A new Tropical Industrial Revolution in Latin America

Geneva Centre for Security Policy (GCSP)

A new Tropical Industrial Revolution in Latin America is episode 4 in this new GCSP Podcast Series. Dr Paul Vallet interviews Mr Alvaro Cedeno Molinari, Narratives Futurist and Co-Founder at Perfectible.io and former Ambassador of Costa Rica to the World Trade Organisation. Dr Paul Vallet: Welcome to the Geneva Centre for Security Policy podcast. I'm your host, Dr Paul Vallet, Associate Fellow with the GCSP Global Fellowship Initiative. For the next week, I will be talking with the subject matter experts to explain issues regarding peace, security and international cooperation. Thanks for tuning in once again. In following issues of international security and cooperation to GCSP shows a has a keen interest in diverse regions of the international community. And today we're focused our eye on Latin America from which several personalities and practitioners have contributed to our activities, both in training and reflection. Of course, being joined by such personality today is Mr Alvaro Cedeno Molinari, Co-founder of perfectible.io, who is speaking to us from Costa Rica. While today, he works as a narrative futurist and I'm sure we'll all be very interested in discovering what this new activity is like, keeping watch on current issues, and especially those that surround climate change on which he focused while an Executive in Residence at the GCSP in 2019. Alvaro worked for over 10 years for the Costa Rican trade and diplomatic service, rising in the ranks to where reached out of Ambassador with service respectively in Beijing, Tokyo, the OECD, and finally as the Permanent Representative of Costa Rica to the WTO in Geneva. So welcome to the podcast Alvaro. It's very nice to see you again. Mr Alvaro Cedeno Molinari: Thank you, Paul, it's great to talk to you again and to see you again. It's unbelievable that it's been almost a year since we met last. Dr Paul Vallet: Indeed. So of course, we're going to be keenly interested in seeing what your eye from your home country is like on several the events that have touched us all. So of course, my first question to you would be, of course, as a narrative futurist, but also in your identity as a Latin American, what are the principal human and environmental security challenges that you would identify as our priority concerns today? Mr Alvaro Cedeno Molinari: The first thing I would say is that Latin America was not very well prepared for pandemic. And the most striking fact about that unpreparedness is that less than 50% of Latin American citizens have access to universal health care or to healthcare in any way. So, when you have such levels of widespread vulnerability, a pandemic can do much harm, let alone talk about the economic vulnerabilities that are part of the system as well. So, the impact of COVID-19 has probably pushed Latin America in developmental terms a couple of decades back. So, I would say that's definitely a challenge. But beyond COVID, I would say that Latin America has, ill preparedness for climate shocks for the climate crisis that we're in. And this is something that we are still very, very good on time in order to prepare better because Latin America possesses probably 40% of all of the Earth's freshwater, about 50% of all of the world's rain forests, sufficient arable land to feed the entire planet. So, it's easy to argue that Latin America could very well be the future of human life on Earth. But on top of that, challenge, slash opportunity, there is a severe security challenge that we've been facing for the last 40 years, which is drug trafficking. And it's only getting worse. It doesn't matter how you call it, how you finance it. Drug trafficking is the nuclear bomb that detonated in Latin America, and this is killing our youth. This is destroying our families and our communities. This is infiltrating our public institutions.