Threats to biodiversity and the environment. Major threats to biodiversity in the Usumacinta watershed can be attributed to three fundamental causes. The first is an economic model that condemns 10-20% of Mexicans to live below poverty level. The poor lack access to education, health, credit, and property, and so are often forced to work the most marginal lands—many of which are in the most biodiversity areas. The combination of poverty, lack of health, and lack of education generates new problems: a demographic explosion, high mortality and malnutrition rates, and ignorance or inability to use strategies for rational resource management. The second root cause of biodiversity loss in the Usumacinta is Mexico’s weak institutional structure. Third, the unregulated and often illegal cut-price sale of the region’s natural resources (such as timber and oil to powerful national and international companies) is problematic. Such sales rarely take into account the long-term sustainable management of the watershed or the needs of the local population. Deforestation and fires are caused by a variety of proximate factors, and numerous analyses have identified these factors. For example, Xxxxxxx and Xxxxxx (2001) focused on the sources of impacts in Calakmul, while CI (2001) coordinated an analysis of root causes, threats, and their effects in the Lacandona Forest. These analyses concluded that the key proximate threats to biodiversity in the area are: • Insufficient capacity at local level to prevent or fight fires. • More than 40 invasions have occurred in the last 9 years inside Lacandona Forest Reserves. • Little local capacity to implement sustainable economic development, steaming from a lack of shared “lessons learned”. Economic alternatives to deforestation—such as shade-grown or organic coffee, sustainable ecotourism, sustainable forest management, and use of non-timber forest products—have been attempted, with varying degrees of success, throughout southern Mexico. • The lack of a coherent, regional management strategy has precluded effective action to prevent environmental degradation. While many conservation and civil society organizations throughout southern Mexico are monitoring biodiversity, threats, and land use change, these efforts are often disjointed and institution-specific. Existing partial monitoring systems are often of little use for identifying, tracking, and monitoring systemic threats across the region. • There is also a lack of coherent legal action to protect natural resources, even ...
