The challenges of climate change, more challenges for Latin America

Today marks the International Day against Climate Change, 2022 has shown worldwide the effects of global warming and the impacts on broad swaths of the population. The OAS reviews the situation in the region and puts the challenges for Latin American countries into perspective.

The American continent has witnessed this year how persistent droughts reveal the bottom of lakes and rivers dried up, cracked soils; Raging fires have also devastated forests one after another during extreme heat waves in the western United States and Canada.

Also in Latin America, the effects of global warming are beginning to take their toll on countries like Chile, Brazil, Argentina and parts of Peru that have had to face extreme and persistent drought, while in tropical areas the rains have come in excess.

This October 24, the world commemorates the World Day against Climate Change, a date that calls for reflection on the impact of the phenomenon associated with the climate and the patterns of human behavior to aggravate it.

In this context, the Organization of American States (OAS) presented a report to put the situation in the region into perspective and how joint public policies should be oriented to deal with the problem.

The study Climate Change: life, democracy, justice, freedom and equality analyzes the situation and the commitments that must be materialized in the short term in the region so that it can overcome the phenomenon that in some areas of the American continent has begun to trigger waves migratory

In others, it exposes vulnerabilities due to the accumulation of one disaster after another caused by extreme natural phenomena.

“There are countries, such as those in the Caribbean and Central America, that are in the group that suffer the most from the consequences and at the same time are the most vulnerable. In the absence of special conditions, the countries of Central America and the Caribbean will come out of each shock with more vulnerabilities and less capacity to face the next one”, the study explains.

And these dynamics -according to the OAS study- are repeated on a scale in each nation among the most vulnerable population and differs from those who have more capacities to deal with the problem.

It is considered that among “the continuous effects of climate change in the OAS member states, the irreparable damage and the high cost it has had stands out, both in human lives and in human displacement and economic destruction.”

The investigation has crossed data from other reports that have emerged in the different regions of the continent, contributions from experts who have systematized the information, and the visits that intergovernmental missions have made to assess the phenomenon in the face of “the serious challenges that the OAS member states are already facing. , and the way in which they can worsen if the factors that cause climate change are not counteracted”, reads the document.