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The
Central American coastline of the North-East Pacific hosts a
variety of tropical and subtropical habitats including mangrove
swamps, productive fishing grounds, and species-rich forests
that extend to the water's edge.
Millions of people depend on these ecosystems and their resources for food, construction
materials and income from tourism-related industries. In some places, using the
resources of those ecosystems constitutes the only economic activity.
Over 70% of the population of Central America live on this drier Pacific side,
and so it is here where the environmental pressures are the greatest. Forest
clearance, over-exploitation of resources, expanding maritime trade, rapid development,
poverty, high risk to the effects of natural events, limited capacity to counteract
those effects, serious environmental vulnerability and political conflict are
rampant.
The result has been widespread loss of plant and animal species, degraded and
eroded soils, destruction of biodiversity-rich mangrove areas and pollution of
both coastal and inland waters.
Pollution from the land is made potentially even more damaging in the region
because of the numerous sheltered bays and gulfs where the natural dispersal
of oil and toxic chemicals such as agrochemicals is limited.
The region is also an important shipping route for vessels sailing from Panama
to Alaska, and much of the oil transported from Alaska to the east coast of America
transits the Panama Canal or the Laguna de Chiriqui oil pipeline. Moreover, the
region still has a troubled legacy to overcome.
In the 1980s, Central America was gripped by a profound political and economic
crisis marked by an accumulated 18.3% decline in per capita gross domestic product.
The end of the Cold War something over a decade ago may have ended the major
conflicts afflicting the region, but its legacy of poverty endures.
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