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

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air (see the section on health), and from the deterioration or shortage of the natural resources or water on
which they depend for their survival. The poor are also more vulnerable to extreme weather events, which
tend to worsen with climate change.
Not enough has been invested in the past few decades in managing the risks associated with
natural events, and post-disaster recovery or reconstruction has often been postponed or left incomplete
(ECLAC, <strong>20</strong>10b). The need to adapt to the consequences of climate change makes the role of
environment protection and ecosystem services even more important. Where potential conflicts of access
and control exist in relation to environmental resources, States must make additional efforts to ensure that
the rights of disadvantages groups are properly protected (UNCRD, <strong>20</strong>11). 3
Inequality, too, has many dimensions (UNDP, <strong>20</strong>10a). One of them is gender. Women have made
a major contribution to poverty reduction through paid and unpaid work and migrant remittances
(ECLAC, <strong>20</strong>10b). Poverty is worse, however, in female-headed households and in most of the countries
of the region a higher proportion of female-headed households than male-headed households are poor.
Women outnumber men in the region’s informal labour markets and consequently earn lower incomes
and have more limited social security access (UNDP, <strong>20</strong>10a). The countries with the greatest inequalities
in general also show the largest gaps between men and women. What is more, given the double work
burden (paid and unpaid) borne by women and the higher barriers they face to working outside the home,
they have narrower options for overcoming poverty and entering paid employment (UNDP, <strong>20</strong>10a,
<strong>20</strong>10b). Inequality also has a strongly territorial component: Latin America as a region shows highly
uneven patterns of land use (see section D).
The sustainability perspective must necessarily consider the intergenerational transmission of
inequality (UNDP, <strong>20</strong>10a and ECLAC, <strong>20</strong>10a). Two critical factors in this respect are unequal
capacities and high rates of early fertility among the poorest population groups (for a discussion of the
latter, see section 5).
With regard to capacity-building, the quality of education remains highly uneven between
different socioeconomic levels and between the rural and urban populations in the countries of Latin
America and the Caribbean (see figure I.6). Five criteria are used to assess the quality of education:
importance of learning, relevance, equity, effectiveness and efficiency. Even though the region has
made significant strides in education compared with the international context, inequalities persist
between and above all within the countries of the region. At the end of the first decade of the twentyfirst
century, 91% of Latin Americans and Caribbean nationals were literate and 94% of school-age
girls and boys were enrolled in a school programme (UNESCO, <strong>20</strong>11). Generally speaking, reading
skills and above all skills in mathematics and the sciences are below the average for the OECD
countries. According to the second Regional Comparative and Explanatory Study of the United Nations
Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO), Cuba is the country in the region with
the best performance in all areas (UNESCO, <strong>20</strong>11).
3
In August <strong>20</strong>11, the intermediate Governments of Latin America, led by the Latin American Organization of
Intermediate Governments (OLAGI) and with support from the United Nations Centre for Regional
Development (UNCRD), signed the Valparaíso Manifesto on Human Security in the Latin America Integration
Agenda, with emphasis on climate change and risk management. This Agenda will be submitted at the United
Nations Conference on Sustainable Development (Rio+<strong>20</strong>). There are also significant initiatives under way in
Chile, Colombia, Haiti and Honduras, which point up the outcomes of synergies between human security,
biological diversity and territorial (rural and urban) management in a context of integrated land management.