LATIN AMERICA: Integration Needed to Curb Environmental Destruction

By Dalia Acosta Reprint | | Print |

Dalia Acosta

HAVANA, Sep 30 1995 (IPS) - Latin American and Caribbean governments must step up integration of their efforts if they are to head off continued environmental destruction in the region, concluded a ministerial-level meeting held in Cuba.

According to Arsenio Rodriguez, the regional director of the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP), only South-South cooperation would enable such challenges to be tackled in a world where development aid is increasingly “drying up.”

That issue was the central focus of the ninth regional meeting in which 14 environment ministers and other high-level officials from 11 countries participated this week here in Havana.

Although the meeting did not come up with common policies to be undertaken by governments in the region, it identified shared positions with regards to the international environmental agenda, and urged a search for effective coordination mechanisms.

These could lead in the future to a search for solutions to the problems of supplying clean water and sewer systems, marine pollution, protection of forests and biodiversity, and the transportation of toxic waste.

U.N. sources estimate that by the year 2000 nearly 60 percent of the urban population of Latin America and the Caribbean would be living in cities of more than 100,000 inhabitants, and 30 percent in cities of over one million.

The region’s natural habitats are being destroyed to open new land for crop cultivation and livestock grazing, with increasingly alarming consequences in terms of conserving biodiversity.

While only 2.2 percent of the region’s entire surface area is dedicated to natural reserves, the rate of deforestation holds steady at 50,000 square kilometres a year, and desertification has affected 10 percent of the region.

“The sustainability of Latin America is not only a question of natural resources, but also one of social development and reduction of inequalities,” said Colombian Environment Minister Cecilia Lopez Montano.

A UNEP report presented during the meeting states that under- development and social inequality lead to a vicious circle of environmental deterioration that clearly demonstrates the interrelationship between the economic context and environmental issues.

Although Colombia has “nearly 40 percent of the world’s biodiversity, it has not yet resolved its human problems,” said Lopez Montana, stressing that poverty in her country has not been reduced in spite of the national economy having steadily grown over the last 50 years.