High-Level Mexican Delegation Visits IIASA
Water and climate adaptation
IIASA is no stranger to the particular challenges faced by Mexico. On 13 March 2012 Prof. Kabat participated in a high-level ministerial roundtable on "Water and Adaptation to Climate Change—The Way Forward," organized by the governments of Mexico, Jordan, and Portugal, which centered on development and implementation of water-based climate change adaptation measures.
Catastrophe bonds
In the mid-2000s Mexico's Ministry of Finance began working with IIASA scientists to examine the economic costs and benefits of two methods of transferring the risks of natural disasters to the financial markets: reinsurance and catastrophe bonds. As a result of training of Mexican officials by IIASA using the interactive catastrophe simulation CATSIM, Mexico in 2006 became the first national sovereign to issue catastrophe bonds to hedge earthquake risk, and in 2009 issued a similar financial instrument to cover earthquake and hurricane risk.
Other aspects of IIASA-Mexico collaboration include:
- A study by IIASA of the sustainability of the aquifers supplying water to Mexico City in the context of its rapidly growing urban population.
- The development of literate life expectancy indicators for the social development of the Mexican population, as well as probabilistic methodology to project the Mexican population, by IIASA's World Population Program.
- Support by Center for Demographic, Urban and Environmental Studies of El Colegio de México of IIASA's call for greater emphasis on sustainable human development ahead of Rio+20.
- Research on key aspects of energy use in Mexico, like public transportation, in the context of the Global Energy Assessment, led by IIASA and published in 2012.