The Importance of Protected Areas in Mitigating Climate Change and Conserving Ecosystems in Latin America and the Caribbean

Abstract

Biodiversity conservation in a world under climate change is a significant challenge for Latin America and the Caribbean (LAC), which holds 60% of global terrestrial life. Six of the ten most biodiverse countries (Brazil, Colombia, Ecuador, Mexico, Peru, and Venezuela) are in LAC, and biodiversity hotspots are well-represented along the region’s coasts and mainland. The region has the most significant areas of tropical forest and large portions of subtropical forests, temperate steppe, and subantarctic Patagonia. Protected areas offer opportunities to conserve unique biodiversity, provide ecosystem services, and mitigate climate change effects. LAC’s contribution to carbon capture, by protecting extensive forests and other natural ecosystems, is potentially opening tremendous economic opportunities under the green economy paradigm. This chapter describes the current status of protected areas in LAC and explains how this conservation mechanism should play a mitigation role. LAC’s protected areas cover almost all types of terrestrial and marine ecosystems, and their number is increasing in the region. Although protected areas mitigate the effects of climate change on biodiversity, climate change and traditional environmental problems like deforestation, mining, and agriculture affect the viability of protected areas. Thus, their expansion and connectivity throughout the region are crucial to combat climate change and biodiversity loss. Nature is also essential to the region’s biocultural diversity, including a miriad of complex cosmovisions and traditions. In LAC’s unique ecosystems, rich biodiversity is spatially correlated with rich cultural diversity, granting opportunity for Indigenous Peoples and Local Communities to lead experiences in managing protected areas in biologically and culturally diverse ecosystems of LAC.