UN Division for Sustainable Development

Case Study Detail Record

Organization type:	Government

Name of Ministry/Agency:	SECRETARÍA DE MEDIO AMBIENTE Y RECURSOS NATURALES

Country:	Mexico

Name of Focal Point:	Enrique Lendo Fuentes

Initiative Title:	Cross-cuting agenda, Agriculture - Environment

Internet links:	http://www.semarnat.gob.mx

Scope:	National:

Status:	Ongoing

Timeframe:	Start: 2004 End:

Lead Institution:	SECRETARÍA DE MEDIO AMBIENTE Y RECURSOS NATURALES

Stakeholders/Partners:	SECRETARÍA DE AGRICULTURA, GANADERÍA, DESARROLLO RURAL, PESCA Y ALIMENTACIÓN (SAGARPA) Y SUS ORGANISMOS SECTORIZADOS

Relevent issues:	- Enhancing agricultural productivity through adequate and sustainable inputs - Diversifying agricultural production systems - Agriculture - Others - institutional coordination; cross-cutting approach

Objectives/Challenges:

To incorporate the environmental dimension in the areas of action and the programs of promotion for the agricultural and fishing production in order to advance in sustainable development improving the environmental performance of the producers.

Lessons Learned:

Building basic agreements and explicit commitments between different Secretariats and entities of the federal and state governments has proven to be a valuable tool in order to obtain measurable results for sustainable development. The improvement and the consolidation of the coordination intra - and intersecretarial allows to reach significant results in each of the fields in which the involved actors take part.

Policy Options:

The advance of the country towards a sustainable development needs to penetrate the work into cross-cutting agendas. Specifically, the Agenda Agriculture - Environment must travel towards the integration of politics of productive promotion and the environmental politics.

Summary:

The Agenda of cross-cutting Agriculture – Environment, initiate in 2003 with the purpose of stimulating actions towards sustainable development in the programs of productive promotion for the agriculture, cattle management and fishing in Mexico.

This agenda is a part of a major strategy tackled by the Ministry of Environment and Natural Resources, and also it is very well explained at the Environmental Policy Report of Mexico, in order to establish an agenda of environmental commitments with each of the dependences of the Public Federal Administration, with the purpose of promoting a sustainable development in all the spheres of performance in which the Federal Government acts.
In case of The Agenda of cross-cutting Agriculture – Environment, the first basic agreement is given between the holders of SEMARNAT and SAGARPA by means of whom the priorities and commitments are defined, later by means of joint groups of work of diverse areas of both Ministries set up the actions and projects, goals and indicators and establish a strategy of follow-up for the commitments. Recurrently the obtained advances are checked and, eventually, new actions join.

In the first year of The Agenda of Transversalidad Agriculture – Environment, some actions were registered in the lines of managing of lands, sustainable agriculture, ecological planning, food innocuousness and biosecurity, mitigation and adjustment to the climatic change, fishing and sustainable acuaculture, among others.

Stands out among the lines of work of the Agenda 2007, the review combines the programs of support (subsidies) of the Ministry of Agriculture, with the purpose of incorporating criteria of environmental protection and sustainable use of natural resources in all the programs as a route to improve the environmental performance of agricultural activities, as well as fishing and acuaculture.