The continent of South America accounts for over half of the world's percentage of deforestation. Tropical deforestation is a major cause of climate change; and, unfortunately, Latin America is no stranger to this issue—more forests have been destroyed in this region than in any other since the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change was adopted in 1992. Says co-author Lisa Deutsch: "The regime shifts database has allowed the creation of a consistent framework to systematically analyze impacts, key drivers, underlying feedbacks, and management options.". This also means that most (72%) deforestation in Brazil is driven by cattle ranching. As a consequence of the joint efforts made by the UN, regional integration mechanisms, Non-Governmental Organizations (NGOs) and civil society, governments have been working to implement sustainable development on the continent based on the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGS). Over the past two decades, no other region has experienced a faster agricultural expansion than that of Latin America. It caused land ownership to be consolidated into fewer individuals, favouring expansion of soy agriculture. Over several years, centre researchers have developed a database called the Regime Shift database consisting of cases describing the sudden shift of a system from one state to another, often in circumstances where it is difficult to return to the former state. One case is deforestation in Paraguay.Photo: Wikimedia Commons, Bildtext får vara max två rader text. Nonetheless, there has not been as much focus on aspects such as trade or the role of public policies in causing stability – or instability – in a system. For South America, the situation has been changing. Year on year, a space of tropical forest the size of Great Britain is "converted" from an area equal to the size of Europe. F Four of the countries that have lost the most forest cover since 2001 are located in South America. The years where more hectares were lost were 2009 and 2014. Deforestation in Latin America is advancing rapidly on several fronts. Products from big cats — jaguar paste, pelts and claws — are smuggled to China, where they … One of the effects that most worries the experts is the loss of biodiversity, due to the natural alterations caused by humanity that increase the problems derived from climate change. . Variables in yellow belong to feedbacks whereas variables in gray are outside feedbacks; hence by definition they are external drivers: their dynamic behavior does not depend on the state variables of the system. Left: causal-loop diagram for the eco-certified coffee case study. Even though every story is unique, by comparing the characteristics and drivers in the different instances, the authors start to find patterns and common features that would enable or hinder such drastic change. Colombia, Peru and Bolivia had particularly big surges in deforestation. The authors conclude that “although more cases are needed, our preliminary results show that policy outcomes are often nonlinear with unforeseen consequences, including leakage effects between cases.”. Between 2001 and 2015 the jungle lost an average of almost 2 million hectares in a period of 15 years. Because of deforestation, environmental problems such as aridity, erosion and the loss of biodiversity caused by habitat damage, have become the headaches of Latin American leaders. 2019. Conservationists sound alarm of threat to jaguars from raging Amazon fires and deforestation. Preliminary data indicate the rate of deforestation has increased further in 2020 in many areas. SEE ALSO: How Organized Crime Profits from Deforestation in Colombia Latin America is home to a wide variety of land and marine species highly coveted in Asian black markets. We can’t protect nature and wildlife, safeguard human health and tackle the climate crisis unless we STOP deforestation and change how we manage forests! Beef production in Latin America is linked to deforestation. The Case of Brazil Economic data Lumber exports < 5% of world total Timber value = several trillion Correct answers: 2 question: Most of the world's deforestation (about 60%) occurs in A. Latin America B. Africa C. Asia D. North America One of the most famous measures is the national forest programs. The inset shows the temporal horizon at which each case study is described. Toward understanding the dynamics of land change in Latin America: potential utility of a resilience approach for building archetypes of land-systems change. Read More. Satellite data show tree cover loss in South America rose 2.8% between 2018 and 2019. Haiti and the Amazon the most critical places in Latin America and the Caribbean. The foremost reason of deforestation in Latin America is the requirement for food, fuel, shelter, and foreign exchange. Latin America is commonly known for its pure rain forests and all of the different species that inhabit this area. Brazil, where deforestation is seen as the main cause of carbon emissions, has set itself a voluntary goal to reduce illegal logging, annually, in the Amazon, to an annual maximum of 3,900 km 2 by 2020. #DeforestationFronts: Share : Download the report. On December 1, 2020, the Brazilian space agency INPE announced that deforestation in the Brazilian Amazon had risen to a record level, the highest in 12 years. French retailer Casino has said that it has been actively fighting deforestation across its branches in Latin America for many years.. United Nations Food and Agricultural Organization (FAO) explains that Latin American and the Caribbean lost 4.7 million hectares, which corresponded to 65% of the global losses during the 2000-20005. One example is how the soy farming expansion in Brazil, Uraguay and Argentina and has pushed cattle ranchers into El Chaco, of neighbouring Paraguay. In Latin America and Southeast Asia a majority of deforestation is today the result of industrial activities, notably cattle ranching in the Amazon and large-scale agriculture and intensive logging in Southeast Asia. Blue arrows denote positive relationships, orange arrows negative relationships. What's the point? In accordance to the Monitoring Project of the Andean Amazon (MAAP), the causes of deforestation were logging, agriculture, livestock, illegal mining, infrastructure works and illicit crops. One of the hardest struggles in much of Latin America is the issue of Deforestation in the area, specifically of the Amazon Rainforest. VBDO, IUCN NL and WWF NL provide recommendations for Dutch investors to prevent them from contributing to deforestation linked to cattle production through This paper arose from the workshop “Seeking sustainable pathways for land use change” organized by the South American Institute of Resilience and Sustainability Studies (http://sarasinstitute.org) in Uruguay, March 2016, during which a regionally, and topically, diverse group of scholars came together with practitioners and regional government representatives to conceptualize recent land-use change in Latin America.