Advance science and renewable energies necessary to confront climate change

Seriously protecting the environment, moving from fossil fuels to renewable energies, investing in basic and applied sciences, as well as progress in adapting to the transformations caused by climate change, are public policies that the state must implement to confront a problem. global, with researchers from UNAM warned of important repercussions on a local scale.

The inaction scenario could drastically reduce our country’s agricultural production capacity, with yields dropping from five to 20 percent in the next two decades, and as high as 80 percent by the end of the century for some crops and states. Project Climate Change Research Program Coordinator (PINCC), Francisco Estrada Burua.

A researcher at UNAM’s Institute for Atmospheric Sciences and Climate Change (ICACC) also warned that flood risks in the national territory are high and will increase dramatically.

Currently, the projected annual damages in Mexico from river flooding are $7 billion and coastal flooding is $130 million. He said that Tamaulipas, Veracruz and San Luis Potosi will have the highest levels of risk due to flooding of the rivers, as well as the center of the country.”

During the teleconference “Conclusions and Agreements from COP 26, What After Eliminating Climate Change?” , researcher at the Institute of Engineering (II), Ruth Cerezo Motta, considered that the Glasgow meeting had positive and negative aspects, such as progress in the Paris Agreement rulebook that was not achieved in previous events, despite the limitations in mitigation and the mechanism of loss and damage, which is the reform of Before the countries that historically pollute the most towards the countries that did the least. .

Cerezo Motta noted that talks on deforestation and the environment, signed by 103 countries, have been supported, and therefore improvements in the sector are expected.

The specialist acknowledged that voluntary and non-mandatory actions still prevailed in the agreements, which could affect their compliance.

Among the positive agreements he highlighted are two: Burning coal around the world, where COP 26 committed to phasing out the use of this fossil fuel and reducing methane consumption by 30 percent by 2050.

“There has been no progress in terms of mitigation, they have been very short and in the end the negotiations have been very strong. It is part of climate justice, the debt that some countries have in terms of pollution.”

Estrada Borua insisted that the effects of this phenomenon on our country are numerous. It is not an acute problem, but it is long-lasting and growing; We will do significant damage to agricultural capacity, the potential for new diseases to emerge, through zoonoses, the arrival of vector (mosquito-borne) diseases into places where they have not been before, and we will have a serious problem in labor productivity by overcoming certain levels of labor, he explained. warming;

The expert highlighted UNAM’s work on this issue, whereby PINCC provides free access software to create models and future scenarios for climate change, contributing to the generation of knowledge and awareness of the problem. They can be consulted at: https://www.pincc.unam.mx

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