Voices of Mexico no. 73

Our Voice

These days the predominant note in the international situation is disaster. The natural disasters caused by Hurricanes Katrina and Stan are testing governments’ ability to deal with the consequences. Katrina and the devastation it caused in the southern United States have brought into question the strategy of contention that Washington so fervently boasted of having prepared and the effectiveness of the states in implementing it to deal with natural disasters.

Secondly, this questions states’ political determination to establish a strategy of this type. Thirdly, it forces doubt to the surface about governments’ —mainly the U.S. government— real willingness to take cognizance of global warming, linked to the Kyoto Protocol, which Washington has repeatedly refused to sign over the years. Lastly, given the Homeland Security Department’s failure to respond to the human, economic and social disaster that Katrina represented for the poorest inhabitants of New Orleans, the question arises about whether the very conception of security should not change radically and whether it should not be understood in an integral way, as both a factor in and a means for achieving national sustainability.