Abstract

ROUSSEAU, Isabelle. The New Social Management Regulation of Energy Projects in Mexico. Security, Sustainability and Governance. Rev. mex. cienc. polít. soc [online]. 2017, vol.62, n.230, pp.197-219. ISSN 0185-1918.

Among its objectives and the new institutional framework that it has provided, the Mexican energy reform (2013-2014) has addressed social challenges related to energy projects in communities and municipalities. This paper discusses the prospects, and particularly, the existing gaps in legislation to propose alternatives. It has also underlined the nature of a governance problem that lies behind the social conflicts on the rise due to the intervention of developers among the communities. This article is part of a larger research project; in consequence, interviews in-depth were carried among different stakeholders (public and private sector, communities, scholars, journalists, consultants, etc.) to support the hemerographic sources. The original features of this essay is that: a) it provides an historical overview of the new institutional framework to adjust the social impacts (when compared to the previous serious flaws) and analyses the contributions of legislative changes within human rights, indigenous rights, and corporate social responsibility in the new regulation; b) it confirms how legal certainty, which the new institutional framework is intended to provide, is, in fine, associated with the age-old governance problem that Mexico has failed to solve so far.

Keywords : regulation; social impacts; social impact evaluation; prior consultation; governance; developers; (indigenous) communities; energy project; Mexico.

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