Introduction

This introduction presents an overview of the key concepts covered in the subsequent chapters of this book. The book describes the status of biodiversity in Latin America and the Caribbean (LAC), the main threats to this biodiversity, and the drivers of these threats. It identifies the main policies that are being used to conserve biodiversity and assess their effectiveness and potential for further implementation. The book discusses the biophysical environment, status and trends in biodiversity by ecosystem type. It presents the author's map of major LAC biodiversity actors. LAC biodiversity directly underpins a broad range of human activities such as agriculture, aquaculture, and nature tourism that generate goods and services sold in markets. The book presents structured interviews of approximately one hour apiece with ten experts in LAC biodiversity representing multilateral and bilateral international cooperation institutions, non-governmental organizations, and a foundation.