Mexico and the Post-2015 Development Agenda (eBook)

This interdisciplinary edited collection presents original analysis on Mexico's transition from the Millennium to the Sustainable Development Goals, departing from three main perspectives. In what areas did Mexico gain leverage and actually contribute to the debate around the proposed SDGs? What are the challenges for Mexico with regard to the SDGs? How to handle the issue of congruence/dissonance in Mexico's accomplishment of the MDGs in relation to the socioeconomic realities on the ground? The contributing authors examine what kind of state is needed to strengthen democratic politics and social justice, but also to improve the economic effectiveness of the state and thereby prospects for development. For Mexico, what is missing is a clear vision for creating a progressive, truly modern society where the notion of a social contract between the government and citizens could be established along the lines of a welfare state that is inclusive, sustainable, and transformative enough to tackle seriously the fundamental socioeconomic injustices dividing Mexicans.

Rebecka Villanueva Ulfgard is Associate Professor in International Cooperation and Development Studies, Instituto Mora, Mexico, researching on Mexico and international development cooperation, Mexico's civil society and New Multilateralism, and theories of international relations for development. She is the editor of the series Governance, Development and Social Inclusion in Latin America.

---

 This book explores how and why Mexico s approach to the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development and Sustainable Development Goals (SDG) implementation with the Lopez Obrador administration is unsustainable and non-transformative, overshadowed by his vision of Mexico s Fourth Transformation . Approached as a super mantra revolving around Republican Austerity and First, the poor , it provides original analysis of structural and conjunctural challenges facing Mexico as regards People-, Planet-, and Peace-centered development. The book reveals the promise First, the poor is inconsistent with data on Mexico s poverty reduction (SDG1). Despite record-high spending on social programs and unmatched coverage, the recent tendency of improvement in tackling poverty is rather ambiguous from the perspective of multidimensional poverty. The book covers access to clean energy (SDG7), resilient infrastructure and sustainable industrialization (SDG9), and safeguarding biodiversity(SDG15) by examining three megaproject case studies: the oil refinery Dos Bocas, the Interoceanic Corridor of the Isthmus of Tehuantepec, and the Maya Train, generating concern with the economic, environmental, and social dimensions of sustainable development. The prospects for an enabling environment for SDG implementation are hampered by persistently high levels of homicides and impunity (SDG16). Turning Mexico s Armed Forces into first development partner of choice is problematized as regards their reach in infrastructure megaprojects and social welfare programs, in the overall context of the de-risking state favoring private capital. The result, as determined by Villanueva Ulfgard, has led Mexico further astray from sustainable and transformative development.