Mexico: Challenge of Achieving Energy Development, Domestic Economic Growth and Social Acceptance

Mexico has a rich vibrant cultural history with innovative civilizations going back centuries, well before the so-called discovery of the Americas and its conquest. Spain conquered Mexico, colonized it, and exploited it for its natural resources, especially its silver and gold.  Fast forward, today Mexico is challenged in developing its rich natural resources sustainably for the national common good and with the consent and acceptance, as well as participation, of its impacted communities, in particular its rural and indigenous communities.

The 2024 Capstone will build on the 2023 Capstone as well as apply the principles and concepts set forth in the prior related Peru Capstones, which focused significantly on community acceptance and participation in the natural resource sector. The goal is to create in the dynamic, evolving, and changing public sector settings an environmentally and socially sustainable natural resource program with gender equity and which promotes a circular economy (and test it through field work), a program which also has the potential to generate domestic economic multiplier (growth) impacts.