How to link netcdf as shared libraries during conda installation of esmpy?

I installed esmpy using conda install -c conda-forge esmpy but am unable to get it to create a mesh from an existing Netcdf file using something like this:

mesh = ESMF.Mesh(filename=myfile.nc),filetype=ESMF.FileFormat.ESMFMESH)

My input file is the output from the CAM-SE global atmospheric model at ne120 resolution. This model returns unstructured output. I get an error message saying that Netcdf should be built as a shared library. I know the Netcdf libraries exist because I use xarray all the time to read and process them. But how does one link those libraries during the installation step for esmpy using conda? Do I need to build esmpy from source to be able to do this?