Notes 1. This paper is based on a study prepared by teams at El Colegio de Mexico and the Universidad Nacional Autonoma de Mexico (UNAM). A first version was presented as a power point in “Population Dynamics and Climate Change II: Building for Adaptation”, organized by UNFPA, IIED, CEDUA/El Colegio de México, El Colegio de Mexico, 13-15 2010. Authors of the original study were Boris Graizbord, Jaime Ramirez, Emelina Nava and Raul Lemus of El Colegio de Mexico, Victor Magaña, Luis Galvan and Carolina Neri of UNAM, Rafael Gonzalez Franco, consultant, and Cuauhtemoc León, coordinator. It is the product of the first phase of an international research project examining megacities in Asia and Latin America, including the Mexico City Metropolitan Area (MCMA). The purposes of this project were to model climate variability risk and provide city governments with guidelines for the design and implementation of climate change adaptation strategies. (See: “Annex 6: Mexico City Case Study” in Baker, 2012, pp. 217-233.) 2. The author would like to thank José Luis González, Omar López and Raúl Lemus for their help in updating the maps and tables, Diana Graizbord for reviewing the English version and the editors for suggesting numerous changes and revisions. 3. See: “Prologue” in Galindo, 2009, p. 7. 4. From 2000 to 2006 and 2007 to 2012. 5. In most of the existing literature, a metropolitan zone includes municipalities that are integrated in functionaleconomic terms to the core area (the original city). However, this chapter defines the Mexican metropolis as a physically continuous urbanized area, including the core area (i.e., the Federal District), all 16 delegaciones (i.e., boroughs) of the city and adjacent communities and municipalities in the State of Mexico. 6. Half of the Federal District (the southern part) is considered a “conservation area” and suffers from illegal, piecemeal settlement, which might be negligible in quantitative terms but is very critical qualitatively in environmental health, as well as in terms of mobilizing people for adaptation purposes. 7. An ejido is an area of communal land used for agriculture on which community members (ejidatarios) individually occupy and farm a specific parcel. The ejido system was introduced as an important component of the land reform programme when Lázaro Cárdenas became president in 1934. An ejido would be established and the original petitioners (landless farmers) would be designated as ejidatarios with certain cultivation/use rights. Ejidatarios did not actually own the land, but they were allowed to use their allotted parcels indefinitely as long as they did not fail to use the land for more than two years. They could even pass their rights on to their children. (See website: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ejido, accessed 10 June 2012.) As a result of the legislative reform in 1992 of Article 27 of the Mexican Constitution, the new mechanisms under which ejido land may be disestablished in order to prevent irregular urban growth (mainly by an informal alienation process) have been unsuccessful (Olivera, 2005). There are two main reasons for these results. According to Olivera, ejidatarios still do not have the complete autonomy to control their own land as federal and state governments still maintain several options to modify the ejidatarios’ decisions, and planning agencies and municipal governments frequently have a limited administrative and financial capacity to exercise effective authority over land development processes. 8. In operational terms relevant to planning, short-term adaptation refers to “behavioral modifications in response to changed or changing conditions”, while long-term involves “changes in structure, morphology (e.g., urban sprawl vs compact city growth), or physiology of populations that enhance their ability to survive and reproduce in the prevailing environmental conditions” (Dunster and Dunster, 1996, p. 6). 9. Área Geo-estadística Básica or AGEB: INEGI’s statistical geographic unit for census data. 10. Variables used in the cluster exercise were: population 18+ with only primary school; women 65+; recent immigrants; female-headed households; workers with less than US$2/day salaries; dwellings with precarious materials in walls and roofs; with no water and sanitation; without refrigerators; and privately owned. 11. Not all hazards are “natural”. Hazards can refer to an “object, condition, or (natural and/or human) process that threatens individuals and society in terms of production or reproduction” (Robbins et al., 2010, p. 81). 12. Gender blindness is the lack of consideration of risk due to gender in climate change analyses and the exclusion of women in decision-making on climate change. Gender blindness exacerbates gender inequality and poverty in general and becomes a barrier to success in response to climate change (Otzelberger 2011, pp. 4-5). 13. The highest numbers of victims from the 2004 tsunami in Asia were women and children. Recurrent flooding in Bangladesh results in women’s death rates that are five times higher than men’s. These results are due to discrepancies in their social roles and are clearly related to women’s limited access to information compared to men, who receive information through their jobs and in public spaces (Neumayer and Plümper, 2007).
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