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Biodiversity as an ally of development goes beyond the dilemma between conserving it or extracting it. In Latin American and Caribbean countries, surrounded by diversity in all its forms, plants, animals, landscapes and genetic potential should also be a source of inspiration for progress. This is stated in a report by CAF and the Tide Center of the University of Oxford, launched during the United Nations summit on climate change (COP30) underway in Belém de Pará, Brazil. In the region that contains more than half of the planet’s biodiversity, nature has been seen as “something to preserve, not something to learn from”, ignoring the potential it has to move towards a more inclusive and resilient society.
“Biodiversity is not just a natural asset to be preserved,” the report clarifies. “Also a productive frontier to be cultivated, capable of strengthening structural transformation, quality employment and environmental resilience”. And although, recently, countries and leaders in the region have navigated different shores, exploring how to turn biodiversity into a potential that is not antagonistic to the economy – or even how to change what is meant by economic growth per se –, at the core remains a misconception: that biodiversity must be extracted and used. Instead, what bioinspiration, as they call it, proposes is to rely on “nature’s design principles instead of continuous extraction” for guidance on how to develop.
The report indicates that there are already some paths that bring us closer to this proposal. In Latin America and the Caribbean, for example, more than 250 payment programs for environmental services have been implemented since 1990. And, through ecotourism, 3.5 million jobs were created by 2018. Additionally, countries such as Argentina, Brazil, Colombia and Costa Rica have published bioeconomy strategies to promote sustainable development. But bioinspiration goes further. It’s about avoiding seeing biodiversity as an object of simple exchange, of commerce. “Not all bioeconomy is development-oriented,” the report states. “If left unchecked, parts of the bioeconomy could simply biologize the old extractivism, replacing fossil raw materials with biological ones, while maintaining unequal value capture, weak learning, and ecological pressure.”
Amir Lebdioui, professor at the TIDE Center and author of the paper, clarifies the potential of bioinspiration in a statement. “The developing world is home to most of the planet’s biodiversity, a vast library of biological intelligence built over 3.4 billion years of evolution. Yet this extraordinary heritage remains largely untapped for local development and sustainable innovation.”
More money for research and biodiversity
Latin America and the Caribbean are a region of paradoxes and this case does not escape that premise. Despite the advantageous conditions for finding solutions in the field of biodiversity, spending on research and development is extremely low. It represents just 0.6% of the region’s gross domestic product (GDP), below the global average of around 2%. Their spending also comes from public funds, which represents a fiscal limitation. To close the gap, Tide and CAF say, research and development spending must rise from the current $35 billion to at least $130 billion annually.
This lack of spending translates into obstacles on the ground, such as limited access to research infrastructure, lack of opportunities for people to professionalize in these fields, and lack of coordination. The Pacific, Caribbean and Amazon, for example, have the lowest density of laboratories, research universities and innovation funding, despite having the greatest biological richness.
The report also highlights this last point, the financing of biodiversity. In a further paradox, it explains that, although spending on biodiversity in Latin America and the Caribbean has exceeded that of other regions – it multiplied sixfold, going from around 500 million to more than 3 billion in 2017 – it has focused almost exclusively on conservation. When classified under the umbrella of biodiversity-related development financing, it is even behind Asia and Africa, “averaging $3.2 billion per year over the past decade.”
“For too long, biodiversity funding has focused primarily on conservation, but not livelihoods,” also noted Alicia Montalvo, Climate Action and Positive Biodiversity Manager at CAF. “While these efforts remain essential, they are not sufficient. Development banks like CAF have a unique role to play in bridging these agendas.”
Innovation, they insist, is “the missing link in the structural transformation of Latin America and the Caribbean.” To promote it, it is not enough to host biodiversity: seeing it from that point is what has led countries to limit themselves to being exporters of raw materials. We must also take into account the scientific potential to study, understand and analyze it, and the economic support that allows Latin and Caribbean peoples to decipher their puzzles and translate them into solutions.
