Natural hazards and economic stressors

This chapter explains the mechanism by means of which natural disasters and some past economic policy decisions have turned into hazards in Mexico. Natural disasters occurrence is increasingly producing severe damages to the so-called traditional agriculture, highly exposed to climatic events due to its predominating rainfed cropping practices as well as its high marginalization conditions, which together tend to amplify the negative effects from hazards. In the frame of the economic reforms implemented from the middle of the eighties, trade liberalization has led some economic sectors to increase more remarkably their exposure to international markets. The negative impact of trade liberalization on rural livelihoods has been evidenced over the past two decades through price drops of agricultural grains, the main crop of subsistence farmers. It has undermined their incomes given their limitations to increase neither productivity nor cropping land, as well as their inability to re-orientate production