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REPORTS:
LATIN
AMERICA
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ENVIRONMENT:
Protected
Areas - On Paper Only
Humberto
Márquez*
CARACAS, (Tierramérica) -
Nearly 25 percent of Latin American
territory is under some sort of nature
protection legislation, but just a
half-dollar per hectare goes towards
management and monitoring of these
areas, says a report by the United
Nations Environment Programme (UNEP).
Most of these protected areas exist
only in the documents that created
them, without the provisions being put
into practice, says a UNEP study
presented at the Fifth World Parks
Congress in Durban, South Africa,
where some 2,000 delegates are meeting
Sep. 8 to Sep. 17.
Latin America possesses the greatest
combined area of protected lands,
representing nearly 25 percent.
Meanwhile, just 18 percent of North
American territory and 14.5 percent of
Southern and Eastern Africa are
protected. The world average is 10
percent of national territory under
some protective legislation.
The protected areas in Latin America
and the Caribbean need human and
financial resources for their
administration, appropriate laws and
the institutions to apply them, and
planning and coordination among the
agencies entrusted with their
management, states the UNEP report.
The state has an indelegable
responsibility to safeguard natural
areas as public heritage, the document
says.
As with many other matters in this
region, just scratching the surface of
the issue leads to concerns of poverty
and social exclusion.
One example is the Montes Azules
biosphere reserve in the southern
Mexican state of Chiapas, which in the
past two decades lost 40 percent of
its forest cover -- amidst a context
of misery and violence.
Its 331,000 hectares are home to 163
of the 439 species of mammals in
Mexico, 500 bird and 800 butterfly
species. The reserve is set in the
Lacandona jungle, where Chole,
Tojolabal, Tzeltal and Tzoltzil
Indians live, and where the insurgent
Zapatista National Liberation Army (EZLN)
is based.
There, ”the landscape of
deforestation and pillage causes a
feeling of spiritual desolation, not
just visual,” poet Homero Aridjis,
president of the environmentalist
Group of 100, told Tierramérica.
Another sign that protection must move
from paper into practice is the
trouble afflicting the Río Plátano
biosphere reserve in Honduras, part of
the Mesoamerican Biological Corridor,
whose 815,000 hectares were declared
natural heritage of humanity by UNESCO
(United Nations Educational,
Scientific and Cultural Organisation).
But the Honduran reserve could lose
that status at any moment.
Deforestation advances at the hand of
the 45,000 families living in the
area. But the state is intervening,
alongside UNESCO, to ”redouble
protection efforts and to raise
awareness among the communities,”
Honduran environment secretary Fausto
Mejía told Tierramérica.
Citizen participation is essential,
says the UNEP report, based on
questionnaires put to state entities
and non-governmental organisations
specialising in environmental issues.
Nine out of 10 countries in the region
have legal instruments for protecting
their natural wealth, ranging from
national environmental councils or
commissions in Brazil, Cuba and
Ecuador, to committees for each
protected area, as in Argentina and
Bolivia.
”We encourage consultations with the
local communities for our five
wildlife refuges, which in theory are
untouchable, and the seven reserves
where local residents have limited use
of the areas,” biologist Xavier
Elguezabal, with Venezuela's
environment ministry, told Tierramérica.
Data provided by 23 countries for the
UNEP report show that there are 2,267
protected areas in Latin America and
the Caribbean, covering 211 million
hectares, with an average of 99,000
hectares each. But the funds set aside
for managing these areas is just 56
cents on the dollar per hectare.
The country with most protected areas
is Brazil (582), followed by Cuba
(236), Venezuela (229), Mexico and
Costa Rica (150 each), Jamaica (133)
and Guatemala (108).
Bolivia has relatively few such areas
(20), but they are enormous, averaging
825,000 hectares. In El Salvador, with
just nine, the reserves cover an
average of 959 hectares each.
Venezuela stands out because 61
percent of its territory is under some
form of protection, followed by Belize
with 44 percent, and Panama, with 32
percent.
All of the countries in the region are
involved in international cooperation
programmes aimed at nature reserves,
and all signed the Convention on
Biological Diversity (Rio de Janeiro,
1992).
Furthermore, all are parties to the
Convention on International Trade in
Endangered Species of Fauna and Flora
(CITES), and have ratified the U.N.
Framework Convention on Climate
Change. But paper is not enough, say
activists and officials.
UNEP is calling for national oversight
plans, with strategies for the medium
and long terms.
Ecological inventories are also
needed, including environmental,
social and economic variables, and
there must be greater coordination
among institutions, says the U.N.
agency.
The world's protected areas now cover
more land than that under permanent,
arable crops, making it the most
significant form of land use in
depressed rural areas, UNEP executive
director Klaus Toepfer told delegates
to the World Parks Congress.
”Since 1962, the year of the first
World Parks Congress, the number of
(protected) sites has really
mushroomed, rising from an area of
some two million square km to over 18
million today,” Toepfer said.
But Toepfer stressed that merely
adding to the list of protected areas
cannot be an end in itself.
”Put simply, we cannot pat ourselves
on the backs if we end up with islands
of well-protected wildlife, habitats
and ecosystems in a sea of
environmental degradation,” said the
UNEP chief.
(* Eddie Koch/South Africa, Thelma Mejía/Honduras
and Pilar Franco/Mexico contributed to
this report. Originally published Sep.
13 by Latin American newspapers that
are part of the Tierramérica network.
Tierramérica is a specialised news
service produced by IPS with the
backing of the United Nations
Development Programme and the United
Nations Environment Programme.)
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