An assessment of the impacts of climatic change in Latin America and the Caribbean supported by reliable data suggests that “climate changes during the last century have included an increase in the surface medium temperature, particularly in medium and high latitudes, and changes in precipitation quantity and intensity in several countries of the Region (Southern Brazil, Paraguay, and Argentina). The climatic change could modify the present conditions, with positive or adverse impacts, as is taking place due to the El Niño/Austral Oscillation (ENAO) Phenomenon. Natural climate variability, from seasonal to multi-year scale, has produced significant effects in the Latin American countries, which suggests that climatic change projections constitute an important element for national and regional planning. Nonetheless, the climatic change should in no way be considered in isolation; rather, it needs to be addressed in close interaction with other important development factors, such as land-use practices, population growth, economic situation and community behavior.” (IPCC, 2000).

Based on the most likely scenarios considered by a number of authors for the next 50 or 100 years, the Region’s future climate can damage the general environmental quality due to disproportionate reduction or increase of water potential at a regional scale; land losses in low coastal areas; soil impoverishment; changes in the agricultural yield of basic regional food staples or disappearance of traditional crops; biodiversity losses, mainly in coastal areas; damages to coastal human settlements; increase, reappearance or emergence of transmissible diseases, and the ensuing impact on the economic activity at large. This proposition is based both in climate-modeling results and the Region’s climate signs and trends evidencing that the above-mentioned factors are a climatic expression of the current conditions. In parallel, the trends being observed in the different variables of the hydrologic cycle evidence the exacerbation of such conditions (Sixth Water Dialogue, 2006). LINK.

The FRIEND Project is working in the development of a regional synthesis of the mail aspects included in the national communications to the United Nation Convention on Climatic Change.