Since the remarkable “Breaking the Tragedy of Horizon” speech by Mark Carney, Governor of the Bank of England, in 2015, climate-related risks entered the agenda of concerns for the financial supervisor and regulator. Two years later, in December 2017, eight central banks and supervisors (including Banco de Mexico) established the Network of Central Banks and Supervisors for Greening the Financial System (NGFS).
Latin America and the Caribbean (LAC) has the most biodiverse habitat in the world, the Amazon rainforest. In addition, this region is the most humid in the world, contains the most extensive wetlands on the planet and has more than 30% of the world's drinking water reserves. Over 10% of its land surface is protected (211 million hectares). Unfortunately, this region suffers from an increasing pressure on biodiversity due to poor development management, including unsustainable use of natural resources, pollution, degradation and change of land use.
When we talk about women’s empowerment, it is difficult to grasp what we actually mean. Does it refer to women’s attitude towards gender violence? Or does it mean women’s economic independence and decision-making power? Does it perhaps imply access to productive resources, education and other opportunities? Or might it mean control over time? Or does it concern all these aspects?
The Mané Dendê River Basin in the western part of Salvador (the capital of Bahia) has a population of about 44,000. Eighty percent of households in the area have incomes below the minimum wage, and 32 percent of the Salvador population lives in informal settlements, sometimes in areas prone to flooding and with poor access to public services.
Countries such as Chile and Jamaica are encouraging the deployment of electric cars, even while they produce electricity from fossil fuels.
Jane and Arturo enjoyed a tasty lobster and a pina colada while soaking their feet in the turquoise waters of Hispaniola Island, relaxing after a sightseeing trip where they spotted migratory birds and dived alongside manatees within green and thick mangroves. Little did they know that, throughout its life, that lobster had passed several phases of its growth in these amphibious forests resistant to salinity, which grow in estuaries and shallow waters.
In the past few years, ‘Nature-based Solutions’ has emerged as a new umbrella term for measures “inspired and supported by nature”. Nature-based Solutions may include a range of urban, coastal and land-based approaches, such as coral reef restoration, afforestation, watershed creation, green roofs and facades and more. These types of ecological approaches that utilize the natural world, can help policymakers tackle many societal issues, such as climate change.
Latin America and the Caribbean is a region with a huge social, cultural, political, and economic diversity that has made major strides in poverty reduction. Relevant quantitative data shows that at least 70 million people pulled out of extreme poverty and moved up the social ladder, swelling the ranks of the middle class to more than one-third of the region’s population.
The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) launched a warning call, emphasizing the benefits of keeping the temperature rise below 1.5 degrees, as to date our planet is living the consequences of an increase of temperature between 0.8 ° C and 1.2 ° C on average. The countries that signed the Paris Agreement and committed to taking climate action should look for new ways to address the problem and should do it quickly.
The increase in recent years of intensive hazardous events in Latin America and the Caribbean (LAC), such as the devastating Hurricanes in 2017 (Harvey, Irma, Maria, Nate, and others), the intensive earthquake in Ecuador in April 2016, the Argentina Floods in 2013 and many other events, have caused many fatalities, injuries, disruptions of infrastructure and people’s livelihood, as well as vast economic losses.