Biodiversity and development: thoughts from Latin America and the Caribbean
Work area(s)
Biodiversity and development: thoughts from Latin America and the Caribbean
- Publication type: Project documents
- Publication corporate author (Institutional author): NU. CEPAL
- Physical description: 40 pages
- Publisher: ECLAC
- UN symbol (Signature): LC/TS.2024/95
- Date: 18 August 2025
Abstract
This document examines the challenges and opportunities facing Latin America and the Caribbean in biodiversity conservation and sustainable development. While the region has abundant natural resources that have been instrumental in driving economic growth, their overexploitation has jeopardized this valuable heritage and exacerbated social inequality, and that, together with habitat loss, deforestation and climate change, threatens long-term sustainability. In that context, the development model must be reoriented towards a more sustainable one that values, preserves and regenerates the region’s natural heritage.
Achieving this requires strengthening the participation of local institutions and actors and promoting research, investment and effective environmental governance, including the recognition of Indigenous Peoples, as key actors in the protection of biodiversity. Integrating conservation into public policies and decision-making processes will enable the region not only to ensure a more prosperous and sustainable future for its inhabitants, but also to produce innovative solutions to environmental challenges.
Table of contents
- Introduction
- 1. The Latin American and Caribbean region is endowed with a rich natural heritage that, in addition to helping regulate the planet’s climate, supports a vast number of livelihoods. Its deterioration not only jeopardizes environmental sustainability, but also entails the depletion of an asset that is essential for economic and social development
- 2. Latin America and the Caribbean has the opportunity to transform its development model through new consumption and production practices that boost key sectors and, at the same time, preserve and recover its valuable natural heritage
- 3. Transforming the unsustainable development model requires significant increases in biodiversity investment. The recovery of natural heritage will not only help ensure development sustainability, but will also prevent its current bases from being compromised in the long term
- 4. Biodiversity loss and climate change are closely interconnected: they affect and exacerbate each other. Reversing the negative reciprocal effects requires adopting a comprehensive strategy that addresses both phenomena jointly, promoting coordinated actions in support of nature
- 5. Bolstering biodiversity as a basis for the region’s development requires improving and promoting transformative governance and institutional capacities and resources in the region’s countries, as well as strengthening the rule of law, justice systems and environmental democracy.