Latin America: The Most Biodiverse and the Most Threatened

One million of the eight million species estimated to exist in the world is in danger of extinction, notably in Latin America. With the UN Biodiversity Conference taking place in Montreal, are rich countries willing to finance the protection of biodiversity, indispensable for our survival on the planet?

Illustration: Erick Retana

By Cristian Ascencio

According to the UN Environment Programme, 60% of the global land and water species can be found in Latin America. As the home of the greatest variety of organisms, it is the most biodiverse region worldwide.

Indeed, the continent harbors iconic world biodiversity ecosystems, such as the Amazon, where 10% of the species in the planet are found. But that is just what we know: frequently, new plants, fish, mammals, birds or insects are found in any corner of Latin America. For instance, this year, researchers confirmed the discovery of two colorful fish species in the Amazon. One of them, the Poecilocharax rhizophilus, is the most miniature darter ever identified. 

Also in 2022, Peru’s Servicio Nacional de Areas Naturales Protegidas announced the discovery of a tree species in the region of Loreto, which was named Virola parvusligna, meaning ‘little tree’ in Latin.  

But humanity’s ferocious pressure on ecosystems could even lead to the disappearance of these new species. Actually, researchers have warned that the newly discovered tiny fish is in danger of going extinct. 

Murilo Pastana, postdoctoral research fellow at the Smithsonian National Museum of Natural History and member of the team that discovered the fish, told CNN that “in the field, we saw the forest on fire, logging trucks carrying out huge trees, and cleared patches turned into cattle pasture. This made us feel a lot of urgency to document these species and publish this paper as quickly as possible.”

Even though Latin America is the most biodiverse region worldwide, it is also the one with the most biodiversity loss, as detailed by the World Wildlife Fund (WWF) in its “Living Planet Report 2022”. The study monitored populations of 32,000 groups of species between 1970 and 2018. While populations showed a 69% decrease around the world, the decline in Latin America and the Caribbean reached 94%, far greater than in any other region.

Sandra Valenzuela, Director of WWF Colombia, delivers two concerning facts: a football field of forest is lost every two seconds, and a third of the world’s wetlands has been lost since 1970. “This situation is one of the greatest threats faced by humanity nowadays, our well-being is entirely reliant on the health of nature and ecosystems.”

The COP15 started this week in Montreal, Canada, with the aim to restrain this crisis. This year’s meeting, led by China, will end on December 19th. Environmental organizations and scientists expect the conference to have an outcome of serious and achievable commitments. “This Global Conference must conclude with agreements that are proportional to the magnitude of the crisis,” Valenzuela says.

But there are lingering doubts. One is precisely the meeting’s leadership, since China has been historically reluctant to follow conservationist stances. There are also questions about the United States, even though the country has not ratified the Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD), it will attend the conference without a right to vote. Republicans in that country have blocked the ratification of the agreement in Congress, arguing that the nation would lose autonomy and would have to assume an economic cost. Still, the country has committed to the 30×30 initiative, which seeks to protect 30% of Earth’s land and ocean area by 2030. 

“As the only country that has not ratified it, it shows a lack of commitment towards ending the crisis of extinction. The United States should adhere to it and allocate funds to help protect the planet’s biodiversity,” said Tierra Curry, researcher at the Center for Biological Diversity, in an article to the newspaper El Pais. She added that “it is a major problem when governments treat the extinction crisis and the climate crisis as different matters. We need to take urgent simultaneous measures pertaining to both, focusing on issues of justice and sustainability of indigenous populations and vulnerable communities.” 

The Amazon exemplifies that urgency. According to studies based on satellite images, conducted by Fundacion EcoCiencia, based in Ecuador, the Amazon lost 9.7% of its natural vegetation between 1985 and 2021, which accounts for 75 million hectares —an area equivalent to the state of Texas. Most of these hectares of land have been turned into agricultural or cattle areas.

Apart from the Amazon, other lesser-known places in Latin America have a complex and endangered biodiversity. For instance, the paramos (alpine tundra ecosystems), the Patagonia and the Atacama desert in the north of Chile. There on the coast, hundreds of species of plants grow and are nurtured by the Pacific’s fog. These plants are a lesson of life in extreme conditions of dryness, but most of them are threatened by human’s demographic expansion. Should these plants disappear, so would insects, reptiles (that feed on the insects), foxes and birds (that feed on the reptiles).

Jaime Pizarro-Araya, entomologist of Universidad de La Serena, has taken part in the discovery of fifty new species of arthropods in that area, including the tenebrio de las dunas,  a darkling beetle that lives in the Pan de Azucar National Park.

But recently, he made a discovery contrary to what he is used to: a species that went extinct. “After fifteen years of study, we suggested the Ministry of the Environment declare a beetle from an island in Huasco as extinct. It would be the first officially extinct insect in Chile”. In that case, Pizzaro explains, the industrial activity taking place in the beetle’s area could have influenced its disappearance. Pizarro asserts that, biodiversity aside, it is important to protect these species due to endemism —the state of animals and plants coming from a single geographic location. “That is why we are unaware of how many species have gone extinct without even being discovered.”

Carmen Josse, Executive Director of Fundacion EcoCiencia and PhD in biological sciences  specialized in vegetation and biogeography, expounds that “oftentimes we don’t understand that biodiversity has essential roles, such as keeping soils fertile or pollination.” She warns that this problem will eventually affect humanity, for instance, its food security. “Our oceans are losing species as a result of absurd overfishing; we are wiping out entire populations of marine species that we don’t even eat just because they get tangled up in enormous nets.”

But not all is lost, and Latin America is taking significant steps. For example Ecuador, Panama and Peru have accomplished the first target of protecting 17% of their land by 2020. And Chile, Colombia and Mexico, have turned 10% of their coastal and marine areas into protected areas. Obviously, there is much to be done. At global level, none of the twenty targets of the convention have been entirely fulfilled.

For Josse, it is key that the actions discussed in the COP15 (such as the designation of protected areas) have funding and are aimed exclusively at conservation, without coexisting with mining projects, for example. “The areas that are designated for conservation must be managed to that end and funded to attain the expected results, otherwise it will all be left on paper.”

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