What was the purpose of the discounts, agreements, meetings and new policies to address the environmental crisis that was experienced in Mexico City in 2016? Apparently none. A year after, the situation being registered is similar to that of March and May of last year.
The environmental contingencies that have taken place in the last 10 days occur in spite of the fact that a year ago there were agreements by the Federal, Mexico City and State of Mexico governments, mainly, to adopt measures that would contribute to reducing the problems of contamination in the so-called Megalopolis.
Out of the 14 measures issued by the Ministry of Environment and Natural Resources to improve air quality conditions in the Valley of Mexico, only six of them, or half, have been implemented.
The one that has advanced more, according to a registry published by EL UNIVERSAL, is the Emergent Norm of Vehicular Verification, that was adopted with the argument that, before that measure, 1.7 million cars had obtained, in a "wrongful" way, the hologram 0 - which allowed them to circulate every day - and stopped having restrictive holograms 1 or 2.
The hardening of the pollutant emission measurement - which started with delay and confusion - caused that, in the first month, more than 50% of cars with hologram 0 returned to 1. The program was said to be working.
These days cars with holograms 1 and 2 have stopped circulating, and the pollution hasn't ceased. Can they still say that the program worked? There are no functionaries who can explain why the number of cars that can circulate every day has declined without this being reflected in the high levels of pollutants.
The recurrent problem of pollution characterizes a procedure that seems to be usual in authority. It announces programs, agreements, new policies to change a situation, but after a certain time, it goes back to the same point. The problem resurfaces, then there are cross accusations for it, actions of reinforcement are announced ... and it is a matter of waiting for months, maybe years, and once more we all have to begin dealing with the same initial situation.
Evidence of the above are the operations to control the insecurity in an entity or region, the problem of the clandestine milking of pipelines, which has been present for more than 10 years, or transport assaults, to name a few.
In environmental matters, the lack of equal commitment from all the governments of the Megalopolis, periodic progress reports and even the accompaniment of social organizations, if we do not want to be addressing the same situation next year.
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