The COVID-19 pandemic has made Latin America’s underlying pre-existing systemic problems radically more evident than before. From the broken healthcare system, to the economic crisis, to gaps in access to education and technology, the infamous label of ‘The Most Unequal Continent in the World’ seems justifiable. The region’s vulnerability to COVID-19 mirrors its susceptibility to the climate crisis, another global emergency that, though apparently perceived as ‘less urgent’ because of its more distant temporal effects, is already transpiring and taking a toll on the lives of Latin Americans, particularly on marginalised and vulnerable communities.
This critical juncture of intersecting crises offers the opportunity to tackle both COVID-19 and the roots of climate injustice in the region, with the hope of not only curving the spread of the coronavirus and preventing future pandemics, but also building hazard-free, climate-resilient and socially inclusive communities in Latin America.
Latin America’s Comorbidities
The pandemic caught Latin America in a moment of economic, political and social fragility. According to CEPAL, during the 2010-2019 period the region’s GDP growth rate decreased from 6% to 0.2%. Furthermore, the 2014-2019 period exhibited the lowest growth since the 1950s (0.4%). In terms of employment, the high rate of informality was already high preceding the pandemic, as was the lack of unemployment benefits and the breach in the access to contributory social protection schemes. Before COVID-19, around 25% of the population experienced very high vulnerability to poverty. The pandemic is expected to push 45 million extra people into poverty, and 28 million more into extreme poverty. In the words of Blofield, Hoffmann, & Llanos (2020), ‘close to half the population in the region is facing an impending humanitarian crisis’.
This inherent structural fragility coincided with a crisis of political legitimacy and incompetence, that has embodied an additional hurdle to Latin America’s deep-seated issues. Tom Gatehouse, researcher and writer for the Latin American Bureau (LAB), draws attention to the unfortunate political moment in which the pandemic hit the region: ‘many countries like Chile, Colombia, Bolivia, Ecuador, Haiti, had experienced major political unrest just months before reporting their first Covid cases. A pandemic demands that civil society makes major sacrifices for the common good, but this is hard to achieve when the people in charge are so badly discredited. Major Latin American nations have had the misfortune of being led by presidents who have downplayed the virus and basically sabotaged a serious pandemic response’. In line with this, Linda Etchart, a lecturer in Human Geography at Kingston University and a contributor at LAB, illustrates how unwavering denial of the pandemic from the Brazilian government caused immense loss of life —more than 473,000 recorded deaths by 6 June 2021—and knock-on effects in neighbouring countries such as Uruguay . As of May 2021, Uruguay reported more than 3.000 new daily confirmed cases, while in February there were generally fewer than 900 cases. Experts link this sharp increase to the cross-border spread of the Brazilian variant of the virus, called P1, which is 2.5 times more contagious than the original.
The Other End of the Iceberg: Climate Injustice
To make matters worse, the region had been experiencing the effects of climate change for at least a couple of decades. Despite Latin America’s minor contribution to climate change, given the region’s low levels of greenhouse gas emissions, it remains the hardest hit by the phenomenon, mainly due to more intense and frequent natural disasters.
Many of the communities who are now on the frontlines of the pandemic were already living on the forefront of the climate crisis, bearing the brunt of poverty. While enduring unemployment or informality, lack of access to land, housing, and basic services, they also face devastating storms, wildfires, crop failure, and prolonged drought–in many cases forcing migration. Climate-induced migration and displacement is a common phenomenon in Central America, particularly in El Salvador, Nicaragua, Guatemala and Honduras, where agricultural livelihoods have been threatened by severe drought, pest outbreaks, tropical storms and hurricanes for decades. In November 2020, many small farmers in El Salvador -whose livelihoods were already on the brink because of the COVID-19 pandemic- lost their homes and crops due to the impact of the tropical storms Eta and Iota, facing acute food insecurity, lack of access to safe water, and distress, among other issues. Frontline groups include inhabitants of informal settlements and slums surrounding metropolises, indigenous and rural communities, undocumented migrants, women and certain particular collectives such as the LGBTQ+ community. Sue Brandford, freelance journalist and News and Current Affairs Editor at LAB, pointed out the particular situation of rural families all over the region who ‘are being driven off the land by increased drought and industrialised farming, which is increasingly taking over land and using scarce water resources...expelled from the land, impoverished families are highly vulnerable to COVID’, mainly due to poverty and inefficient official food policies which ‘have led to high levels of diabetes, obesity, high blood pressure and other comorbidities’. Gatehouse also adds that ‘the drought experienced by much of the region over the last decade has contributed to major water scarcity, meaning it is more difficult for people to follow basic hygiene precautions such as handwashing’.
The case of indigenous communities is particularly sensitive. Prior to the pandemic, many of these groups were already experiencing the severe impacts of the expansion of the extractive frontier, where the prevalence of private and state agricultural and mining interests lead to indigenous communities ‘losing access to resources, such as clean water, necessary for their survival, with communities dispossessed of their lands and displaced’, as stated by Linda Etchart. To exacerbate matters further, COVID-19 was introduced into rural areas by miners and loggers, threatening the lives of indigenous peoples who have little resistance to infectious diseases. Such is the case of the Yanomami territory in north Brazil, which was illegally invaded by tens of thousands of gold-panners, who introduced the coronavirus into a community that was already suffering from serious malnutrition, making its impact a lot worse.
The Need for Intersecting and Synergetic Policy-Making
Given the cross-sectional relationship of the COVID-19 crisis and the climate crisis and their parallels, the efforts made to confront the former could be designed in such a way that enables the meaningfully addressing of the root causes of the latter.
Some intersectional policy suggestions to increase resilience to COVID-19 and also mitigate the effects of the climate crisis are:
Investing in the strengthening and decentralisation of public health systems. ‘Public health systems across most of Latin America have long been inadequate and have struggled to cope, even reaching the verge of collapse in several countries’, Tom Gatehouse notes. So this is a no-regret policy: strong public health systems will be prepared to bear the pressure of the COVID-19 pandemic –and future ones– as well as local epidemics such as dengue. It will also be capable of treating patients experiencing the many health effects of climate change:heat-related diseases such as heat stroke or exhaustion, vector borne illnesses like dengue or Chagas, poor nutrition, mental health issues, respiratory diseases caused by particulate matter and ground level ozone. Decentralisation will contribute to more equal access to healthcare, especially for frontline communities.
A structural transition to a lower-carbon economy. Decarbonisation and the consequent emission reduction will improve air quality, reducing the incidence of cardiovascular and respiratory diseases that increase the vulnerability of individuals and communities to COVID-19. However, with the principles of the Paris Agreement in mind, regional governments must ensure a just transition for all, since decarbonisation might impact vulnerable communities through unemployment (workers of carbon-intensive industries may face loss of employment) and the loss of livelihoods.
Green cities. There’s a need to rethink urban planning to reduce road traffic and encourage more sustainable forms of mobility such as cycling and walking, relieving the pressure on public transport systems. This would reduce greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions, air pollution and the risk of contagion all at once, as well as contributing to better general health and increased resilience to disease. ‘This would primarily benefit the poor who are the most likely to have to travel long distances to get to work, using overcrowded systems of public transport’, Gatehouse argues.
Halt depletion of natural resources, protected land and indigenous communities. Keeping extractive activities –chiefly logging, mineral extraction, oil drilling and agribusiness– away from indigenous territory entails also keeping COVID-19 away from those with low resilience to the virus and stopping further spread. It puts an end to decades of violation of basic human rights. It also preserves high conservation value forests and the ecosystem services they provide, thus sustaining livelihoods. As Linda Etchart and Sue Brandford agree, the preservation of indigenous communities, with their traditional knowledge and traditional way of life, safeguards the planet and holds the information we need to combat the climate crisis. Indigenous peoples’ in-depth knowledge of their territories and their millennia of experience in adapting to environmental variability represent a valuable source of climate history and baseline data that complements traditional climate science, enabling the development of more comprehensive adaptation policies to climate change that consider livelihoods, security and well-being and are applicable at a local level. For example, in the highlands and valleys of the Cuchumuela community, Cochabamba, Bolivia, climate change has manifested itself through increased pests, particularly the potato moth; instead of relying solely on toxic chemicals to control moths -which compromises farmers’ health, increases production costs, develops moth resistance and damages the soil and water resources- Quechua farmers use native plants that have repellent properties (muña and eucalyptus leaves), and also practice biological control bringing ants that feed on potato moth.
Despite all of Latin America's chronic structural malaises, the region's extractive model is a protagonist in halting the achievement of climate justice and the prevention of zoonotic diseases. Tom Gatehouse states that ‘the region appears locked into its position as a supplier of raw materials for the developed world, which is totally unsustainable’. Despite repeated warnings that the next pandemic could emerge in the Amazon, as the felling of the forest may well disturb dormant pathogens, governments such as Bolsonaro’s in Brazil have promoted the expansion of extractive activities in the Amazon.
The recent signing of the Escazú Agreement is a step forward in the protection of indigenous peoples and other environment defenders’ rights towards climate justice. The treaty, however, requires governments merely to ‘encourage public and private companies, particularly large companies, to prepare sustainability reports that reflect their social and environmental performance’, which is weak, says Linda Etchart. ‘Moreover there are let-out clauses that enable governments to make exceptions under national law’. Gatehouse argues the successful implementation of the Escazú agreement bodes ill in the current political context in Latin America in which political will for environmental affairs is scarce, reflected in the fact that nations such as Peru, Colombia and Brazil are yet to ratify the agreement, while Chile hasn't even signed.
Development cooperation for pandemic recovery and climate justice?
In the context of the climate crisis, following the principle of ‘common but differentiated responsibilities’, highest-emitting developed countries have the responsibility to cut emissions faster and to provide financial and technological support to developing countries to enable them to follow a low-carbon path to development. Therefore, in the context of the sanitary crisis, what role should the Global North have in Latin America’s recovery process?
According to Tom Gatehouse, the Global North holds a moral obligation both to assist the recovery of Latin American countries and to settle the climate debt with the rest of the world. However, given the ‘first-me’ approach of high income countries seen in the vaccine rollout, it is possible that they will focus on their own recoveries before assisting Latin America. Worryingly, there also is a concern that any post-COVID assistance might be used to evade the climate debt. Despite the uncertainty enveloping the post-COVID scenario, there is general consensus that international support will be essential to respond to and recover from the pandemic in Latin American countries, and that such aid should be reshaped to address both pandemic recovery and the climate emergency.
This could be achieved if existing sources of finance for developing countries such as the Official Development Assistance (ODA) of the World Bank or multilateral development banks were aligned with the Paris Agreement and the United Nations’ Sustainable Development Goals. Further, financial aid should prioritise the protection of indigenous peoples and local communities, as well as reducing Latin America’s reliance on exports of primary products which extraction entails severe environmental and social impacts.
Governments might as well seize the opportunity presented by this critical juncture to alleviate the situation of those who have been hit by overlapping crises, and to prevent more lives from being jeopardized.
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