Climate Change, Biodiversity and Sustainability in the Americas

Seldom does the title of a book promise themes so alluring to earth scientists as climate change, biodiversity and sustainability, such that the temptation to own an exemplar or order a copy for the institutional library is great. However, edited volumes often suffer from coherence problems, particularly if they are assembled by lax editors or when they consist of papers presented at symposia without a thorough screening of contributors.

This is, unfortunately, the case of these eight unrelated monographs. The brief six-page introduction does not provide a guide to assure unity of purpose and thematic consistency. The terms of reference for climate change, biodiversity and sustainability –all precious subjects to geographers specializing in Latin America– are not satisfactorily spelled out at the onset, as it would be expected in a primer. Sifting through the bibliographies of the chapters one notices the striking absence of even a single entry authored by a Latinamericanist geographer, an omission that disregards diversity of approaches and ignores interdisciplinary collaboration.

The complexity of contemporary climate change is addressed at an elementary level that cast doubts about the authors’ understanding of the atmospheric sciences. In fact, although the term “climate change” appears in the titles of half the contributions, this seems to be a mere catch phrase in order to conform to the title of the book. Climate-linked adaptations in sensitive ecosystems are treated as localized occurrences, disconnected from broader global events, e. g. Population Trends of Montane Birds in Southwestern Puerto Rico: Eight Years after the Passage of Hurricane Georges by A. G. Tossas.

From a conceptual viewpoint, no distinction is made among climate oscillations, climate variability, climate singularities, or climate change, even though the specialized literature is particularly meticulous in establishing clear distinctions among these concepts. Only the chapter by M. B. Karsch and D. MacIver grasps the intricacies of climate modifications, as the authors cautiously choose the term “climate extremes” to refer to cyclical or random deviations from established climatic norms.

Biodiversity, a central theme in environmental and conservation studies, deserved an exhaustive consideration in the introduction. A review of this issue that has been intensively discussed by contemporary ecologists, would have integrated human intervention as a key modifier of species variation in the earth’s ecosystems. In this respect, the most insightful contribution is that of M. Sarlo, C. Healy and C. Potvin on carbon storage in a Panamanian forest for it unveils the close connections between forest management, carbon sinks, and biodiversity. By comparison, the survey on biomass accretion and carbon storage in Costa Rica, by W. Fonseca et al., is merely descriptive and fails to place the observations in a broader regional perspective.

Even less satisfactory is the treatment of sustainability, an ample concept that has deep social and economic connotations, as well as political economic imbrications. At least on paper, environmentally-minded governments formulate conservation guidelines and seek to optimize the management of their natural resources. With the exception of the mention of sustainability in the book’s title, there is scarce reference to sustainability in any of the eight contributions. The omission of this dominant paradigm in the development discourse is indeed troubling. The numerous articles, monographs, and books on sustainability in the Americas that have been written by rural sociologists, development-oriented political scientists, regional geographers, engaged ecologists, and environmental managers have gone entirely unmentioned.

While the chapters can be of empirical interest and local relevance, the editors missed an opportunity to assemble a large volume of scientific literature, panel discussions, and protocols on themes as socially relevant and politically pertinent as climate change. This task still lies ahead for a geographer with a profound understanding of the global interweaving of climate variation, species adaptation, and sustainable development. Furthermore, a future text will have to stress the progress made by collective and individual research, and the actual the state of knowledge in the environmental sciences concerning biodiversity and sustainable development as they relate to climate variability.