Urgent action is needed to safeguard the biodiversity of Latin America and the Caribbean’s forests

22 May 2020, Santiago, Chile - Urgent action is needed to safeguard the biodiversity of the world’s forests, according to the latest edition of The State of the World’s Forests released today.
These valuable resources are not only part of the natural environment, but also are fundamental to the people that inhabit forest landscapes: according to the SOFO, 8 million forest-dependent people in Latin America are poor and represent about 82 percent of the region’s rural extreme poor.
The SOFO reports that Africa had the highest net loss of forest area in 2010–2020, with a loss of 3.94 million hectares per year, followed by South America with 2.60 million hectares per year. However, since 1990, South America’s losses have decreased substantially.
While Latin America still needs to reduce its deforestation rates, the SOFO report also highlights many positive experiences in sustainable forest use and conservation in several countries.
Brazil nut: a cornerstone of Amazonian forest conservation
The Brazil nut (the seed of the rainforest tree Bertholletia excelsa) is the only globally traded edible seed currently collected from the wild by forest-based harvesters. Over the past few decades, the harvesting of Brazil nuts has supported the “conservation through use” of millions of hectares of Amazonian forest by tens of thousands of rural households.
The nuts contribute significantly to local livelihoods, national economies and forest-based development in a large geographic area, generating tens of millions of US dollars in annual export value in Bolivia, Brazil and Peru. The resource users have developed endogenous management systems that sustain productivity.
Connecting ecosystems to conserve nature and culture in Colombia’s Caribbean
Since 2016, the five-year BioCaribe Connectivity Initiative (Conexión BioCaribe) has been working to reduce the degradation and fragmentation of the valuable ecosystems in the Caribbean Region of northern Colombia.
The results so far include 13 500 hectares of new protected areas, and another 116 000 hectares in the process of creation; 5 000 hectares farmed under alternative models of sustainable production, with more than 1 500 families having participated in farmer field schools; 1 300 hectares of protected-area buffer zones established with sustainable production plans; and 68 000 hectares of conservation and sustainable use of natural resources established.
Guatemala: community concessions in the Maya Biosphere Reserve
The Maya Biosphere Reserve was created in 1990 to protect the largest area of tropical forest in Central America. It occupies about 2.1 million hectares, including 767 000 hectares under strict protection, 848 400 hectares under multiple use (including concessions) and 497 500 hectares of private holdings in the buffer zone. About 533 000 hectares of concessions have been awarded in the multiple-use area with explicit conservation objectives.
Results in terms of biodiversity conservation in the concessions include sustainable levels of timber harvesting, successful control and reduced incidence of forest fires, maintenance of jaguar populations and low to zero deforestation, which resulted in a 0.1 percent increase in forest cover between 2016 and 2017.
Labelling initiative supports honey produced by Bolivian women
The Mountain Partnership Products (MPP) initiative is a certification and labelling scheme that provides technical and financial support to smallholder mountain producers.One of the products supported by the MPP initiative is honey from Tetragonisca angustula bees, an indigenous forest product carefully harvested by a cooperative of 160 women of the Guarani community in Serranía del Iñao National Park, Chaco Province, Bolivia.
Guarani families have reared bees since ancient times. The honey has become a rare good, however, as deforestation and the introduction of more productive European honeybees has reduced the distribution of the 350 known stingless bee species. Perfectly adapted to the local environment, stingless bees are crucial pollinators; this initiative thus helps not only to support the livelihoods of beekeepers and conserve the bees but also to maintain the existing plant biodiversity through pollination.