The Community Water Observatory of Mexico’s Oaxaca region warns that government corruption and the exploitation of real estate development, with the complicity of the authorities, are threatening not only the Crestón and Fortín hills, but also the biodiversity of the entire northern mountain range of Oaxaca and access to water for nearly one million people.

As part of the conference El Monte y la Ciudad: Hacia una Gobernanza para Conservar la Cordillera Norte de los Valles Centrales (The Mountain and the City: Towards a Government to Conserve the Northern Cordillera of the Central Valleys), they issued a statement, in which 28 social organisations and local authorities participated, pointing out that in the last four decades the state and federal governments have greedily destroyed more than 60,000 hectares of natural biodiversity. Juan José Consejo, director of the Institute of Nature and Society of Oaxaca (INSO), said:

“If we continue like this, the occupation of the ecological reserve that supplies water to the metropolis of Oaxaca will end tragically. This is no longer just about the Crestón or Fortín, where there is a predatory activity of real estate companies invading territories, but about the progressive destruction of the entire Ecological Reserve, which has not been seen in the last 50 years.”

Roundtable members demanded a halt to the destruction of the Cordillera Norte Ecological Reserve, pointing out that behind the ecocide are corruption, omissions and a lack of urban planning that have exacerbated the water crisis in the city of Oaxaca and degraded the protected area since 2023.

Mauricio del Villar, Technical Secretary of the Oaxacan Water Forum (FAO), said:

“Declaring a protected area is not enough to stop the fires, forest plagues, desiccation, erosion, contamination, social and productive disintegration that have affected the reserve. It is necessary to transform the Council into a working group for the entire mountain range and to prevent the destructive tendency with which the urban stain has invaded the territory from being accentuated in the cities of the Sierra.”

In the statement, they stressed that the conservation measures have not respected the legitimate rights of ownership and possession of individuals, agrarian nuclei and communities, as well as the collective human right to a healthy environment, and that this affects almost a million people who are at risk of losing their water supply and a productive and regulated environment.

Source: Educa – Servicios para una Educacion Alternativa (Spanish)