Sostenibilidad

In a not too distant future, in a galaxy very similar to ours, the statistics will be all remote. Satellites will take photos and scan the entire surface of a given country, or a region. Algorithms tuned for many years with intense validation work in the field, will prepare maps of agricultural areas, livestock, forest, fallow land and other types of uses.

President Carlos Alvarado together with the first lady, Claudia Dobles, recently presented the Decarbonization Plan of Costa Rica. The plan is based on the Paris Agreement that seeks to limit the increase in global temperature well below 2 ° C above pre-industrial levels.

Groundwater accounts for one third of the world’s unfrozen, fresh water resources, providing 50% of drinking water and the main source of water for major industries, particularly irrigation (UN-IGRAC 2019). For each of the past 50 years, the global demand for groundwater has doubled, leading to one third of international basins currently experiencing groundwater storage distress as one of the consequences (Wada and Heinrich 2012).

The Word disaster originates from the Greek dis (a negative prefix) and astrum (star), indicating a bad omen, whereas resilience comes from re (repeat) and silire (get ahead) – the ability to get back on track and overcome. At the Inter-American Development Bank (IDB), we are committed to make all projects RESILIENT whether or not they are exposed to natural disasters.

This Friday, March 22nd is World Water Day 2019. This year's theme is "Do not Leave Anyone Behind", in line with the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development, which promises the benefit of sustainable development progress for all.

This is what happened in Honduras between 2013 and 2016, the pine weevil, a beetle the size of a drop of water attacked an area equivalent to 1 million soccer fields in forests (500,000 hectares). This represents 25% of the countries' pine forest. Sadly, 100 million trees were destroyed. The affected area represents the loss of coverage that would have occurred in Honduras' pine forest in the next 110 years with the current deforestation rates; contributing around 200 million tons of CO2.

Only one third of the fish consumed in Haiti is supplied by the country´s marine fisheries, even though Haiti has one of the region’s lowest consumption of fish per capita, with approximately 5.8 kg per person per year (FAO, 2017). This gap between local consumption and local fish production is the result of the low productivity of the sector, which can be explained by several factors.

Disasters are named after the natural phenomenon that caused them (in the case of tropical storms, they are named in alphabetical order, i.e. Hurricane Mitch, Katrina, etc.) or by the name of geological landmarks (the Nevado del Ruiz, the Casitas volcano or like, the Fuego volcano). Nevertheless, in the naming the most important part is not taken into account, the people affected.

El año pasado, el Banco Interamericano de Desarrollo celebró su aniversario número 60. Durante las últimas seis décadas, ha tenido un rol transformativo fomentando el desarrollo en América Latina y el Caribe (ALC). Al reflexionar sobre muchos de estos avances positivos y mirando hacia adelante, nos preguntamos, ¿cuál será nuestra contribución a la región en las próximas décadas? Esta reflexión debe tener en cuenta que nos enfrentamos a emergencias ecológicas y climáticas simultáneas y superpuestas.