Integrated disaster risk management in Mexico: Reflections, challenges, and proposals from the academic community seeking a transformation on policy making

Abstract

The lack of a public policy based on scientific and traditional knowledge, oriented to the integral management of the territory is intrinsically expressed in the construction of risk, and therefore in the increase of the occurrence of disasters. Although in the last three decades there have been some advances in terms of civil protection in Mexico, it is necessary to conduct a critical review and evaluation of the National Civil Protection System and the existing institutional framework within the three orders of government, to determine role and functionality, as well as its effectiveness and relevance, in order to analyze its possible transformation into a System or National Coordination of Integrated Disaster Risk Management (IDRM). The implementation of such system should be based on five normative axes; efficiency and equity, integrality, transversality, co-responsibility and accountability. IDRM should be understood as a complex systematic process consisting of a series of decisions, actions and activities, as well as a transversal coordination between the different institutional and social actors, to understand and transform the needs and weaknesses expressed in the different aspects of vulnerability and exposure, in specific responses and collective solutions, whose main objective is the deconstruction of risk. Inevitably, IDRM requires a foundation directed towards the reduction of vulnerabilities as a strategic axis of diagnosis, laws, programs and co-management of government and society, where safeguarding human life is privileged, along with the improvement of the quality of life of the population and its integral development, within a framework of respect for human rights and, consequently, with a gender perspective. Based on the principles of the IDRM developed and agreed upon at the international level, this document contains a series of recommendations that were discussed by a group of academicians and put into consideration of the candidates for the Presidency of Mexico and those candidates of popular election at the Federal, State and Municipal level in June 2018, as well as to the President-elected Andrés Manuel López Obrador, and the next members of his cabinet, head of the cross-cutting areas related to disaster prevention.