sustainable development 20 years on from the ... - José Eli da Veiga

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A major factor underlying this trend is that investment decisions are based on traditional
economic criteria that do not take into account the importance of protecting biodiversity. In addition,
short-term benefits of economic activities that damage biodiversity are reaped by specific agents —often
private ones— whereas the benefits of protection are less concrete and only materialize in the long term.
The absence of effective mechanisms enabling civil society to participate in decision-making and the
dissemination of information on the benefits of protecting biodiversity (and the costs of degradation)
perpetuates the bias towards activities that yield short-term private profits to the detriment of the
environment. This issue is addressed further in chapter III. With regard to biodiversity, the economic
valuation of ecosystem services —which is not necessarily associated with payment systems— can be
useful for translating the loss of benefits arising from the loss of ecosystems into a material language and
can complement decision-making (TEEB, <strong>20</strong>10).
Higher temperatures in some marine areas, rising sea levels and the greater frequency and
intensity of weather phenomena as a result of climate change, also pose a threat to the region’s
biodiversity. In its fourth assessment report, published in <strong>20</strong>07, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate
Change predicts significant losses of biodiversity (IPCC, <strong>20</strong>07). In addition, the ecosystems that serve to
support biodiversity provide other ecosystem services that are essential to mitigation (such as carbon
absorption) or adaptation (such as protecting water sources or resilience to extreme weather events).
Box II.4 illustrates the impact of climate change on Central America’s biodiversity.
Latin American and Caribbean countries have played an active part in international conventions
and protocols on biodiversity and protected species, from the Ramsar Convention in 1971 to the Nagoya
Protocol in <strong>20</strong>10 (see box II.5).
Since 1992, significant progress has been made in the establishment of conservation areas, the use
of best practices in agriculture, <strong>sustainable</strong> forest management, the <strong>development</strong> of <strong>sustainable</strong> fisheries
and the implementation of payment schemes for environmental services. As regards the establishment of
conservation areas, between 1990 and <strong>20</strong>10 the number of officially protected marine and terrestrial areas
in Latin America and the Caribbean more than doubled, surpassing the global average, including the
averages in developing and developed countries (see figure II.11). There are a total of 4 million square
kilometres (km 2 ) of protected areas in the region, representing <strong>20</strong>% of the world total (ECLAC, <strong>20</strong>10a)
(see map II.3). In many instances, the <strong>sustainable</strong> forest management of protected areas has been
combined with other techniques, such as reforestation and community forest management, payment for
environmental services, land management, certification and <strong>sustainable</strong>, community or certified forest
management (UNEP, <strong>20</strong>10a).
The fact that protected areas are extensive does not necessarily mean that all ecosystems are
adequately represented within those areas (Armenteras, Gast and Villareal, <strong>20</strong>03; Urquiza, <strong>20</strong>09). For
protected areas to serve as an effective mechanism for biodiversity conservation, they must be
representative of biomes and ecosystems, interconnected and endowed with sufficient human, financial
and technological resources to enforce restrictions on activities.