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The first quantitative analysis of the impacts and risks associated with climate change in 15 protected areas in Latin America and the Caribbean has worrying conclusions. The study, which was presented this Tuesday in Montevideo, warns of rising climate risks in five global geoparks and ten UNESCO biosphere reserves in the region, where climate change has caused droughts, floods, forest fires and landslides. land. “All 15 sites are experiencing higher temperatures and a change in precipitation patterns,” reads the report Assessment of climate change in Biosphere Reserves and UNESCO World Geoparks in Latin America and the Caribbean. If current trends continue, its authors warn, these impacts will increase.
The areas chosen for this UNESCO analysis are located in nine countries: Mexico, Guatemala, Honduras, Saint Kitts and Nevis, Ecuador, Chile, Argentina, Uruguay and Brazil. They were selected for their geographical diversity and in total they occupy 1.02 million square kilometers (an area similar to that of Bolivia), where around 111 million people live. For UNESCO, these protected areas function as climate change observatories and can contribute substantially to national and international climate policy.
Each of the 15 sites studied, the report states, is exposed and can be impacted by a series of representative climate risks: from the loss of vegetation cover due to increased temperatures and decreased rainfall to the possibility of loss of lives due to flooding due to increased extreme rainfall in rural populations. Large or out-of-control fires are also among the most important risks, one of the co-authors of the study, Serena Heckler, a UNESCO specialist in Ecological and Earth Sciences, tells América Futura.
“The scenarios in the coming decades are going to be much more challenging,” says Heckler. Against this backdrop, the author explains, the study presents a methodology to compile and generate reference data and thus facilitate greater risk planning and adaptation to climate change. “For each risk, there are plans that can be put in place, but the first step is to recognize it and know its degree of severity,” she adds. In total, 45 priority climate risks were recorded, identified from interviews with site managers and the review of available documentation. Of these, the study evaluated the 11 most relevant risks, such as the aforementioned forest fires.
Those responsible for the sites underestimate the risks
One of the aspects that caught the attention of Heckler and his colleagues is that the managers or those responsible for the sites analyzed underestimated the risks that threaten their territories. In the case of forest fires, they were only identified as a priority impact in 6 of the 15 areas, when the report shows that 13 of them present a medium or high risk of suffering them. “Forest fires represent a risk for almost all sites. It doesn't matter if they are from Chile, Mexico, Ecuador or the Caribbean. Throughout the region, forest fires are and will continue to be very important risks,” says Heckler.
Among the data presented by the report, the loss of more than 14,000 km² of forest cover (forests) stands out between 2015 and 2021, of which 2,740 km² are attributed to forest fires. In addition, another 23,000 km² of the evaluated sites are at risk of river flooding, impacting 3.3 million people. The study maintains that more than 97,000 km² are at risk of landslides, with more than 8 million people living in those areas. Likewise, the evaluation shows that 10.7 million people live in areas exposed to interruptions in the supply of drinking water.
“We hope this report is a call to action. Now the COP28—climate summit—is taking place and not only national governments, but all actors have to understand that climate change impacts all aspects of our lives: at home, the economy, ecosystems, agriculture…” , Heckler remarks. Faced with this scenario, the expert emphasizes the importance of planning at a local scale, which in many cases combines the ancestral wisdom of indigenous peoples with scientific knowledge, in order to adapt and mitigate climatological impacts.
To exemplify the above, Heckler cites some of the experiences carried out in the Biosphere Reserves analyzed in Honduras and Guatemala. “In Honduras, we have examples of good work practices with indigenous peoples, who with their knowledge identified indicators of intense rains to be able to put together an early warning system for possible floods.” In the case of Guatemala, he continues, local managers of the Mayan Biosphere Reserve worked with the communities to participatively address the fires, which pose a high risk for the protected area and its inhabitants.
Among the contributions of this study is also the preparation of a climate profile for each of the 15 sites analyzed, with basic information about the place and the history of climate risks. Each profile includes historical, current and projected climatology based on data from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, in addition to the results of the assessment contained in the report. The objective of this profile, Heckler notes, is to contribute to the participatory planning of adaptation to climate change in each of the sites analyzed.
“The first effect sought with this study is that site managers, at the local and national level, use these profiles to improve adaptation planning. The second is that we, UNESCO, can use the methodology to better understand the impacts of climate change in our network of sites, not only in Latin America and the Caribbean, but throughout the world,” adds Heckler. In this direction, they first aspire to develop more risk assessments and climate profiles in the more than 140 UNESCO Biosphere Reserves and Global Geoparks in Latin America and the Caribbean. “If financing allows it,” the report clarifies.
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