Key Findings

Baja California Sur has insufficient water, forest, pasturelands, and fertile soil resources to support its existing and future population growth.  Foremost among the major threats are: marine influence (e.g. abrasion, corrosion, saline intrusion, sea penetration); occasional intense fluvial phenomena (e.g. flooding, erosion, migration of water courses and streams, water freshets); slumping (e.g. landslides, inadequate drainage, unstable slopes); wind effects; and problems caused by pollution, dumping, over-exploitation of aquifers, disorderly construction development, extraction of materials, and grading or leveling fragile areas.[1]

Another extremely fragile element in Baja California Sur is its landscape.  Many poor households are forced to cut down trees and vegetation in the surrounding rural areas because they lack the money to produce goods or services for self-consumption or for the market.  This practice often creates dangerous conditions in times of fire or flood when natural vegetation would otherwise mitigate these disasters.[2]

The desert characteristics of the islands in the Gulf of California, their isolation, and scarce fresh water have all protected the islands from adverse uses, thus turning them into some of the most protected island ecosystems in the world.  However, human activity on the islands and in their adjacent waters is on the rise, and consequently, threats to the island ecosystems have also multiplied. The state’s vast coastline, in general, and the coastline between the municipalities of Los Cabos and La Paz, in particular, are exposed to a risk of deterioration caused by the ever-increasing commercial development over the past two decades.[3]

Finally, we cannot exclude the 171 oases that occur in Baja California Sur.  These isolated ecosystems ─ relics of tropical environments now in arid zones─ play an important role in bio-geographical mix of flora and fauna. The oases account for less than 1% of the state’s geographic territory, yet an important proportion of the biodiversity are concentrated in them, as well a number of endemic species, which co-exist with abundant human activities and population centers. [4]  Some oases have been affected by the drainage of the aquifers, palm and reed cutting, and introduction of exotic species; these have lost structural complexity and biological diversity.