President Felipe Calderón led Earth Day ceremonies at the Lerma ecological reserve in the State of Mexico Sunday, where he said the nation´s environmental awareness will grow in coming years, but that widespread poverty has slowed efforts to promote ecology."We will not be able to stop environmental degradation if we do not end the misery and extreme poverty that millions of Mexicans live under," Calderón said. Grinding poverty puts added pressure on natural resources, but "neither will we be able to stop the misery of poverty if we´ve ruined the environment," the president added.
He was joined at the event by State of Mexico governor Enrique Peña Nieto, Michoacán state governor Lázaro Batel and Public Education Secretary Josefina Vázquez Mota, and a group of schoolchildren.
Calderón said he was committed to an environmental policy that will save the environment and combat global warming through educational programs.
"For years we´ve learned to destroy the environment," he said. "Today we will start to learn - and teach - how to conserve ... the environment."
Calderón reaffirmed the importance of a pact between the Public Education Secretariat (SEP) and the Environment and Natural Resources Secretariat (Semarnat) to promote environmental sustainability in the nations´ school systems.
He emphatically instructed the SEP´s Vázquez and Semarnat chief Elvira Quesada to ensure "that environmental education is taught in all of Mexico´s schools, so that every child learns to care for the Earth."
Calderón talked to the audience of schoolchildren about his PROARBOL environmental program. PROARBOL seeks to plant 250 million trees, to slow deforestation caused by fires, to establish a zero-tolerance deforestation policy in Monarch butterfly habitat and to give protected status to 3 million additional hectares of land.
At Sunday´s ceremony, Calderón also signed a decree to prohibit further exploitation of the endangered "El Hundido" aquifer in Coahuila state.
