Flavia Liberona
Executive Manager of Terram Foundation
Since some time ago, human beings have been slowly understanding the importance of biodiversity, the way we depend on it, and how it is and has been the support of our societies and cultures. Something that seems so obvious, it has been relegaded to second and third place in contemporary societies.
Conservation or nature protection hasn’t been a relevant theme for a majority of the population, neither governments or political class. Important things have been progress, development and ‘domestication’ of natural environments, whether it’s establishing cities, factories, different types of crops, without measuring consequences or impacts it might generate.
This idea of progress thta was set up in our society, which tries to harmonize everything, domesticate nature, increase production, reduce costs and increase business incomes, is still firm. Disregard to nature means for most people that technological development or economic renevues are more important than conservation.
We have needed many years of work by NGOs, scientists, reports by rural communities and indigenous leaders, among others, to slowly set up some sensibility about the importance of protecting nature. Every day and with more arguments coming from science, politicians are being forced to understand that protecting nature and native ecosystems – whether they’re terrestrial or marine, is important to protect ourselves. But the process has been slow, very slow.
According to reports, the poorest countries and those that meet most vulnerability conditions according to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change, will be the most affected, but there are no societies or countries that can escape the situation.
Now, countries have to decide how to face the effects of climate change. Possible paths to follow in order to soften the impacts are clear: reducing greeenhouse gas emissions by 50% by 2030, that is to say, within 12 years; and reaching zero greenhouse gas emissions by 2050, in order to avoid the occurrence of extremely catastrophic events affecting humankind.
In this scenario, conservation and biodiversity protection is starting to have a relevant role: protecting basins with native vegetation to keep and guarantee water resources, establishing protected terrestrial and marine areas, foresting and restoring with native vegetation, avoiding the overload of marine ecosystems or recovering fishery.
They all are measures that, if well articulated, they can become very relevant at the time of relieving the effects of climate change, especially in a country like Chile, which is categorised as highly vulnerable to its impacts.