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Legal and social concerns for the conservation of ecosystems in Venezuela

Abstract:

Venezuela is considered one of the biodiversity hotspots in the world, gathering a high richness not only of species but also at the landscape level. Although there is no permanent monitoring of natural resources, it is known that deforestation rates are exceeding 164,000 ha per year. Venezuela has several laws for the protection of environment, and several permanent conservation areas such as national parks, natural monuments, forest reserves, etc. However, actual government policies in environmental conservation are unambitious and even contradictory, without incentives for local landowners to keep primary forests or to restore degraded lands. Moreover, the occupation of protected forested areas by subsistence farmers seems to be favored by some laws. The regulations concerning environmental reconstruction liability are only applied to big projects involving mining and urban infrastructure. On the other hand, some Venezuelan institutions have established an ambitious project in order to revert some consequences of deforestation and land degradation through plantations for conservation and production purposes. These initiatives have shown promissory results especially in integrating rural communities into conservation practices such as planting native species in the edges of some streams. But these are only few isolated initiatives which lack a structured national plan that could set the basis for an effective conservation program that could balance deforestation rates. There is an urgent need to build environmental governance to assure the sustainable use and conservation of Venezuelan ecosystems and its biodiversity due to its global relevance.