Is Latin America close to building ‘green countries’?

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To stop pollution and the depletion of natural resources, it is necessary that countries turn to green initiatives, which are already doing it?

Green technologies, green fuels, green laws, in short. Anything that has "green" as a qualifier refers to environmental practices that are favorable or in favor of the environment. Undoubtedly, there is an ecological advance worldwide in relation to the need to take actions that lead to less pollution through more advanced technologies, the most efficient use of natural resources, sanction laws that protect nature, among others.

Leer en español: ¿Está Latinoamérica cerca de construir 'países verdes'?

Probably, this advance that is perceived is the response to the accelerated rate of destruction that humanity has imposed on the planet in the last two centuries. In any case, today ecology is on the agenda of politicians, universities, companies. Although not all countries have the same capacity and/or willingness to create an ecologically friendly environment.

Environmental Performance Index

To do this, the Universities of Yale and Columbia, in collaboration with the World Economic Forum (WEF), have developed the Environmental Performance Index, which measures how advanced a country is in this matter through the study of 10 indicators grouped into two categories:

How are the Latin American countries on the list?

As might be expected, the countries with the best environmental performance are the developed countries, which can allocate ample resources to promote ecological practices and enjoy more stable institutions that contribute to the realization of such purposes. On the contrary, the countries with the worst performance are the most underdeveloped countries and with widespread poverty. Let's see the list of countries of the 10 best and 10 worst performers:

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On the other hand, the countries of Latin America are located in the middle of the table with wide differences in the ranking between one and the other but with very similar performances if we measure them by their score. It tends to follow the same trend as economic and/or social indicators, where our countries are in the saga of Western Europe and North America but much more advanced than sub-Saharan Africa and Southeast Asia. This is the list of the top 10 positions in Latin America:

An interesting data from the World Bank on the countries that most protect their territories in environmental terms shows an evolution of 8.2% of the total land surface protected worldwide in 1990 to 14.8% at present. The list of these countries is headed by Venezuela, which has declared 53.9% of its territory as protected areas, being the only Latin American country in this top 10 surrounded by developed countries.

It is interesting to note how in these studies the main economic powers are not included in the rankings, with the exception of France.

The two largest economies in the world measured by size, China and the US, are not exactly the most ecological according to these indicators and we can see this through their absence and/or hostility towards major global environmental initiatives such as the Protocol of Kyoto or the Paris Agreement, which implies that the global protection towards the environment may be diminished given the important role of these two countries in the world economy.

LatinAmerican Post | Luis Alberto Lozada

Translated from "¿Está Latinoamérica cerca de construir 'países verdes'?