The South America Handbook by Heenan Patrick;Lamontagne Monique;

Author:Heenan, Patrick;Lamontagne, Monique;
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 1603898
Publisher: Taylor & Francis Group

South America and the New Century

Chapter Sixteen

Environment and Natural Resources

Jonathan R. Barton

Dr Jonathan R. Barton is a Lecturer in the School of Development Studies at the University of East Anglia, Norwich.

South America is a continent rich in natural resources and diverse environments. It was primarily for this reason that Spanish, Portuguese, British, French and Dutch colonizers entered the continent from the 1500s, that European and US merchant houses became involved in the import-export trade once colonialism had ended, and that the nation-states of South America became integrated into the international economy during the 20th century. Although there was extensive use of the resource base, for agriculture and mineral extraction, during the pre-Columbian period, it has been during the 500 years of post-Columbian development that resource exploitation has been at its most intense.

The outcomes of this process of exploitation, associated with extensive changes in land use, have included a reduction in biodiversity; soil erosion; the overextraction and overconsumption of particular resources, such as fisheries and forests; impoverished rural environments, with low levels of sanitation and preventive health care; and also impoverished urban environments, characterized by poor air quality and inadequate disposal of waste. The question that has been posed, and even more starkly in the past ten years than before, is whether the environments of South America have now reached breaking point. It has become urgently necessary to ascertain whether, and to what extent, these environments and natural resource bases have been exploited beyond sustainable levels, thus exceeding their natural capacities for regeneration. These questions will need to be answered if South America is to move beyond its long history of environmental degradation and development, firmly tied to a depleting resource base, toward a more sustainable model.

The term “sustainable development” entered the lexicon of governance in South America, as elsewhere, following the publication in 1987 of the Brundtland Report, and became consolidated as a development objective at a summit conference of the Organization of American States held in Santa Cruz de la Sierra, in Bolivia, in 1996. Sustainable development refers to the need to maintain balance between economic, social and environmental systems, and to develop activities that consider these systems simultaneously and lead to inter-generational equity, both in resource endowments and in quality of environments. During the late 1980s and then the 1990s, the republics of South America established environment agencies, usually for the first time, while health, agriculture, industry and transport ministries, nongovernmental organizations, and international agencies all became more active in tackling local and national environmental issues, and moving toward greater sustainability. The environmental issues being addressed by these varied institutions can be categorized within “green,” “blue,” and “brown” agendas. The “green” agenda is concerned with issues of forestry, biodiversity, and changes in land use more generally; the “blue” agenda covers water resources, sanitation, and marine environments; and the “brown” agenda refers to problems of industrialization, transportation, and urbanization. There are, of course, strong overlaps across these agendas, but fragmentation has taken place for the purposes of policymaking and resource allocation.

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