ENVIRONMENTAL SECURITY IN LATIN AMERICA AND THE CARIBBEAN: EVOLUTION AND CHALLENGES FOR THE 21st CENTURY (original) (raw)

2021, ENVIRONMENTAL SECURITY IN LATIN AMERICA AND THE CARIBBEAN: EVOLUTION AND CHALLENGES FOR THE 21st CENTURY

Environmental security is a concept that has been gaining relevance in recent decades due to the overwhelming effects that climate change and the harmful actions of man have generated on ecosystems and the well-being and subsistence of human societies around the world. One of the most vulnerable regions to the effects and impacts of climate change is Latin America, due to its great climate variability and the poverty of millions of people who, with the slightest change in their forms of subsistence, find themselves in imminent danger. Therefore, this policy paper aims, on the one hand, to show in general terms the evolution and importance of environmental security studies in the 21st century, and, on the other, to emphasise said concept in the region of Latin America and the Caribbean (LAC). To do this, we begin with an outline of the evolution of the concept of security, and then inquire into the concept of environmental security, its antecedents, origins, and challenges. Subsequently, we undertake a synthetic description of the environmental security situation in LAC and the main problems that arise in each of its subregions, identified based on the political boundaries created by existing regionalisation processes and the networks of shared interdependencies created by the environmental problems and challenges they face.