In Latin America there are eight countries that have about a 70% of the planet's biodiversity. However, a large part of its population is not aware of that wealth. The environment suffers serious threats such as deforestation, pollution and drought. According to several scientists, countries such as Brazil, Colombia, Costa Rica, Mexico, Bolivia, Ecuador, Peru or Venezuela, are part of the group of nations with the greatest variety of fauna and flora in the world, they register serious environmental problems to which practically no government has responded properly.
A third of the world's deforestation is located in Latin America, which accounts for 22% of native forests, the equivalent of more than 860 million hectares. For example, in Brazil, a country with the highest biodiversity index, last year 7,464 square kilometers of the Amazon were devastated, which is equivalent to five times the area of Sao Paulo, the largest South American city. That is why in the following article we will talk about the environmental problems in Latin America.
Colombia
In Colombia it is estimated that 300,000 hectares of forest are destroyed every year as a direct cause of the drug production. To produce one gram of cocaine, an average of four square meters of forest are destroyed. Something very harmful for the future of the country, apart from the destruction of society by the consumption of narcotics, the environment is also being burdened.
Cuba
Cuba faces a complicated and prolonged drought In much of the country, 2009 was one of the four least rainy in the last 109 years on the island. In Argentina, specifically in the Matanza-Riachuelo basin, which marks the southern limit of Buenos Aires and is home to a population of five million people, most of them in precarious conditions, it has been the most polluted watercourse for decades because it receives about 88,500 cubic meters per year of industrial waste.
Bolivia
In Bolivia, the main problems also come from mining exploitation, according to where the level of lead detected exceeds the value of 0.05 milligrams per liter allowed in the Environment Law by three times. Added to that are the tons of mercury from mining activities in countries such as Brazil and Venezuela.
Too Peru lives a critical situation in La Oroya, a town in the center of the country considered the most polluted city in Latin America, where many people have serious health problems due to the high levels of contamination of metal particles released by the metallurgical complex.
Chile and Ecuador
Chile is still experiencing the consequences of lead and arsenic contamination in Arica, a city on the border with Peru, where 20,000 tons of toxic waste were deposited in the mid-1980s. In Ecuador, the multinational Chevron-Texaco is accused by indigenous communities of having caused serious environmental damage in the Amazon area. Oil exploitation is at the center of what has been described as the worst ecological disaster in United States history, as the spill from the Gulf of Mexico has released millions of liters of crude from an underwater well operated by British Petroleum. Pollution is the great evil of the 21st century.
Haiti
On the other hand, the cutting of trees to make charcoal, at a rate of 30 million copies a year, threatens to turn Haiti into a desert, which currently only has a forest cover of barely 2%. As a measure to counteract this problem, Paraguay implemented the "Zero Deforestation" law with which it has managed to reduce the hectares felled, but it is not enough to alleviate the enormous problem. Deforestation is compounded by other environmental catastrophes due to pollution, generated especially by mining and toxic waste, as well as lack of water.
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