human rights.

Opportunities that the Mexican CID can take advantage of to improve sustainable water management

Comprehensive and sustainable water management largely depends on strengthening government institutional capacities, such as training, technological innovation, and charging fees at the local level. In the country's capital, the Mexico City Water System (SACMEX) is the ideal organization to carry out projects since it is the operator responsible for providing drinking water and sanitation services and the one that is closest to the problems of the resource: access to drinking water to guarantee basic sanitation, risks in the face of meteorological phenomena such as floods in urban and rural areas.

Mexico has strengthened and promoted bilateral ties with traditional CID players such as Germany, Spain, the United States, France, and Japan, and has offered South-South cooperation with Chile, Uruguay, and the African region. AMEXCID has a Technical Committee of Governments that has strengthened the relationship with subnational governments, however, in terms of water and sanitation, Mexico City has only carried out one project with the Metropolitan Regional Government of Santiago, Chile, Secretariat of the Environment of Mexico City (SEDEMA) with the project "Strategy for the Efficient Use of Water in the Metropolitan Region of Santiago de Chile and Mexico City".[12]

The Mixed Fund for Technical Cooperation between Mexico and Spain is a space of opportunity to finance projects related to the subject since Spain has a specific fund on the subject. SACMEX through AMEXCID could develop an alliance with the help of this fund to carry out training workshops and technological innovation of the supply network and reduction of water losses, since it is known that the city loses around 40% of water due to leaks in the pipes.[13] It is vital to make the supply more efficient in order to minimize losses during treatment, transport, storage and use.

In addition to renewing and innovating the monitoring and distribution system of our urban water network, the most important thing is the behavior of users regarding the use and care of the resource. The latter has to do with promoting a new culture of water towards citizens, a matter in which the City of Zaragoza in Spain is an expert, since it has achieved control of water consumption with the installation of water-saving devices and a data collection system connected to a geographic information system and a simulation model.[14]

Another opportunity is found in non-governmental actors. AMEXCID could promote, together with the General Directorate of Liaison with Civil Society Organizations of the SRE, promotion and coordination in the design of rainwater collection projects with non-governmental and private organizations, since these have a greater impact in reducing negative effects and increasing local availability of water.

In the Municipalities of Tlalpan and Iztapalapa, the Government of CDMX together with the NGO Isla Urbana, has installed, since 2009, drinking water systems to solve the problem of lack of access to drinking and quality water[15]. The designs, costs, benefits and limitations for a large scale could be a project that would be interesting to carry out in Mexico City with other Latin American cities to share technical experiences and obtain mutual benefits.

Isla Urbana Rainwater Harvesting Systems.

Final considerations

The sustainable management of water in Mexico City, although it has a technical-engineering component, it is essential that political and social, governmental and non-governmental actors become more involved with each other. Therefore, a strengthening of intergovernmental coordination is required, and a greater participation of society to demand a better provision of a better drinking water and sanitation service.

The priority issues that these actors must attack are: establishing affordable rates, renewing sewerage networks, developing alternatives for water supply and storage; decontaminate the aquifers and rivers that cross the city, to reduce the overexploitation of the aquifers.

The future of society is increasingly taking shape in the cities, therefore, our cities must be prepared to face the new global challenges. Increasing the use of instruments offered by AMEXCID under a local and urban development approach can be an innovative alternative to develop new methods and projects for a sustainable, sustainable and efficient management of water use, and thus the inhabitants of Mexico City stop suffering from the scarcity of this resource.