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Rising global temperatures pose a risk to many communities facing a series of interconnected and increasingly frequent climate events such as extreme heat, droughts and flash floods. “Monterrey is a city that suffers from these problems directly related to water and that has increasingly worrying effects,” says Dino del Cueto, a young man from Chilango who makes up the group of architects behind the “buffered riverside”, a hydro-urban corridor that seeks to rescue the network of contaminated rivers and sections of vegetation strategically located along them as a solution to the increasingly serious weather phenomena in the capital of the Mexican State of Nuevo León.
In 2010, Hurricane Alex was one of those that left the most economic damage in the country, exceeding 25,000 million pesos (almost 1,500 million pesos). In 2022, with its most important dam at 5% capacity, Monterrey will reach day zero, the day in which water reserves are depleted. In September of the same year, the rains ended a long drought to unleash violent floods. “Therefore, creating natural buffers and the recovery of the main water sources will be essential to ensure the future of our water networks in cities and make metropolitan areas resilient to the effects of climate change,” says Cueto, representative of the team that won first place in the final of the 4th edition of the contest Climatón UNAM 2024.
The initiative organized by the National Autonomous University of Mexico, and which aims to call for collective action to raise awareness of the climate emergency and give visibility to socio-environmental crises, was held at the beginning of May at the Estefanía Chávez Barragán theater from the Faculty of Architecture. The proposals received to counteract degradation and the effects of climate change in Mexico sought to improve waste management and the deterioration of coastal systems, create green spaces resistant to deforestation, as well as alternative products to toxic pesticides and water harvesting systems. to alleviate serious droughts.
The solution of the winning team, made up of César Bonilla, Dino del Cueto, Mariana Navarro and Valentina Maldonado, architects recently graduated from UNAM, proposes the creation of a riparian buffer in the river The chair of Monterrey in order to rehabilitate, reconnect and mitigate the floods and the effects of the drought suffered by the city. A thesis work that connects infrastructures and ecosystems from an urban design where the river expands and contracts according to weather conditions, “thus reducing the risk of flooding that could affect nearby urban infrastructure,” says Bonilla. “And it is replicable for all cities with rivers in the country, taking into account local and natural factors,” explains Dino del Cueto.
The initiative, which won a prize of 80,000 pesos (more than 4,700 dollars) and whose implementation would involve the Government, private sector, university, cooperation agencies and the inhabitants of the city themselves, establishes through adaptive solutions the bases for a more effective management of the risks associated with climate change. “And it does so with an approach that integrates communities and biodiversity. Our project not only seeks to create a connection between humans and the river, but also with the species that inhabit it, which are also agents of change. The riparian buffer rescues nature as a solution to an urban problem but also to create a sense of belonging for people with the ecosystem who use it as a public space,” Maldonado points out.
As the young architect explains, the riverside water corridor that her team has devised and that will be able to begin developing its first phases with the prize money, “will not only favor the natural adaptation of the river, but will also establish a responsible connection between the community and water, regenerating ecosystems, improving and reconnecting adjacent urban areas.”
The Climatón winning initiative also provides an opportunity to redefine the relationship of the city of Monterrey with its rivers. It is a comprehensive proposal to treat an increasingly common problem in urban areas. “Although the project responds to a local problem, all the conditions exist for it to occur in the rest of the country’s cities,” said Amparo Martínez Arroyo, a scientist specialized in Climate Change and Environmental Problems at UNAM and part of the jury.
The second award – awarded 60,000 pesos (more than 3,500 dollars) – went to the Biocitri Project, an initiative that offers a second life to citrus organic waste before its decomposition through the generation of a rapidly degrading biofilm that serves as a food serving container, which could replace conventional single-use plastic packaging. “In Mexico, 7 million tons of plastic waste are produced daily, of which only 8% is recycled correctly, while the rest contaminates soils and water, with a direct impact on human and animal health. In addition, 1,880,562 tons of waste derived from citrus products are generated annually, of which a large percentage ends up in landfills where it decomposes and emits large quantities of methane gas that harms the environment,” explains Cruz Castellanos, project representative.
The third winner of the call, with a prize of 40,000 pesos (2,375 dollars), was the initiative Piper, which addresses the health effects of fertilizers used to combat pests of the country’s main crop, corn. “One of the biggest problems we face when growing corn in my place of origin, Cosala, Sinaloa, is the fall armyworm, which can generate losses ranging from 10% to 100% of the harvest,” explains Cruz Francisco. Osuna, representative of the team of biologists that has created a natural fertilizer that does not harm the environment or human health and protects corn from the most devastating pests.
In Mexico, highly dangerous pesticides (HPP) are used that are prohibited in dozens of countries, which constitutes the second cause of death due to poisoning. “This is not only a health problem, since the insecticides most currently used to combat the fall armyworm have several harmful effects on ecosystems, the main regulatory agents of the climate. Therefore, its use has a negative impact on climate change,” says Osuna, one of the creators of Piper. The biopesticide is based on a black pepper compound that the team plans to produce with synthetic biology using brewer’s yeast and which represents a more sustainable alternative to conventional chemicals.
Of the two dozen ideas that were finalists of the Climatón, only three were able to obtain financial support to move forward, but the jury praised the talent and potential of all those who participated and acknowledged having faced great difficulties in selecting a few. “I found the projects spectacular. The incredible talent of these young people and their climate awareness are very surprising. “This generation offers a lot of hope in the face of the complex socio-environmental challenges that we face as a society!” said María Eugenia de Diego, specialist in Adolescent Development at Unicef in Mexico, at the end of the event, one of the organizations participating in this call created to promote from the university the talent of young people as a catalyst for the necessary green transformation that the country needs.
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