Environmental Law Prosecution Local Office

Background Information

The MEP and ECCSTZ21 were created in accordance with international treaties like the North America Cooperation Environmental Agreement and The United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change. Both initiatives are under the legal basis of Mexican Constitutional Law, the Sustainable Development Goals, COP21 Outcomes, the Mexican National Development Plan, the Mexican Sectorial Program of Environment and Natural Resources, the Jalisco State Development Plan and the Tlajomulco de Zúñiga Municipal Development Plan.

Goals of the Initiative

The goals of MEP and ECCSTZ21 are: 

•Improve governance of environmental resources through an innovative public policy model that strengthens the capacity of local government and increases energy and resource use efficiency; mitigate and adapt to climate change; ensure enforcement of environmental regulatory framework and hence provoke social, cultural, and economic sustainable development.

•Increase the productivity and impact of local government environmental public services boosting effectiveness and making the organization and administration more efficient through the use of IT and development of innovative performance measurements.

•Reduce the cost of bureaucratic promotion of citizen involvement in the surveillance of local economic and private activities such as water use, waste management, noise pollution, conservation of natural resources and biodiversity.

•Ensure the accountability and responsiveness of public servants through partnerships established with national, international and civil society institutions that are part of the Local Sustainability Evaluation and Monitoring Committee.

•Build a cross-jurisdictional collaboration that innovates the design, planning, decision making, application and evaluation of local government environmental policies.

•Reduce in less than four years at least 33 percent of air, water and soil pollution produced actually in municipal territories, and pass from a low environmental rate to a high environmental rate.

•Increase the resilience of municipality and the reaction capacity of local government agencies to natural disasters and environmental crisis.

•Establish sustainability philosophy and culture throughout the private sector and civil society members of the municipality.

•Recognize and award environmental best practices, initiatives and projects developed by civil society.

•Advance prosperity and quality of life of almost six million citizens in the metropolitan area of Guadalajara, through the conservation, increase and improvement of local natural resources.

Parties and Partners to the Initiative

Design, planning and implementation of MEP and ECCSTZ21 have been developed through an innovative model of participatory planning with representatives of the following organizations:

•University of Guadalajara, with four representatives from the Water Research Campus, Biological Campus, Architecture Campus, and Social Sciences Campus;

•Institute of Social Research of Autonomous University of Morelos State;

•Ecosystem Center Research and Systems and Sustainability Research Institute of National Autonomous University of Mexico;

•Center of Environmental, Demographic and Urban Studies of the Mexico College;

•University Metropolitan Autonomous, Campus Iztapalapa;

•Center of Advanced Social and Anthropology Studies and Research;

•Polytechnic University of Guadalajara Metropolitan Zone;

•Autonomous University of Nayarit;

•Commission for the Environmental Cooperation of North America;

•Pro-Natura Civil Association;

•Save the Primavera Forest Civil Association;

•Pro Cajititlán Lagoon Network Civil Association; and

•Tlajomulco de Zúñiga Industrial Business Chamber.

All these institutions were invited to participate in an Environmental Evaluation and Monitoring Committee, which is an innovative model of participatory planning, design, decision making and evaluation of the local environmental public policy.

This new partnership between Municipality, Education and Research Institutions and Civil Society Organizations has been a great way to enhance societal engagement with environmental local challenges, and is also a very powerful tool for improving transparency, accountability and responsiveness in public administration.

The Committee is consulted by public servants, press and citizens in their open public meetings. Almost all the members of the Committee collaborate as honorary advisers for many processes and services of the local government.

Every year on World Environment Day the Committee presents an Evaluation Report and assessment on the environmental resources of Tlajomulco de Zúñiga and an assessment of the performance of local environmental public policy.

The local government is also implementing new business models through agreements established between cross-jurisdictional collaboration with Federal, Sub National and other local Environmental Institutions (more of 20 government agencies).

Finally, agreements for fostering local government and citizen’s empowerment have been established with international organizations like the Local Economic Environmental Development Centre of the OECD, the Friedrich Naumann Foundation, The Masdar Institute, and the OAK Foundation.

Resources Used for Implementation

In 2016, the Municipality of Tlajomulco de Zúñiga has invested more than $1,142,800 for the development of the green agenda public policy, sustainable rural development public policy, and MEP public policy. All these funds were unanimously approved in the 2016 budget by the seventeen councilors from four different political parties that constitute the Municipal Council of Tlajomulco de Zúñiga.

Technical collaboration was provided by the 25 experts from 21 institutions that were part of the participatory planning process of the design of MEP. It was provided for free to the municipality and also the participation of the institutions and their representatives in the assessment, advisory and consultancy works of the Tlajomulco de Zúñiga Environmental Evaluation and Monitoring Committee will be with no cost for the municipality.

The municipality is also receiving technical and human support from the Friedrich Naumann Foundation, through the capacitation of public servants of the local government regarding good practices in environmental matters. It is also funding the development of a technical study for the reduction of carbon dioxide produced by the 192 brick factories that are established in the municipality and constitute a strong source of atmospheric pollution for all the metropolitan area of Guadalajara.

The Municipality has established cooperation agreements with:

•National Commission of Forests

•National Commission of Biodiversity

•Federal Environment Attorney

•National Commission of Water

•Jalisco State Water Commission

•Jalisco State Environment and Territorial Development Secretary

•Jalisco State Environment Attorney

•Jalisco State Rural Development Secretary

•Jalisco State Territorial Institute

In order to receive technical and managerial resources like capacitation, technical advisory, use of programs, maps, data exchange, and other actions that allow the municipality and the subnational and federal institutions to increase efficiency in the use of public resources.

Finally, it is necessary to mention that municipality is in the middle of a petition process of $400,000 from an American foundation that will enable the purchase of all technical equipment that MEP requires for an efficient performance of their surveillance and inspection duties.

Innovation for the Initiative

The initiative is regarded as revolutionary because a local government has never before constituted an exclusive branch responsible for the accomplishment of a legal environmental framework in a municipal territory.

Based on a document outlined by the United Nation Environment Program in 2009 alongside our own research, we can affirm that at the moment there are no local environmental procurement offices in any municipality within the American continent.

Obviously the initiative didn’t come from nowhere. The idea was originally developed by President Alberto Uribe, who stated in a first level public officers meeting that “it was necessary to create a new agency dedicated to the protection of natural resources and the enforcement of environmental regulations at local level”.

After that meeting the Cabinet Coordination of Municipality organized a participatory planning four-session workshop with 25 experts from 21 institutions who discussed and developed a new business model of environmental management of local resources.

The conclusions and recommendations provided by the experts were translated by the advisory group of the Municipal President in a legislative and administrative reform that includes the creation of MEP and ECCSTZ21 as a new model of public local environmental management that would drive Tlajomulco de Zúñiga towards become one of the first global sustainable cities.

Finally, the new model of environmental management of local resources was addressed by the opinions from a multidisciplinary group of the first level local public servants, and by the members of the municipal council of Tlajomulco de Zúñiga, who make the last contributions for the creation of MEP and ECCSTZ21 as an innovation to improve environmental global governance.

Innovation has been applied in

MEP is a public policy that establishes a new business model of management environmental resources at local level, involving all public and private organizations and citizens of Tlajomulco de Zúñiga, in stages of planning, design, implementation, financing, administration and evaluation.

Since the legal and administrative reform has been approved by Municipal Council, MEP is responsible of the protection of local environmental resources, the enforcement of new local environmental regulatory framework, executing duties of surveillance and inspection and attending all the denounces and complaints that citizens and other public and private institutions deliver to the local government about illegal environmental activities performed in the territory of Tlajomulco de Zúniga.

But MEP not only operates at local level, as it has the mandatory duty of defending and representing local government and global society’s public interest over environmental resources. Therefore, MEP will have to present claims, denounces, trials and any other legal or administrative resources at a sub national, national and international level and follow all the processes in order to accomplish its mission of ensuring the protection, conservation or restoration of local environmental resources.

The ECCSTZ21 is a transversal policy that involves the participation of all the offices and public servants of the local government and goes from planning, design, implementation, financing, administration and evaluation.

The ECCSTZ21 also operates at local level with all the public and private institutions and population of municipality through a set of activities that are being developed according to different plans, programs, and projects like:

•The environmental data, measurement, evaluation and monitoring

•The environmental territorial ordering plan;

•The municipal green agenda goals;

•The local program of sustainable agriculture;

•The environmental education program;

•The climate change municipal plan;

•The waste management policy;

•The Cajititlan Lagoon sustainable management project;

•The environmental protected zones management project;

•The brickworks project.

Obstacles and Solutions for Innovation

The first obstacle was the lack of creativity and willingness to innovate from public servants of local government, as they didn´t recognize the ineffectiveness of old environmental local public policy and only proposed increments of financial resources as the best way to face local environmental challenges.

To tackle this, it was necessary to replace the Director of Environment with somebody with creative foresight, familiar with technology and communications technologies and a total advocacy to a dream called sustainable city. Once this was done, the second step was to develop a participatory planning process that allows the municipality to have external opinions about how to deal with the vast environmental challenges of the municipality.

Once securing an innovative way to deal with municipal environmental challenges, the subsequent, and almost inevitable obstacle was the lack of financial resources.

In Mexico, local governments receive less of 5 percent of total public incomes, a situation that renders municipalities unable to provide sufficient and high quality public services. The solution lies in a two-step strategy: first, decisive political support from Municipal President, who is a believer of sustainable culture; and obtaining funding for the application of MEP and ECCSTZ21 in this year 2016. We are now in the middle of a petition process for technical equipment with an American foundation for a total investment of more than $ 400,000.

The third problem faced was the lack of technical capabilities and ethical behavior of local public servants.

This problem was rectified by an extremely transparent and professional selection process of the Municipal Prosecutor which was designed and conducted by the Environmental Evaluation and Monitoring Committee. It has been fought with the contraction of new public servants dedicated to environmental inspection and surveillance activities, some of whom are young professionals from a variety of fields including biology, geography, environmental management, information technology management, law, political science and public administration, displaying a strong commitment to sustainability culture.

Outcomes and Assessments

The scale where MEP and ECCSTZ21 leads to the most changes is primarily at local level, specifically through the protection of local natural resources, and the enforcement of environmental regulation over the municipal territory. However, the outcomes of these changes will also have effects on a metropolitan and regional level. 

With the creation of MEP and ECCSTZ21 the municipality already achieved new attitudes and behavior of public servants who are now committed to improve the efficiency and sustainability of local government. The municipality also have achieved outcomes in accountability, transparency and linkage with civil society organizations thanks to the participatory planning process, the selection process of Environmental Prosecutor and environmental inspectors and with the establishment of the Environmental Evaluation and Monitoring Committee that will help municipality to establish new good governance practices that allows resource efficiency improvements; mitigate and adapt to climate change; and ensure resilience of all the communities of Tlajomulco de Zúñiga.

With the creation of MEP and ECCSTZ21, we hope to achieve the following the outcomes:

•Improve more than 35 percent of local government energy resource efficiency in the next two years;

•Improve social cohesion and citizen commitment through environmental and risk disaster education and training;

•Reduce more of 20 percent greenhouse gas emissions in the next two years;

•Boost local sustainable farming in more than 30 percent of the actual farming land of the municipality;

•Increase the public transport system of municipality by 100 percent in the next two years;

•Reduce the water pollution in Cajititlan Lagoon by 100 percent in the next two years;

•Reduce the number of days with bad quality air in the municipality by at least 33 percent in the next two years.

•Strengthen the capacity of environmental accountability and responsiveness of natural resources of the local public administration;

•Improve the environmental rate of the municipality in order to be among the five best municipal rates of Jalisco State.

All of these outcomes will improve the quality of life of more than six million people living in the metropolitan zone of Guadalajara, and will boost the development of a new local economy of environmental friendly and sustainable products and services. It will also transform the local government into a sustainable organization and finally will contribute to making Tlajomulco de Zúñiga’s population adopt sustainability and resilience practices.

Methods Applied

Everything has been recently developed or applied through the local government, together with the legal and administrative reform that created MEP and its new procedures. There is a new local regulation for environment, climate change and sustainability, and there are new working procedures in the General Direction of Environment, Climate Change and Sustainability Management.

There are four new databases gathering information about natural resources, local solid waste, local greenhouse gasses emissions, and local environmental claims and crimes.

There is a new local public policy to recognize environmental business and citizen good practices.

There is a new public policy offering financial incentives to local producers to change from traditional faming to organic farming, which is complemented by the establishment of the first weekly metropolitan organic market where local producers have the opportunity to sell their products directly to consumers.

Also, since the planning and design of MEP and ECCSTZ21, the use of new technology has been considered as a key role to the achievement of the outcomes and changes desired. In this way, the municipality is seeking financial resources at a sub national, national and international level for the acquisition of equipment that allows the local government to provide high quality environmental public services and develop into a leading sustainable city.

The building of new partnerships between local government and private and social organizations that have allowed a more effective civic engagement with sustainable practices are also new approaches to development.

These partnerships allowed the local government to establish cross-jurisdictional collaborations in several environmental issues, including the surveillance of natural resources, promotion of organic farming, increase of communities’ resilience, and environmental education.

There is a new Environmental Evaluation and Monitoring Committee that evaluates the natural environmental resources and the environmental public policy of the municipality.

Last but not least, the local government’s innovative use of technology allows the optimization of use and allocation of public resources and boosts efficiency and effectiveness of the local government in areas like water, waste and natural resource management.