Mexico aims to develop highly productive and sustainable food systems that ensure national self-sufficiency. This paper employs an integrated land-use modeling tool—the FABLE Calculator—to estimate the degree of policy ambition required for the country to meet mid-century climate, conservation and production goals in the land-use sector. We generate national-level land-use pathways to mid-century in terms of agricultural production, land use change dynamics, greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions, and availability of land supporting biodiversity under varying assumptions of national policy and productivity changes. We estimate the effects of plausible efforts to achieve sustainability in land-use and food systems to 2050 against a business-as-usual benchmark. In the sustainable pathway, assumptions on agricultural land expansion, reforestation, and protected area expansion reflect existing and aspirational Mexican government policies aiming to improve crop yields, livestock productivity with silvopastoral systems, and GHG mitigation goals. We also model diets that evolve toward Mexican dietary guidelines for a healthier consumption of fats and oils as well as a substantial increase in the intake of fruits and vegetables, pulses, nuts, and fish. Results suggest that Mexico can feasibly adopt a sustainable land-use pathway that provides adequate nutrition for the population by 2050, limit agricultural expansion, reduce GHG emissions, and expand forested lands. This type of integrated land-use modeling can help ensure policy coherence in land and food systems across national strategic plans for climate, biodiversity, and agricultural self-sufficiency, each spearheaded by different government agencies. Importantly, a sensitivity analysis highlights the transformative impact that diets have on land-use systems, and as such, dietary transformation should be considered in all climate mitigation plans.
In face to the novel COVID-19 and the high mortality ratio associated with different comorbidities in Mexico (and elsewhere), we identified the need to characterize the risk of regional population to COVID-19, exclusively as a result of their health status. With data from the 2018 National Health and Nutrition Survey (ENSANUT), we have calculated a vulnerability index that includes hypertension, diabetes, obesity, chronic renal insufficiency, smoking, and cardiovascular diseases, as well as age cohort and sex at the municipal level. With the vulnerability index we calculated the population at risk and, in combination with hospitalization beds, the population that can be effectively treated at each municipality. Although, COVID-19 has already hit Mexico, the index serves as a planning policy tool to implement preventive actions on those vulnerable regions. We show that, given unhealthy habits, the population at risk in Mexico is close to 78.2 million. Particularly, we observed that poor areas have less comorbidities than rich areas. However, they also have poorer access to health infrastructure which diminishes municipalities’ resilience to COVID-19. Furthermore, highly populated municipalities appear to have a higher vulnerability index
scite is a Brooklyn-based organization that helps researchers better discover and understand research articles through Smart Citations–citations that display the context of the citation and describe whether the article provides supporting or contrasting evidence. scite is used by students and researchers from around the world and is funded in part by the National Science Foundation and the National Institute on Drug Abuse of the National Institutes of Health.
customersupport@researchsolutions.com
10624 S. Eastern Ave., Ste. A-614
Henderson, NV 89052, USA
Copyright © 2024 scite LLC. All rights reserved.
Made with 💙 for researchers
Part of the Research Solutions Family.