ABSTRACT
This chapter aims to provide an overall picture of growth and environmental problems in Latin America. It explains why pollution is a difficult economic problem to deal with and the interactions between economic growth and environmental quality. The chapter considers the policy options available to governments in their attempts to deal with the difficult trade-offs between economic growth and environmental quality. It deals with how global climate change has the potential to influence the economies of Latin America in the twenty-first century. An environmental issue frequently related to deforestation is biodiversity. Biodiversity refers to the number of different forms of life that occur in a local ecosystem or on the earth as a whole. The environmental Kuznets curve is a common part of the lexicon of economic growth. Used simplistically, it carries a potentially important idea. Rapid economic growth in a low- or middle-income country can create extremely high levels of pollution and degradation of the environment.
