While the conditions of Lake Chapala appear to have improved significantly over the past seven years, progress in achieving coordinated action at all three levels of government to guarantee its long-term environmental well-being continues to lag, according to Marion Hammerl, president of the Global Nature Fund, parent organization of the Living Lakes network.
Hammerl flew in from her native Germany last week to participate in the Chapala Century XXI Forum, a symposium focused on the lake and its natural resources. The event was held Friday, November 10 in the auditorium of Chapala’s showcase waste water treatment plant.
Her last visit here was in 2010 as hostess for the 13th International Living Lakes Conference, an event marked by open friction between the organization’s leaders and Jalisco authorities.
Hammerl told the Reporter that she is pleased and optimistic to see that municipal authorities in the lakeshore region now demonstrate sincere interest and deeper knowledge about environmental matters. She hopes that the same spirit will prevail at the state and federal levels to combat problems of water pollution, deforestation and loss of biodiversity throughout the Lerma-Chapala-Santiago watershed.
For the immediate future, the Global Nature Fund has pledged to contribute funding for a pilot project to create a “green filter” sewage treatment system for the town of Atotonilquillo, a low-cost method utilizing channels of living plants to remove contaminants from waste water.
Lake Chapala was accepted for Living Lakes affiliation in 2003, at the peak of its worst crisis since the 1950s. The lake network put the situation in the international limelight, impelling the Mexican government to implement new conservation strategies that, with help from Mother Nature, brought it back from the brink of extinction. Lake Chapala was designated as a Ramsar wetlands site in 2009, ostensibly compelling Mexico to take a stronger hand in its conservation. However, a comprehensive management plan drafted thereafter has yet to be implemented.