Managing the impacts of climate change in latin America: The need for technology transfer

Abstract

Due to its geo-political characteristics and social and economic features, the Latin American region is considered as being among the most vulnerable ones, as far as climate change is concerned. The combination of two further important elements, namely limited access to technologies and restricted adaptation capacity, may help to explain why the region is so vulnerable and is likely to remain so, unless fundamental changes in decision-making processes are implemented. From an objective point of view, decision-making processes may play a key role in facilitating the ways countries perceive and, as importantly, manage the impacts of climate change. Yet, there is a paucity of research which looks at the extent to which the sound management of the impacts of climate change may take place, across Latin America, in a systematic way. This paper addresses this need, by discussing the extent to which individual Latin American countries handle matters related to climate change, and by illustrating a number of the problems and deficiencies which have been limiting progresses over the past two decades. It also describes some of the recent and on-going initiatives from across the region, and introduces the project CELA, an initiative to promote technology transfer on climate change by means of cooperation between universities in the European Union and Latin American nations.