Environmental Issues in Latin America and the Caribbean

UN Environment's Latin America and the Caribbean Office is working to build more The Ministers of Environment of the region will address these challenges in.
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Conservation Volunteering at the Cornish Seal Sanctuary. Except for the latter area, which was annexed by their respective nations between the late 19th and early 20th centuries, most of these inner regions would remain outside the market system until the mid- to late 20th century, as Pedro Cunill points out.


  1. Environmental Issues in Latin America and the Caribbean;
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The crisis currently faced by Latin American societies in their relationship with the natural world also includes a crisis of views. The dominant feature in the Latin American culture of nature has been, and to a large extent still is, the obvious disjuncture between the views of those who dominate and those who are dominated with respect to the organization of relations between societies and their natural environment in the region. This contradiction is manifested in the coexistence—usually passive but sometimes antagonistic—between a dominant culture that has evolved around ideals that are aligned with North Atlantic views—such as, first, civilization versus barbarism; then progress versus backwardness; and, finally, development versus underdevelopment—and a set of subordinated cultures—especially with indigenous and African American roots—that have evolved from other roots during a constant struggle against the dominant views.

These kinds of social groups had been present in North Atlantic societies since at least the late 18th century, and produced scientists from modest backgrounds, such as Alfred Russell Wallace, who, on the basis of their achievements, could act as interlocutors with their peers from higher social origins, such as Charles Darwin. Indeed, in Latin America, the concentration of land ownership in the hands of an oligarchic caste blocked the development of the kind of rural middle class that produced intellectuals like Gilbert White in Great Britain and Henry David Thoreau in the United States, during the 18th and 19th centuries.

In Latin America, modern intelligentsia of the type represented by these authors took shape only with the industrial expansion and urban development that characterized the second half of the 20th century. Beginning in the s, this intelligentsia became active, and its worldview rejected the notion that mere economic growth offered evidence of the fruits of progress and advancement toward civilization through development.

Instead, it expressed a growing concern about the obviously unsustainable nature of such development, based as it is on the continuous expansion of the export of raw materials to other economies. In the 21st century, this process of cultural maturity has intensified.

From the top, so to speak, the region has seen remarkable growth in the quality of its environmental institutions, which, in turn, has taken—without solving it—the conflict between extractive economic growth and the sustainability of human development to the very heart of the societies. From the bottom, resistance by indigenous and peasant populations to the expropriation of their natural heritage, and the fight for their political rights, is joined by the struggle of the urban middle and lower classes for their basic environmental rights.

These efforts promote the development of a nonconformist environmentalism, which, in Latin American societies today, can look to a mythical past prior to the European conquest when harmonious relationships with nature prevailed and which is able to confront the processes of economic growth that have brought with them social deterioration and environmental degradation. The environmental crisis is part of unprecedented historical developments consequent to the rise of the modern world system, which manifests itself as a change of time rather than a time of change.

Such culture is shaped both by dialogue and by confrontation between its own components as much as by confrontation with state policies, often closely associated with the interests of international financial organizations, and by complex processes to seek agreements on environmental issues within the interstate system. In this double transition process, all the past acts at all present moments. The technical legitimacy advanced by state policies confronts the historical and cultural legitimacy of the movements pitted against them, resulting in a process that generates development options with extraordinary vigor and diversity.

From this perspective, the cultural dimension of the crisis, that is, the source of the new questions that generate innovative responses, is not the mere sum of the ecological, economic, technological, social, and political dimensions, but of the interactions among them.

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Indeed, to the extent that the environment is the result of the interactions between society and its natural surroundings over time, if a different environment is desired, the creation of a different society is needed. This is the main challenge posed by the environmental crisis in Latin America, as in every society elsewhere.

Precisely for this reason, the transformations, conflicts, ruptures, and possible solutions that are currently taking place in the Latin American socio-environmental order also define the terms under which Latin America participates in the global environmental crisis, and they pose problems that need to be solved from within the region through dialogue and cooperation with other societies around the world. We grow with the world, so we can help it change. Scholarship trends in the debate concerning the environmental crisis in Latin America are concentrated in three main fields: There are two main trends in the environmental history of Latin America.

Una historia ambiental de Cuba, — , are prominent examples. Research in this trend in Latin American environmental history is characterized by a broad, systemic approach to the subject, an importance given to long-term and middle-term processes, and an emphasis placed on regional and subregional aspects of these processes as well as on the relevance of sociocultural aspects in this development.

“Climate Change Impacts in Latin America and the Caribbean: Confronting the New Climate Normal”

A much wider and better known trend is the environmental history of Latin America that has been developed by authors from this and other regions in close association with the North Atlantic research and academic systems. Its characteristics include an in-depth analysis of specific situations, a more quantitative approach, the assumption of the nation-state as a unit of analysis, and a much more modest approach to theoretical elaboration from the results of historical research. An example of this trend is J. Globalization and Environmental Crisis in Latin America , which approaches the crisis through a description and analysis of several different cases.

It is important to note that the establishment of the Latin American and Caribbean Association of Environmental History SOLCHA , open from its beginning to participation by historians from the North Atlantic region, has facilitated collaboration of member researchers, who have authored books, such as Naturaleza en Declive , edited by Reinaldo Funes, that provide an interesting example of the results that can be attained by interaction of scholars associated with both trends. With respect to the field of political ecology, one especially active since disenchantment by environmentalist social movements with the failure to achieve practical results following Rio 92, at least three new currents of thought and intellectual output have emerged in the region.


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The other two currents include, first, one inspired by neoliberal thought, which advocates addressing environmental problems through the use of technology, allowing the market to allocate resources with the least possible interference from the state, and the promotion of the so-called green economy. Its prominent proponents include Gabriel Quadri from Mexico.

The other current could be called neosocialist—some call it eco-Marxist. It views the environmental crisis as the manifestation of the general crisis of capitalism on a global scale. This trend considers the relationship between society and nature as an expression of the socioeconomic structures prevalent in the region, and it promotes social control of public management by strengthening the capacity and authority of organizations of manual and intellectual workers, both from the countryside and from the cities.

Noteworthy publications reflecting these viewpoints include Herramienta [tool] magazine, published in Argentina.

“Climate Change Impacts in Latin America and the Caribbean: Confronting the New Climate Normal”

However significant their differences may be, Latin American neoliberalism and neosocialism share some key features, which include a tendency to combine abstract generalization and pragmatic particularization in their analyses. Adherents of both schools in Latin America also maintain close ties with their counterparts in other regions of the world: The key issue, in any case, is their link with the entirety of Latin American environmental thought through the contributions they make to the debates that encourage the further development of that thought.

In quantitative terms, the two most important primary sources essential in research into the problems associated with the environmental crisis in Latin America are, first, the series of Global Environmental Outlook GEO reports published since by the United Nations Environment Programme UNEP , and second, the various statistical series, articles, and compilations on environmental issues published since by the United Nations Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean ECLAC. In both instances, however, the reader should note that these are intergovernmental agencies that gather information according to their own policy agendas, which center on the major themes of international research, such as climate change, sustainable development, and the so-called green economy.

Grito de la tierra, grito de los pobres. Edited by Gilberto C. Centro de Estudios Latinoamericanos Justo Arosemena, Gazia, and Gilberto C. Ferreira, and Michael Walton. Funes Monzote, Reinaldo, ed. Sostenibilidad y desarrollo sostenible: Serie Medio Ambiente y Desarrollo No. Project document compiled by Osvaldo Kacef and Pablo Gerchunoff.

Project document compiled by Osvaldo Kacef and Pablo Gerchunoff, 47— Landscape Transformations in the Precolumbian Americas. Columbia University Press, Editorial de Ciencias Sociales, El ecologismo de los pobres: Siglo XXI Editores, Foundations of the Critique of Political Economy. Algo nuevo bajo el sol: Historia medioambiental del siglo XXI. Una plaga de ovejas: Casa de Las Americas, Perspectivas del medio ambiente mundial. Timmons, and Nikki Demteria Thanos.

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Globalization and Environmental Crises in Latin America. The Early Spanish Main. Cambridge University Press, Edited by Osvaldo Sunkel and Nicolo Gligo, 17— Sunkel, Osvaldo, and Nicolo Gligo, eds. La nueva crisis planetaria.


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    • Latin America and the Caribbean: Summary for Decision Makers. Environmental History and the Ecological Imagination. By Donald Worster, 45— Oxford University Press, Oxford University Press, , 48— In this regard, see, for example, R. UNEP , United Nations, , pp. There are many descriptions and assessments of these environmental degradation processes, which usually tend to converge. David de Ferranti, Guillermo E. This decomposition process coincides, on a global scale, with the deployment of the trend in the development of the world market that Karl Marx described in the Grundrisse of — in the following terms: The tendency to create the world market is directly given in the concept of capital itself.

    Every limit appears as a barrier to be overcome … Commerce no longer appears here as a function taking place between independent productions for the exchange of their excess, but rather as an essentially all-embracing presupposition and moment of production itself. Firstly quantitative expansion of existing consumption; secondly: Foundations of the Critique of Political Economy [London: Who would not buy the unexplored wilderness, lush and full of promises, if they were sold at fifty dollars a stable?

    And as in that province they hold the just belief that raising cattle will soon be at the top of the fortune, who does not pack their books and papers—although not them, but they are friends of the soul! During these millennia of separation, the peoples of Latin America evolved independently from the civilizations that arose in Europe, Asia and Africa. Cultures in the Americas, for much longer than those in the Old World, were faced with task of developing crops that are difficult to domesticate, so the economic support needed for the development of a complex agricultural civilization was not feasible until around B.

    Editorial UCR, , pp. Centro de Estudios Latinoamericanos Justo Arosemena, , p. Editorial UCR, , p.