Monterrey Metropolitan Water Fund: Climate Change Disaster Risk Reduction in Mexico
Monterrey, Mexico
Description: In northern Mexico, the state of Nuevo Leon is characterized by a dry and semi-dry climate, but the region is also along the Gulf Coast making it very vulnerable to intense rainfall events during the hurricane season. For the city of Monterrey, this means that both droughts and flooding are a common occurrence.
The San Juan watershed is already highly stressed, supplying freshwater to more than 4 million residents of the Monterrey Metropolitan area. Water availability per capita is close to 290 liters/day, which is comparable to that of Middle Eastern countries including Syria and Saudi Arabia (Chaidez and Jesus, 2011). Climate change is projected to only worsen droughts in the area with longer dry spells and higher temperatures that increase evaporation (Sisto et al., 2016). When rain is needed, it often comes in the form of major tropical storms and, because Monterrey is built along the Santa Catarina River, a part of the San Juan River basin, flash floods continue to be a very high risk for the city.
Challenges: When Hurricane Alex hit the area in 2010, Monterrey was heavily impacted by flooding, erosion, landslides, power outages and failed infrastructure. The accumulated damage across the region cost the state of a total of US$1.35 billion. The following three years Nuevo Leon experienced abnormally dry weather, but because the storage and regulation capacity of the reservoirs had been severely weakened from Hurricane Alex, water availability was extremely limited. Over 50,000 hectares of crops were damaged and more than 10,000 livestock were killed by the drought, which finally ended in 2013 just before Monterrey’s water supply systems were about to collapse (Abell et al., 2017). Years of poor land management, growing demand on the San Juan watershed, over-drawn aquifers and increasingly extreme hydro-meteorological events due to climate change, are the contributing factors that put Monterrey, Mexico on the map as one of the top 25 Latin American cities for water risk (TNC and LACC, 2016).
Action and Impacts: During the same year that Hurricane Alex was developing, the Latin American Water Funds Partnership identified Monterrey as a leading city in Latin America with high potential of receiving improved water security from nature-based solutions and joined forces with key local partners from the private sector such as ARCA Continental, ALFA, Citibanamex, BANREGIO, CEMEX, Grupo Cuprum, Heineken, FEMSA, and from academia and civil society. After three years of thorough planning, fundraising, and strategic design the Monterrey Metropolitan Water Fund (FAMM) eventually emerged in 2013, becoming Mexico’s first official Water Fund (Abell et al., 2017).
Not long after the FAMM began implementing conservation actions, the Governor of the State of Nuevo Leon, Jaime Rodriguez Calderon, recognized the opportunity that source water protection could provide for the area. In January 2016, he assigned both the Nuevo Leon Council and the FAMM to co-create a new water plan that would align sustainable development, climate projections, water demand, city planning, and more. In 2018, they published the 2050 Water Plan of the State of Nuevo Leon as a result of a two-year process of collaborative work with government institutions, universities, research centers, consultancy firms, and external consultants, and was peer reviewed by national and international water experts. Different public hearings to provide feedback on the results were also hosted and then published on-line. This process was unique in the Mexican context not only because of the number of studies done specifically for the purpose of creating the plan in collaboration with multiple experts, but also because of the long-term planning period considered. Having a document like this is an important legacy to improve the water governance of the State of Nuevo Leon.
Developing the 2050 Water Plan of the State of Nuevo Leon allowed the FAMM to align its own mission and goals to the Plan’s key findings.
References
- Abell, R., Asquith, N., Boccaletti, G., Bremer, L., Chapin, E., Erickson-Quiroz, A., Higgins, J., Johnson, J., Kang, S., Karres, N., Lehner, B., McDonald, R., Raepple, J., Shemie, D., Simmons, E., Sridhar, A., Vigerstøl, K., Vogl, A. and Wood, S. 2017. Beyond the Source: The Environmental, Economic, and Community Benefits of Source Water Protection. Arlington, VA, USA: The Nature Conservancy (TNC).
- Cháidez, N. and Jesús, J. 2011. “Water Scarcity and Degradation in the Rio San Juan Watershed of Northeastern Mexico”. Frontera Norte. vol. 23, núm. 46, julio-diciembre, 2011, pp. 125-150.
- FAMM (Fondo de Agua Metropolitano de Monterrey). 2018. Plan hídrico Nuevo león 2050. Fondo de Agua, Monterrey, Mexico.
- Hesselbach M.H., Sánchez de Llanos, J.A., Reyna-Sáenz, F., García Moral, F.J., León, S.J., Torres-Origel, F. and Gondor, A. 2019. Plan de Conservación del Fondo de Agua Metropolitano de Monterrey. México. The Nature Conservancy.
- Sisto, N., Ramírez, A., Aguilar-Barajas, I. and Magaña-Rueda, V. 2016. “Climate threats, water supply vulnerability and the risk of a water crisis in the Monterrey Metropolitan Area (Northeastern Mexico).” Physics and Chemistry of the Earth, Parts A/B/C, 91: 2–9.
- TNC (The Nature Conservancy) and LACC (Latin America Conservation Council). 2016. “An opportunity for water security in 25 cities in Latin America”. Urban Water Blueprint.
©Erich Schlegel
