Major Environmental Concerns

[ Land | Forest | Biodiversity | Water | Marine & Coastal Environments | Urban & Industrial Environments ]

Underlying Causes

[ Social | Economic | Institutional ]

The Latin America and Caribbean (LAC) region encompasses countries with great economic, social, and environmental diversity. It is not easy to summarize concerns that are common to large and multi-ecosystem nations such as Brazil, the Andean States, and the Caribbean Island States. Yet the region also has a number of common environmental characteristics that distinguish it from other regions of the world. These include immense hydrological systems, such as the Amazon, Orinoco, and Rio de la Plata; a global importance as a carbon sink, particularly in the Amazon Basin; and unique and vast biological diversity and ecosystem heterogeneity.

In addition, the region has other features common to many of its countries. These include high proportions of urban populations, high ethnic diversity coupled with the existence of native indigenous populations, rapidly expanding agricultural frontiers, national economies that are being or have been subjected to structural adjustment programmes, a changing role for the State and its functions, an emerging active civil society, and increasing inequality and poverty. The common and overlapping environmental concerns in the LAC region have been grouped and summarized by the Commission on Development and Environment for LAC (LAC CDE, 1992) under the following themes:

• land use,
• forest resources,
• ecosystems and biological patrimony,
• water resources,
• sea and shoreline resources,
• the environment in human settlements,
• energy,
• non-energy mineral resources, and
• industry.

United Nations Environment Programme