LATIN AMERICA: New Ecological Problems Outpace Solutions
Copyright 2001 Inter Press Service
October 23, 2001
By Andrs Caizlez
RIO DE JANEIRO, Oct. 23 - Degradation of the environment in Latin America and the Caribbean is occuring at a rate that exceeds the creation of workable solutions despite government efforts over the last decade, agreed the region's environment ministers gathered here today.
"We continue to see the deterioration of the environment because problems are outstripping solutions -- and the gap keeps growing," said Colombia's environment minister, Juan Mayr, reporting on the meeting's conclusions.
Areas of particular concern included deforestation, threats to plants and wildlife, and soil degradation.
A dozen officials wrapped up a two-day forum of Latin American and Caribbean environment ministers here today, coinciding with the beginning of the Regional Preparatory Conference for the World Summit on Sustainable Development, also known as Rio+10. The environment officials joined foreign affairs ministers and treasury ministers, central bank presidents and experts from organizations like the Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean (ECLAC), for another meeting, which ends tomorrow.
The purpose of the preparatory conference is to define the position the region will take at the United Nations-organized Rio+10 Summit, slated for Johannesburg, South Africa, in September 2002.
The summit will assess compliance with the goals established at the 1992 Earth Summit in Rio de Janeiro.
Ricardo Snchez, regional director of the United Nations Environment Program (UNEP), in a conversation with IPS, stressed the importance of this week's series of meetings, which represent the path Latin America and the Caribbean have followed since 1992 with sights on Rio+10.
Colombian minister Mayr said the 1992 Rio summit produced tangible results, such as the institutionalization of environment ministers or secretaries -- which had not existed previously in several Latin American countries -- and the enactment of laws to protect valuable environmental resources.
At the Earth Summit, world leaders adopted three international legal instruments: the Convention on Biological Diversity, the Convention on Climate Change and the Convention to Combat Desertification, as well as "Agenda 21," a global action plan aimed at integrating environmental protection and development into the 21st-century economy.
In the preparatory meetings for the 2002 summit, the core of the ministers' debate seems to be how to finance sustainable development, an approach that attempts to balance the environment, human development and economic growth.
The final declaration of the environment ministers' meeting made it optional for the countries of the region to evaluate mechanisms for converting foreign debt into projects benefiting the environment.
"It was discussed in general terms only, to review the relationship of external debt and sustainable development, but they did not establish detailed mechanisms for implementation," said UNDP official Snchez.
Mayr, meanwhile, pointed out that one pending issue from the 1992 summit is the transfer of funds and technology from industrialized countries to the developing South, as was established by the accords signed on that occasion.
Brazil's environment minister, Jos Sarney (son of the former president by the same name), told IPS that as far as "the economic instruments, it is also a question of reviewing the relationship between sustainable development and the trade protectionism (of industrialized countries). The two are closely linked."
Sarney outlined his country's plans for achieving sustainable development, which include "eco-tourism, bio-prospecting, and even sustainable logging of forests, which would be practiced based on environmental criteria."
The region's environment ministers also took a look at the international panorama that has arisen as a result of the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks in New York and Washington, and the subsequent military strikes by the United States and Britain against Afghanistan.
Ana Luisa Osorio, Venezuela's environment minister, commented that the war against terrorism will likely pull the spotlight away from the Johannesburg summit and the entire process leading up to the event, such as the regional preparatory meetings like the ones underway here this week.
Given the current international context, and faced with evaluating the results of the 10 years since the Rio Summit, Mayr told his colleagues that "we should be talking about ethics, about what development model we want for the world in which we live."
The Colombian official said urgent policies are needed to counteract environmental degradation, as the trend continues to increase despite the actions and initiatives to confront the problems from several different fronts.
According to the "red list" of threatened species, published by the World Conservation Union (IUCN), there are some 11,000 species of plants and animals in danger of extinction.
An assessment conducted as part of the Convention to Combat Desertification indicates that this problem, in addition to drought, threatens the lives of more than one billion of the world's six billion inhabitants.
Meanwhile, the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) has warned that the planet loses more than seven million hectares of arable land annually, due to soil degradation.
UNEP, in turn, calculates that some 495 million hectares of forests are lost each year in Latin America and the Caribbean alone, while the global costs of deforestation reach $ 42 billion a year.
All of these figures seem to indicate that in the race between solutions and problems, solutions must pull ahead if the world ultimately hopes to achieve sustainable development.