Natural disasters related to hydro‐meteorological events have increased during the last few decades, both in frequency and severity. Mexico is heavily exposed to climate change, but has also suffered in the past from climate variability (Blümel, 2009). The new risks oblige the government to develop mitigation processes, while the affected people are implementing strategies of adaptation and resilience‐building, mostly at the family and community level. This includes forced migration due to climate change into the slums of megacities or illegal immigration to the United States. The arid, semi‐arid and subhumid condition of 49.2 per cent of the territory of Mexico is seriously affected by climate change. In addition, poverty and the lack of jobs have created complex livelihood situations, in which young people leave rural areas, partly due to socio‐economic pull factors. In this paper, we address the functional relationships between climate patterns and migration processes in Mexico, highlighting the linkages between the origin of migrants, their economic activity and their vulnerability to extreme events and we discuss long‐term climate patterns. Agriculture still uses 78 per cent of the available water in Mexico. In the drylands the competition for water use requires an integrated policy to deal with the new threats from climate change, including mitigation from the top down and adaptation processes from the bottom up to reduce the social vulnerability of the rural population in the highly affected drylands of the central and northern parts of Mexico. The new policy for administering water resources, which promotes the efficient use of an increasingly scarce and polluted resource, still suffers from a lack of participation by the affected rural population. In this paper, we propose an integrated management system from the watershed onwards, involving socio‐economic, political, cultural and hydrological variables, to deal with the rising scarcity of water, and the uncertainty and complexity of climate change.

Background: This article develop analyses water security in Mexico, a country where global environmental change requires social, political and economic actors to protect natural resources and ecosystem services in order to reduce the tension between anthropogenic demands and natural availability. The paper asks: How can overexploitation and inequality in the access and control of water be assessed using an integrated model of water management and how could the existing water resources in each river basin and aquifer be sustainably distributed by a new National Water Law that would encourage participation in order to overcome the conflicts over access to and control of water? Methods: With a model of integrated water management the article reviews the current use of water among different social and production sectors. Results: Agriculture still consumes 77 per cent of the water, especially in the arid north, an area greatly affected by climate change (CC). Industry uses ten per cent and domestic users thirteen per cent of water. The growing megacities are also overexploiting their aquifers, producing subsidence and water pollution together with changes in land use, thus reducing water infiltration into the aquifers during the monsoon. Regional and temporal water stress is further aggravated by unsustainable production processes, where mining and agribusiness hog the water needed by indigenous people and small farmers, forcing them to migrate to the urban centres or illegally to the US. Conclusions: Within this arena of conflict in the field of water management, the article offers several guidelines for a sustainable and participative National Water Law. Food security, including dignified life conditions for the small-scale farmers in rain-fed regions affected by CC, could be achieved with small scale irrigation system in the Southeast of Mexico, where water is available for a second crop. Their sustainable agriculture and preventive management of water pollution by organic agriculture are central activity for conserving and restoring the natural condition of water infiltration. Without an integrated water management, reduction of soil erosion, early warning and resilience-building among the exposed people, Mexico will not reduce the existing and future threats related to global environmental change and particularly to CC.

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Este libro aporta reflexiones críticas e interdisciplinarias acerca de la reconceptualización de la seguridad y la paz con un énfasis especial en el Sur Global. Es reflejo de mi carrera como estudiosa, investigadora y luchadora social en África, Latinoamérica, en especial México, Europa y Asia. Mediante estudios empíricos interdisciplinarios, traté de superar los límites unidisciplinarios de los enfoques teóricos, conceptuales y empíricos enseñados en las universidades de los países desarrollados para experimentar formas sistémicas de investigación colectiva que ayudarán a transformar las presentes relaciones de poder, de discriminación y explotación. Una preocupación recurrente fue la discriminación de las mujeres en la ciencia y globalmente en el ámbito de la vida que se refleja en un número creciente de mujeres en pobreza extrema. Los procesos truncos de desarrollo en los países del Sur Global, atravesados por temas de género, seguridad, paz, alimentación y agua contaminada, me llevaron a entender las raíces profundas de un creciente subdesarrollo. Con el periodo nuevo de la historia de la tierra, el Antropoceno, el cambio ambiental global y el climático, se han agudizado además los conflictos socioambientales y se han gestado guerras no-tradicionales, donde Latinoamérica está poniendo el número mayor de muertos por la guerra contra el narcotráfico, a pesar de contar con una biodiversidad excepcional. La propuesta de seguridad y paz engendradas y sustentables explora primero conceptualmente alternativas desde abajo, y segundo, como propuesta de acción, propone facilitar una transición hacia la supervivencia humana y la recuperación del planeta, que cambiarán radicalmente el saqueo de los recursos naturales por parte de minorías rapaces. Soberanía alimentaria, energética e hídrica apuntan hacia modelos holísticos de desarrollo incluyente, donde las relaciones patriarcales de poder se deberían reestructurar por solidaridad con los vulnerables, mediante una economía de regalo, basada en el cuidado de los demás y de la Madre Tierra.

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