Papers
Here you can consult the most outstanding academic publications of our team members and IRCG strategic collaborators
Dryland Degradation and Expansion: Implications for Mexican Policies from the Earth System Perspective.
López Porras, G. (2021)
Current dryland degradation and expansion trends are predicted to result in large-scale migration, growing poverty and famine, and increasing climate change, land degradation, conflicts, and water scarcity. To stop this situation, we need environmental and climate policies drawn from the fact that the Earth is more than just a planet: it is a complex-adaptive system. In this piece, our Managing Director discusses how “Earth system” policies should be integrated into Mexican efforts combating desertification.
Public Participation and the Escazú Agreement: Implementation Challenges for Vulnerable Groups Amid a Global Pandemic.
Ciesielczuk and López Porras, (2021)
The Latin America and Caribbean region are facing great challenges in the protection of environmental rights, especially on the “access rights” which consists of the right of access to environmental information, the right of public participation in the environmental decision-making process, and the right of access to justice in environmental matters. These challenges are highlighted through the high rates of the death of environmental activists or the increasing marginalization and poverty of indigenous peoples. Now that the Escazú Agreement has entered into force, Latin American and Caribbean countries need to create a suitable institutional setting to protect access rights. Here, Gabriel López, our Managing Director, discusses the implications of such legal and policy endeavors.
Guiding Environmental Law’s Transformation into Earth System Law Through the Telecoupling Framework.
Du Toit, López Porras and Kotzé, (2021)
To adequately respond to the socio-ecological challenges of the Anthropocene, we need to imagine new and more ecologically effective legal responses. One of the most outstanding regulatory challenges posed in the Anthropocene, consist of the need for limiting distant socioeconomic interaction, such as trade agreements and neo-extractive activities, according to the (mainly unforeseen) destabilizing effects over the intangible processes and cycles that maintain the Earth in a well-functioning state. Here, Gabriel López, our Managing Director co-authors this piece where he discusses these regulatory challenges using Mexico and NAFTA as a case study.
Lessons learned from a constitutional controversy on the Mexican
water management.
López Porras and Ciesielczuk, (2021)
Between March and May 2020, fourteen municipalities in Chihuahua, Mexico, initiated a jurisdictional process called 'constitutional controversy' at Mexico's Supreme Court of Justice, against the Congress, the President, the Commander of the National Guard, and the National Water Commission. These municipalities sued for the unconstitutionality of the Federal Government's actions regarding the water extraction in the "La Boquilla" dam, in the light of water legislation unsuitable to foster public participation in water management. In this piece, Gabriel López, our Managing Director, discusses some of the main problems in Mexican water laws' structure to understand why those laws are hardly complied with and weakly enforced. Moreover, he analyzes the potential of stakeholder engagement and local water policies for strengthening the rule of law.