MONTEVIDEO, Uruguay, Feb 02 (IPS) – On 25 January, roughly six weeks after being sworn in following her predecessor’s removal, Peruvian president Dina Boluarte finally recognised that elections were the only way out of political crisis. Elections were rescheduled for April 2024, much earlier than the end of the presidential term she’s been tasked with completing, but not soon enough for thousands who’ve taken to the streets demanding her immediate resignation.
Boluarte’s call for a ‘national truce’ has been met with further protests. Their repression has led to major bloodshed: the Ombudsman’s office has reported close to 60 dead – mostly civilians killed by security forces – and 1,500 injured.
What happened and what it means
It’s unusually easy to impeach Peru’s presidents: a legislative majority can vote to remove them on vaguely defined grounds.
Pedro Castillo, elected president in July 2021, had already survived two removal attempts and faced a third. On 7 December he made a pre-emptive strike: he dissolved Congress and announced a restructuring of the judiciary, as former president Alberto Fujimori had done decades earlier in the ‘self-coup’ that started several years of authoritarian rule.
Castillo announced the establishment of an exceptional emergency government where he would rule by decree and promised to hold congressional elections soon. The new Congress, he said, would have the power to draft a new constitution.
But unlike Fujimori, Castillo enjoyed meagre support, and within hours Congress voted to remove him from office. He was arrested and remains in pretrial detention on rebellion charges. Vice-president Boluarte was immediately sworn in.
In the whirlwind that followed there was much talk that a coup, or a coup attempt, had taken place – but opinions differed radically as to who was the victim and who was the perpetrator.
The prevailing view was that Castillo’s dissolution of Congress was an attempt at a presidential coup. But others saw Castillo’s removal as a coup. Debate has been deeply polarised on ideological grounds, making clear that in Peru and Latin America, a principled rather than partisan defence of democracy is still lacking.
Permanent crisis
Recent events are part of a bigger political crisis that has seen six presidents in six years. In 2021, a polarising presidential campaign was followed by an extremely fragmented vote. The runoff election yielded an unexpected winner: a leftist outsider of humble origins, Castillo, defeated the right-wing heiress of the Fujimori dynasty by under one percentage point. Keiko Fujimori initially rejected the results and baselessly claimed fraud. Castillo’s presidency was born fragile. It was an unstable government, with a high rotation of ministers and fluctuating congressional support.
Although Castillo had promised to break the cycle of corruption, his government, himself and close associates soon became the target of corruption allegations coming not just from the opposition but also from state watchdog institutions. Castillo’s response was to attack the prosecutor and ask the Organization of American States (OAS) to apply its Democratic Charter to preserve Peruvian democracy supposedly under attack. The OAS sent a mission that ended with a call for dialogue. Only two weeks later, Castillo embarked on his short-lived coup adventure.
Protests and repression
According to Peru’s Constitution, Boluarte should complete Castillo’s term. But observers generally agree there’s no way she can stay in office until 2024, never mind 2026, given the rejection she faces from protesters and political parties in Congress.
A wave of protests demanding her resignation rose as soon as she was sworn in, led mostly by students, Indigenous groups and unions. Many also demanded Castillo’s freedom and government action to address poverty and inequality. Some demands went further, including a call for a constituent assembly – the promise Castillo made before being removed from office – to produce more balanced representation, particularly for Indigenous people. For many of Peru’s poorest people, Castillo represented hope for change. With him gone, they feel forgotten.
Four days into the job, Boluarte declared a regional state of emergency, later extended to the whole country. Protests only increased, and security forces responded with extreme violence, often shooting to kill. No wonder so many Peruvians feel this isn’t a democracy anymore.
The state of Peruvian democracy
The Economist Intelligence Unit’s Democracy Index rates Peru as a ‘flawed democracy’. A closer look at the index’s components suggests what’s wrong with Peruvian democracy: it gets its lowest score in the political culture dimension. In line with this, the Americas Barometer shows Peru has one of the lowest levels of support for democracy in Latin America and is the country where opposition to coups is weakest.
Peru’s democracy scores low on critical indicators such as checks and balances, corruption and political participation. This points to the heart of the problem: it’s a dysfunctional system where those elected to govern fail to do so and public policies are inconsistent and ineffective.
According to every survey, just a tiny minority of Peruvians are satisfied with their country’s democracy. The fact that no full-fledged alternative has yet emerged seems to be the only thing currently keeping democracy alive. Democratic renewal is urgently needed, or an authoritarian substitute could well take hold.
Solar panels with a capacity to generate 30 kilowatts no longer work in the Darora Community of the Macuxi people, an indigenous group from Roraima, a state in the far north of Brazil. The batteries only worked for a month before they were damaged because they could not withstand the charge. CREDIT: Boa Vista City Hall
by Mario Osava (boa vista, brazil)
Inter Press Service
BOA VISTA, Brazil, Jan 25 (IPS) – “Our electric power is of bad quality, it ruins electrical appliances,” complained Jesus Mota, 63. “In other places it works well, not here. Just because we are indigenous,” protested his wife, Adélia Augusto da Silva, of the same age.
The Darora Community of the Macuxi indigenous people illustrates the struggle for electricity by towns and isolated villages in the Amazon rainforest. Most get it from generators that run on diesel, a fuel that is polluting and expensive since it is transported from far away, by boats that travel on rivers for days.
Located 88 kilometers from the city of Boa Vista, capital of the state of Roraima, in the far north of Brazil, Darora celebrated the inauguration of its solar power plant, installed by the municipal government, in March 2017. It represented modernity in the form of a clean, stable source of energy.
A 600-meter network of poles and cables made it possible to light up the “center” of the community and to distribute electricity to its 48 families.
But “it only lasted a month, the batteries broke down,” Tuxaua (chief) Lindomar da Silva Homero, 43, a school bus driver, told IPS during a visit to the community. The village had to go back to the noisy and unreliable diesel generator, which only supplies a few hours of electricity a day.
Fortunately, about four months later, the Boa Vista electricity distribution company laid its cables to Darora, making it part of its grid.
“The solar panels were left here, useless. We want to reactivate them, it would be really good. We need more powerful batteries, like the ones they put in the bus terminal in Boa Vista,” said Homero, referring to one of the many solar plants that the city government installed in the capital.
Tuxaua (chief) Lindomar Homero of the Darora Community is calling for new adequate batteries to reactivate the solar power plant, because the electricity they receive from the national grid is too expensive for the local indigenous people. Behind him stands his predecessor, former tuxaua Jesus Mota. CREDIT: Mario Osava/IPS
Expensive energy
But indigenous people can’t afford the electricity from the distributor Roraima Energía, he said. On average, each family pays between 100 and 150 reais (20 to 30 dollars) a month, he estimated.
Besides, there are unpleasant surprises. “My November bill climbed to 649 reais” (130 dollars), without any explanation,” Homero complained. The solar energy was free.
“If you don’t pay, they cut off your power,” said Mota, who was tuxaua from 1990 to 2020.”In addition, the electricity from the grid fails a lot,” which is why the equipment is damaged.
Apart from the unreliable supply and frequent blackouts, there is not enough energy for the irrigation of agriculture, the community’s main source of income. “We can do it with diesel pumps, but it’s expensive; selling watermelons at the current price does not cover the cost,” he said.
“In 2022, it rained a lot, but there are dry summers that require irrigation for our corn, bean, squash, potato, and cassava crops. The energy we receive is not enough to operate the pump,” said Mota.
A photo of the three water tanks in the village of Darora, one of which holds water that is made potable by chemical treatment. The largest and longest building is the secondary school that serves the Macuxi indigenous community that lives in Roraima, in northern Brazil. CREDIT: Mario Osava/IPS
Achilles’ heel
Batteries still apparently limit the efficiency of solar energy in isolated or autonomous off-grid systems, with which the government and various private initiatives are attempting to make the supply of electricity universal and replace diesel generators.
Homero said that some of the Darora families who live outside the “center” of the village and have solar panels also had problems with the batteries.
Besides the 48 families in the village “center” there are 18 rural families, bringing the community’s total population to 265.
A solar plant was also installed in another community made up of 22 indigenous families of the Warao people, immigrants from Venezuela, called Warao a Janoko, 30 kilometers from Boa Vista.
But of the plant’s eight batteries, two have already stopped working after only a few months of use. And electricity is only guaranteed until 8:00 p.m.
“Batteries have gotten a lot better in the last decade, but they are still the weak link in solar power,” Aurelio Souza, a consultant who specializes in this question, told IPS from the city of São Paulo. “Poor sizing and the low quality of electronic charging control equipment aggravate this situation and reduce the useful life of the batteries.”
The low quality of the electricity supplied to Darora is due to the discrimination suffered by indigenous people, according to Adélia Augusto da Silva. The water they used to drink was also dirty and caused illnesses, especially in children, until the indigenous health service began to chemically treat their drinking water. CREDIT: Mario Osava/IPS
In Brazil’s Amazon jungle, close to a million people live without electricity, according to the Institute of Energy and the Environment, a non-governmental organization based in São Paulo. More precisely, its 2019 study identified 990,103 people in that situation.
Another three million inhabitants of the region, including the 650,000 people in Roraima, are outside the National Interconnected Electricity System. Their energy therefore depends mostly on diesel fuel transported from other regions, at a cost that affects all Brazilians.
The government decided to subsidize this fossil fuel so that the cost of electricity is not prohibitive in the Amazon region.
This subsidy is paid by other consumers, which contributes to making Brazilian electricity one of the most expensive in the world, despite the low cost of its main source, hydropower, which accounts for about 60 of the country’s electricity.
Solar energy became a viable alternative as the parts became cheaper. Initiatives to bring electricity to remote communities and reduce diesel consumption mushroomed.
But in remote plants outside the reach of the grid, good batteries are needed to store energy for the nighttime hours.
Part of the so-called “downtown” in Darora, which has lamp posts, houses, a soccer field and a shed where the community meets. A larger community center is needed, says the leader of the Macuxi village located near Boa Vista, the capital of the northern Brazilian state of Roraima. CREDIT: Mario Osava/IPS
A unique case
Darora is not a typical case. It is part of the municipality of Boa Vista, which has a population of 437,000 inhabitants and good resources, it is close to a paved road and is within a savannah ecosystem called “lavrado”.
It is at the southern end of the São Marcos indigenous territory, where many Macuxi indigenous people live but fewer than in Raposa Serra do Sol, Roraima’s other large native reserve. According to the Special Secretariat for Indigenous Health (Sesai), there were 33,603 Macuxi Indians living in Roraima in 2014.
The Macuxi people also live in the neighboring country of Guyana, where there are a similar number to that of Roraima. Their language is part of the Karib family.
Although there are no large forests in the surrounding area, Darora takes its name from a tree, which offers “very resistant wood that is good for building houses,” Homero explained.
The community emerged in 1944, founded by a patriarch who lived to be 93 years old and attracted other Macuxi people to the area.
The progress they have made especially stands out in the secondary school in the village “center”, which currently has 89 students and 32 employees, “all from Darora, except for three teachers from outside,” Homero said proudly.
A new, larger elementary and middle school for students in the first to ninth grades was built a few years ago about 500 meters from the community.
Water used to be a serious problem. “We drank dirty, red water, children died of diarrhea. But now we have good, treated water,” said Adélia da Silva.
“We dug three artesian wells, but the water was useless, it was salty. The solution was brought by a Sesai technician, who used a chemical substance to make the water from the lagoon drinkable,” Homero said.
The community has three elevated water tanks, two for water used for bathing and cleaning and one for drinking water. There are no more health problems caused by water, the tuxaua said.
His current concern is to find new sources of income for the community. Tourism is one alternative. “We have the Tacutu river beach 300 meters away, great fruit production, handicrafts and typical local gastronomy based on corn and cassava,” he said, listing attractions for visitors.
The Mayan Train (TM), run by the government’s National Tourism Development Fund (Fonatur), threatens the Mayan Jungle, the second largest in Latin America after the Amazon rainforest. its ecosystems and indigenous communities, as well as underground caves and cenotes – freshwater sinkholes resulting from the collapse of limestone bedrock that exposes groundwater
by Emilio Godoy (playa del carmen, mexico)
Inter Press Service
PLAYA DEL CARMEN, Mexico, Jan 24 (IPS) – The Mayan Train (TM), run by the government’s National Tourism Development Fund (Fonatur), threatens the Mayan Jungle, the second largest in Latin America after the Amazon rainforest. its ecosystems and indigenous communities, as well as underground caves and cenotes – freshwater sinkholes resulting from the collapse of limestone bedrock that exposes groundwater.
The most ambitious megaproject of the government of President Andrés Manuel López Obrador involves at least 1,681 hectares and the felling of 300,000 trees, according to the original environmental impact study, with an investment that has so far run up to around 15 billion dollars, 70 percent of the initially planned cost.
The plan is for the TM, with 21 stations and 14 stops on seven routes, to start running at the end of 2023 through 78 municipalities in the southern and southeastern states of Campeche, Quintana Roo, Tabasco and Yucatán, home to a combined total of 11.1 million people.
In Quintana Roo there are at least 105 flooded caves over 1,500 meters in length and 408 underwater caves. The porous karst soil of the peninsula represents a threat to the megaproject, which has forced the authorities to change the layout.
In addition, between Playa del Carmen and Tulum – 61 km apart in the south of Quintana Roo – there are at least 13 cenotes.
The Mayan Train, which covers four aquifers and 49 bodies of water along its route, includes a station in Playa del Carmen and another in Tulum, in Section 5.
Fabiola Sánchez, an activist with the non-governmental organization Voces Unidas (United Voices) de Puerto Morelos, talks about the potential impact of the railway in the municipality of Puerto Morelos, in Quintana Roo.
The concern of environmentalists stems from the 2020-2030 Urban Development Program, which they accuse of favoring hotel and real estate interests, to the detriment of citizen participation and sustainable planning, and of favoring the creation of the railway.
Deforestation and urban expansion can result in waters with more sediment in the reefs off Puerto Morelos, greater generation of solid and liquid waste, leaching, and more pollution, that would put even more pressure on an ecosystem that is already disturbed by human activities.
The trains will transport thousands of tourists and cargo, such as transgenic soybeans, palm oil and pork, major agricultural products in the region.
The Mexican government promotes the megaproject as an engine for social development that would create jobs, boost tourism beyond the traditional sites and bolster the regional economy.
A gas flare at installations of the state-owned Pemex oil company in the town of Reforma Escolín, Papantla municipality in the southeastern Mexican state of Veracruz, on Jan. 11, 2023. More than 100 gas wells operate in the area, several of which release gas without controls and put the local population and their property at risk. CREDIT: Emilio Godoy/IPS
by Emilio Godoy (papantla, mexico)
Inter Press Service
A dark mole dots the brown earth, among the green scrub at this spot in southeastern Mexico. A repetitive “glug, glug,” a noise sounding like a thirsty animal, and an intense stench lead to this site, hidden in the undergrowth, where a broken pipe has created a pool of dense oil.
The smell of fuel overpowers the usual aroma of the surrounding vegetation.
The oil and natural gas leak runs freely in a well belonging to the state-run oil giant Petróleos Mexicanos (Pemex) in Reforma Escolín, part of Papantla, a municipality in the southeastern state of Veracruz, in the vicinity of a natural gas flare that illuminates the semi-cloudy environment and warms the already high temperature.
Far from the gaze of Mexico’s Agency for Security, Energy and Environment (ASEA), responsible for monitoring the fossil fuel industry in the country, and Pemex, the gas flares in an area dotted with oil and gas wells.
“The infrastructure is old, they don’t maintain it. When there are leaks, you hear a ‘ssssss’ and the smell is unbearable, you can’t stay in your house,” Omar Lázaro, a delegate to the municipality of the non-governmental National Indigenous Congress, which brings together native peoples and organizations, told IPS.
The local community all too vividly recalls the Jun. 4, 2022 explosion of a Pemex gas pipeline that put residents on edge and confirmed, for the umpteenth time, the potentially catastrophic impacts of fossil fuels.
Lázaro, a local musician, recalled that the leak flowed for two days, there were four fires in the affected area and the fire lasted two weeks, some 300 kilometers from Mexico City, in Papantla, (which means “place of abundant papán” – a local bird – in the Nahuatl language), home to just under 160,000 inhabitants in its extensive rural and semi-urban territory.
“In some places there was a smell of gas before the explosion. The problem was that the scrubland began to burn and there was no water to put it out. Pemex threatened that it would not take responsibility if people went in to put out the fire and something happened to them,” said Lázaro, who is also a member of the Assembly for the Defense of the Territory, which represents some 20 communities and five municipal organizations.
In essence, the gas is methane, 86 times more powerful at trapping heat than carbon dioxide (CO2) over 20 years, even though it spends less time in the atmosphere.
That means it is important to control it to curb the rise in the planet’s temperature to no more than 1.5 degrees C, according to the commitments made by the international community.
In the municipality of Papantla, in the southeastern Mexican state of Veracruz, oil and gas wells abound, emiting polluting gases, such as methane, a major contributor to global warming. The photo shows the “Escolín 238” well in operation. CREDIT: Emilio Godoy/IPS
Massive
The incident in the town of Reforma Escolín is part of a pattern of gas leaks from the extraction and transportation of oil and gas by Pemex and private companies in Mexico, without enforcement by the environmental authorities of the existing regulations.
IPS reviewed Pemex databases on leaks and its prevention plans, obtained through public information requests, which point to underreporting of gas emissions – composed mainly of methane – and confirmed the evidence that leaks devastate an area where gas wells abound.
Historically, Pemex has been the biggest culprit in the gas leaks, due to the size of its infrastructure in Mexico.
After a drop between 2017 and 2019, gas explosions have been on the rise since 2020. Most of the incidents occur at hydrocarbon facilities in the states of Campeche, Tabasco and Veracruz in southeastern Mexico.
In 2020, 78 gas leaks by Pemex and its subsidiaries were registered, 85 by private companies, and 32 by the National Center for Natural Gas Control (CENAGAS), which manages the gas pipelines that belonged to the state oil company, without estimates of the resulting methane emissions, according to ASEA figures.
A year later, Pemex reported 91 leaks, private companies 74, and CENAGAS 28.
These leaks come from gas pipelines, compressor stations and other facilities that transport, store and distribute gas, infrastructure that adds up to some 30,000 facilities and 50,000 kilometers of gas pipelines.
The face of Pastora García, one of the 11 members of the Municipal Council of Papantla, reflects concern about the leaks.
“Things are bad here, there are a lot of risks. This is how Pemex works and we’re screwed. It is worrisome, because people live here,” she told IPS while she was working in Reforma Escolín, a town of some 1,000 people.
García was a municipal councillor in the small town and submitted three requests for pipeline repairs in 2011 and 2020, obtaining no response, and the leaks continued.
In and around the town, local residents grow citrus fruit, beans and corn, and raise cattle, and the pollution harms their activities. In the area, the ground looks like Swiss cheese from which gas frequently emanates, as during the great leak of 2013.
Although ASEA does not record the volumes of leaks, Mexico ranked tenth in the world in methane emissions in 2021, a list led by China, India and the United States, and which also includes Brazil, according to data from the International Energy Agency (IEA), an intergovernmental grouping of large oil consumers.
In addition, since 2019 oil and gas infrastructure has released methane into the atmosphere in Mexico, according to satellite images.
In June 2022, a group of European scientists revealed that Pemex released 40,000 tons of methane in December 2021 from an offshore platform in the Gulf of Mexico.
In the case of Pemex, one of the aggravating factors is the deliberate venting or release and flaring of gas, which has been on the rise since 2017 due to the lack of capture technology and economic incentives for its use, since it is more convenient for the oil company to simply release and burn it off.
This practice grew from 3,800 cubic meters (m3) of gas in 2017 to 6,600 in 2021, according to the World Bank’s Global Gas Flaring Reduction Initiative (GGFR), made up of 20 governments, 12 oil companies and three multilateral organizations. Mexico forms part of the alliance, but Pemex does not.
The IEA measured Mexico’s emissions at 6.33 million tons of methane in 2021, equivalent to 1.8 percent of the world total, to which agriculture contributed 2.53 million, waste 2.28 million, and production and energy consumption 1.47 million. In this segment, venting and flaring represent the main factors, and in gas pipelines, leaks.
Itziar Irakulis, a researcher at the Polytechnic University of Valencia, told IPS from that Spanish city that “from the satellite we see that every time the gas flaring stops (the torch goes out), about 100 tons of methane per hour are vented. This turns the oil platform into what in the literature we call an ultra-emitter.”
The expert, co-author of a study on the release of gas from Pemex platforms, stressed that, in the face of the climate crisis, “the last thing we need is more ultra-emission events of this type.”
Pemex resorts to the practice of flaring gas due to the lack of technology for its retention and economic incentives for its use. The photo shows a pipeline in Reforma Escolín, Papantla municipality in the southeastern Mexican state of Veracruz, on Jan. 11, 2023. CREDIT: Emilio Godoy/IPS
Anaid Velasco, research coordinator at the non-governmental Mexican Center for Environmental Law (CEMDA), described the “important challenges” in accounting for and curbing methane emissions.
“There is more talk about methane, but there is still no public policy. This disconnect between what is said and what is done has to do with not creating more responsibilities that could be binding, in order to apply an energy policy based on fossil fuel sources. They don’t want to generate a greater regulatory burden” for the oil industry, especially Pemex, she told IPS.
ASEA partially applies the regulation to control methane emissions, which is why Mexico faces hurdles to meet its Nationally determined contributions (NDCs) to reduce greenhouse gas emissions.
The regulation was supposed to enter into force in December 2019, after it was drafted in 2018. But in July 2020, under the pretext of the COVID-19 pandemic, ASEA postponed its application for 19 months, until the end of January 2022.
As of August 2022, 18 companies, including the subsidiaries Pemex Exploración y Producción (PEP) and Pemex Logística, had presented to ASEA their program for the prevention and comprehensive control of methane emissions from the hydrocarbons sector, the fundamental component of the regulation.
The state Federal Electricity Commission (CFE) had not delivered its plan.
Between 2017 and October 2022, ASEA imposed 26 fines on state-run and private companies totaling 3.83 million dollars, of which they have paid 3.29 million, without specifying the reason, which means it is not clear if the fines targeted methane emissions.
From 2017 to 2021, it fined Pemex Transformación Industrial three times for undisclosed reasons, which the company appealed.
But ASEA did not investigate the two fires on the surface of the ocean in the Gulf of Mexico, caused by methane leaks in July and August 2021, according to its own records. After the explosion in Reforma Escolín, a group of residents filed a complaint with ASEA, to no avail.
Pemex abandoned its plan to reduce gas flaring in its fields and the ministry of energy blocked the application of regulations in this regard, as reported by the British news agency Reuters throughout 2022.
In August, the state-run National Hydrocarbons Commission, the regulator of the oil industry, fined Pemex about two million dollars for excessive gas flaring at the Ixachi oil and gas field in Veracruz.
Gas deals
In 2021 Mexico signed the Global Methane Pledge, aimed at cutting emissions by 30 percent in 2030, from 2020 levels. But the country has not yet set a specific goal.
Along these lines, President Andrés Manuel López Obrador, who supports fossil fuel energy over renewables and promotes Pemex, announced in June 2022 that the oil giant would invest two billion dollars, with international aid, to cut methane emissions by 98 percent.
But there is no detailed plan to reach that target, beyond Pemex’s previous program to curb them.
In its methane control plan, obtained by IPS through Mexico’s freedom of information act, the oil company set an annual reduction goal in the Cantarell field, the country’s biggest, in the Gulf of Mexico, of four percent between 2017 and 2022. and calculated that emissions totaled 27,175 tons per year. But it is not known how much progress has been made towards this target.
However, the oil company uses an emission factor – the average amount of a pollutant coming from a specific process, fuel, equipment or source – instead of a measurement at the source site.
For the Ku Maloob Zaap field, the country’s second-largest, there are no measurements. The highest estimate comes from the Macuspana-Muspac deposit, located between the states of Chiapas and Tabasco, which emit 199,222 tons, followed by the Poza Rica Altamira Reynosa deposit – between Veracruz and Tamaulipas – with 73,352 tons; the Nejo Olmos field in Tamaulipas (53,395 tons); and Samaria-Luna in Tabasco (52,669 tons).
These emissions come from equipment, gas pipelines, compressors, leaks and venting. Pemex, which did not include infrastructure in other areas of the country, estimates decreases between four percent and 25 percent over a period of six years.
Throughout 2023, public and private companies must submit their annual reports to ASEA.
For the Cantarell deposit, the oil company ordered a halt to the flaring of 80 million Bcf/d, equivalent to 72.74 tons of methane. In addition, PEP applied measures to reduce flaring by 291 billion Bcf/d.
As natural gas for consumption in Mexico continues to be imported via pipelines and burned in combined-cycle power plants that also use steam, methane emissions will also continue, as occurred in the United States.
In places like Reforma Escolín, people have not gotten used to living among time bombs and are only asking that the leaks be repaired, although opposition by the local community is waning.
Lázaro lamented that “After the accident, some community assemblies were held, but the social mobilization dwindled, undermined by the local authorities.”
Without fighting methane emissions, Mexico will have a hard time reaching its Nationally determined contributions, presented to comply with the Paris Agreement on climate change, signed in 2015.
Velasco the environmentalist doubts that Mexico will meet its commitments. “They set goals because there is a lot of international interest. It is good that they make commitments, because it gives us tools to monitor the situation and demand compliance. If Pemex receives financing, we don’t know how it will execute it. Transparency and traceability are needed,” she said.
Spanish researcher Irakulis said maintenance and continuous flaring prevent ultra-emissions.
“It is true that the flares already have other types of emissions associated with them, and there are more environmentally friendly ways than flaring to treat the excess gas obtained from oil extraction. A significant reduction in emissions can be realistic as long as they invest in improving the maintenance of the facilities,” she stated.
In Reforma Escolín, the only option seems to be the dismantling of the gas infrastructure, which is impossible. “Pemex says there is no money. We have not seen machinery to replace the pipeline, they are not doing anything. Where are we going to go? We live here, and we’re staying here,” said García the town councillor.
HAVANA, Jan 11 (IPS) – Félix Morffi supports the energy needs of his home with the help of the sun, in some cases through handcrafted solutions that make the most of an alternative source that is abundant in Cuba, but still used very little.
With two tanks, glass, aluminum sheets, as well as cinderblocks, sand and cement, the 86-year-old retiree created, in 2006, a solar heater that meets his household needs.
“You build it today and tomorrow you have hot water; anyone can do it, and if they have a bit of advice, all the better,” said the retired mid-level machine and tool repair technician who lives in the municipality of Regla, one of the 15 that make up Havana.
He also designed and made a dryer that uses the heat of the sun to dehydrate fruits, spices and tubers, which he assembled mostly with recycled products such as pieces of wood, nylon, acrylic and aluminum sheets.
On the roof of his house, 16 solar panels imported in 2019 provide five kilowatts of power (kWp) and help run his small automotive repair shop where he works on vehicles for state-owned companies and private individuals, an independent enterprise that he set up next to his house.
In addition to covering his household needs, he provides the surplus electricity to the national grid, the National Electric Power System (SEN).
Morffi said more training is needed among personnel involved in several processes, and he cited delays of more than a year between the signing of the contract with Unión Eléctrica and the beginning of payments for the energy surpluses provided to the SEN, as well as “inconsistency with respect to the assembly” of the equipment.
Although Cuba has a national policy on renewable energy sources, “there is still a lot of ignorance and very little desire to do things, and do them well. Awareness-raising is needed,” he argued.
The innovator believes that despite the economic conditions, with a little ingenuity people can take advantage of the natural elements, because “the sun shines for everyone; the wind is there and costs you nothing, but your wealth is in your brain.”
In his backyard, a small solar panel keeps the water flowing from a well for his barnyard fowl and an artificial pond holding a variety of ornamental fish as well as tilapia for family consumption.
The construction of a small biodigester, about four cubic meters in size, is also at an advanced stage on his land, aimed at using methane gas from the decomposition of animal manure and crop waste, for cooking.
Morffi, who manages these activities with the backing of several family members, also plans to import three small wind turbines of 0.5 kWp each and a new batch of 4 kWp solar PV panels.
His vision is to turn his house into a space for the production and promotion of renewable energies in Cuba.
To this end, he has the support of the non-governmental Cuban Society for the Promotion of Renewable Energy Sources and Respect for the Environment (Cubasolar), of which Morffi has been a member since 2004.
Since 2014, Cuba has had a Policy for the Development of Renewable Energy Sources and their Efficient Use. And in 2019, Decree Law 345 established regulations to increase the share of renewables in electricity generation and steadily decrease the proportion represented by fossil fuels.
According to studies, this archipelago of more than 110,800 square kilometers with an annual average of 330 sunny days receives an average solar radiation of more than five kilowatts per square meter per day, considered to be a high level that provides enormous potential in terms of energy.
The solar energy program appears to be the most advanced and with the best opportunities for growth. Over the last decade, several solar parks have been built, providing more than 75 percent of the renewable energy produced locally.
But clean sources account for just five percent of the island’s electricity generation, an outlook that the authorities want to radically transform, setting an ambitious goal of 37 percent by 2030.
WASHINGTON DC, Jan 03 (IPS) – The writer is the Policy Director at Global Financial Integrity (GFI), a Washington, D.C.-based think tank specializing in research, advocacy, and advisory services.Over the last decades, the private investment fund sector has grown into a multi trillion-dollar industry. Private investment funds are vulnerable to money laundering because they contain a variety of structural risk factors that help camouflage illicit behavior.
A 2020 leaked bulletin from the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) found that criminals were using “private placement funds including investments offered by private equity firms and hedge funds, to circumvent the anti-money laundering (AML) programs of other financial institutions and launder money.”
The new Global Financial Integrity (GFI) report Private Investment Funds in Latin America: Money Laundering & Corruption Risks examines the money laundering risk factors associated with these private investment funds in Latin America.
It analyzes the ring of actors and facilitators involved, the methods of contact used by perpetrators and the channels utilized to move illicit money. The report provides a series of case studies and analyzes AML regulation of private investment funds in four countries; Brazil, Mexico, Chile and Argentina.
“Despite the scale of wealth under management, ‘family offices’ have little to no regulatory oversight in most parts of the world,” noted Tom Cardamone, President and CEO at GFI. “This is especially concerning given the close nexus between wealth and corruption in many parts of the world. The unregulated nature of these funds makes them a particularly useful vehicle to mask proceeds of corruption or money laundering.”
Additionally, Private Investment Funds in Latin America uses a series of case studies to highlight how money laundering, corruption and organized crime risks exist in private investment funds in Latin America.
The risk factors include a customer base often composed of wealthy individuals, including politically-exposed persons; a close relationship between fund managers and their clients (i.e. investors); the use of shell companies and trusts to manage investments; outsourcing operations and risk management; weak transparency around source of wealth and source of funds; and investment structures which may include multiple accounts in different jurisdictions, including secrecy and tax havens, with funds moving through a concentration account.
GFI in this report offers the following key recommendations:
• The Brazilian government, which has the largest assets under management in the region, should be the first to adopt AML regulations that will address future risks when they arise. As well as regulators pay closer attention to family office architecture and undertake a risk assessment of the sector
• Latin American authorities should look to regulate intermediaries and enabler professions for AML/CFT due diligence as they are critical in allowing illicit money to move through the financial system within the region but also to be invested in private investment funds overseas.
• The United States, Switzerland, the Cayman Islands, Malta, and other countries within the EU should conduct a robust money laundering risk assessment of their private investment fund sectors.
• Latin American law enforcement authorities involved in corruption, drug trafficking, and organized crime investigations should be provided training on the complexities of private investment funds and the manner in which they can be used to hide illicit assets.
Global Financial Integrity is a Washington, D.C.-based think tank, producing high-caliber analyses of illicit financial flows, advising developing country governments on effective policy solutions and promoting pragmatic transparency measures in the financial system to promote global development and security.
Aerial view of the 5000 square meter roof full of solar panels, in one of the pavilions of La Rural, the busiest fair and exhibition center in Buenos Aires. It is the largest private solar park in the capital of Argentina and required an investment of almost one million dollars. CREDIT: Courtesy of La Rural
by Daniel Gutman (buenos aires)
Inter Press Service
BUENOS AIRES, Dec 23 (IPS) – With large projects held back by the economic crisis and lack of infrastructure, Argentina seems to be looking at an alternative path towards a more sustainable energy mix involving small renewable energy projects, promoted by environmentally aware industries, businesses and private users.
The initiatives are aimed at covering their own consumption, sometimes with the addition of so-called distributed generation, in which user-generators who have a surplus of electricity can inject it into the national power grid and thus generate a tariff credit.
Distributed generation initiatives have just surpassed 1,000 projects already in operation, according to the latest official data.
At the same time, this month saw the inauguration of the largest private solar energy park in the city of Buenos Aires, an initiative of the Argentine Rural Society (SRA), the traditional business chamber of agricultural producers.
The park was installed in the exhibition center the SRA owns in the capital of this South American country, to supply part of its consumption with an investment of almost one million dollars and more than 1,000 solar panels.
“Small private renewable energy projects and distributed generation will be the ones to increase installed capacity in the coming years, because the electricity transmission and distribution system sets strong limits on large projects,” Mariela Beljansky, a specialist in energy and climate change issues, told IPS.
Beljansky, who was national director of Electricity Generation until early 2022, added: “Otherwise there will be no way to meet the growth targets for renewable sources set by Argentina, as part of its climate change mitigation commitments under the Paris Agreement.”
Argentina presented its National Climate Change Adaptation and Mitigation Plan, which includes 250 measures to be implemented by 2030, at the 27th Conference of the Parties (COP27) on climate change held by the United Nations in the Egyptian city of Sharm El Sheikh in November.
The National Secretariat for Climate Change estimated the total value of the plan’s implementation at 185.5 billion dollars, four times more than the debt Argentina incurred in 2018 with the International Monetary Fund (IMF), which has generated a sharp deterioration of the economy since then.
According to the data included in the plan, the energy sector is the largest generator of greenhouse gases (GHG) in the country, generating 51 percent of emissions.
Although renewable sources (with wind projects in first place and solar in second place) reached a record in October, supplying 17.8 percent of total electricity demand, the energy mix continues to be sustained basically by oil, natural gas and large hydroelectric projects.
Furthermore, the country has not decided to slow down the development of fossil fuels. The main reason is that it has large reserves of shale natural gas in the Vaca Muerta field in the south of the country, which has been attracting the interest of international investors for years. The climate change plan sets the goal of using natural gas as a transition fuel to replace oil as much as possible.
The plan also includes the objectives of developing a variety of renewable energy sources (wind, solar, small hydro, biogas and biomass) and also distributed generation, “directly at the points of consumption” and connected to the public power grid, at the residential and commercial levels.
Large renewable projects experienced strong growth between 2016 and 2019, on the back of an official plan that guaranteed the purchase of electricity at attractive prices for investors, but since then there have been virtually no new initiatives.
This truck functions as a mobile health center, travelling through towns in Patagonia, in southern Argentina. The roof of the vehicle is covered with solar panels that provide electricity to the four mobile consulting rooms and diagnostic imaging equipment. CREDIT: Courtesy of Utorak
Consumption subsidies
“In Argentina’s current situation, where there is practically no financing, and there are restrictions on importing equipment, high inflation and economic uncertainty, it is difficult to think about large renewable energy parks, and small projects become more attractive,” Marcelo Alvarez, a member of the board of the Argentine Renewable Energy Chamber (Cader), told IPS.
Alvarez pointed out that what conspires against small private and distributed generation projects are the subsidies that the Argentine government has been providing for years to energy consumption, including those families with high purchasing power that do not need them.
“Artificially cheap electricity rates and the scarcity of credit discourage the growth of renewables,” Alvarez said.
“The proof of this is that more than half of the distributed generation projects in operation are in the province of Cordoba (in the center of the country), where electricity prices are three times more expensive than in Buenos Aires and there is a special line of credit from the local bank (Bancor, which grants ‘eco-sustainable loans’) for renewable equipment,” he said.
Indeed, according to data from the Energy Secretariat, there are 1,051 user undertakings that generate their own electricity and inject their surplus into the grid and 573 of them are in the province of Cordoba.
View of photovoltaic panels in a private neighborhood in Pilar, some 50 kilometers from Buenos Aires. Solar panels have become part of the landscape in the suburbs of Argentina’s capital city. CREDIT: Courtesy of Utorak
Private ventures
On Dec. 15, the Rural Society inaugurated the largest private solar park in Buenos Aires, in the 42,000 square meter covered area where the country’s most important fairs and exhibitions are held. The investment reportedly amounted to almost one million dollars.
“We have 42,000 square meters of roofs in our pavilions. It is a very important flat surface for the placement of solar panels, so we had been thinking about it for several years. We had done a pilot project in 2019, but then everything was delayed by the pandemic, which forced us to close the venue,” Claudio Dowdall, general manager of La Rural, told IPS.
“At this stage we used 5,000 square meters of roofs, on which we placed 1,136 photovoltaic panels, with a total power of 619 kW. This is equivalent to the average consumption of 210 family homes and, for us, it is between 30 and 40 percent of the electricity we use,” he added.
Andrés Badino, founder of Utorak, a company that has been dedicated to renewable energy for families and companies for more than five years, confirms that consultations and demand are growing in the sector.
“People’s interest has been growing because of increased environmental awareness and, also, because of what can be saved on electricity bills for residential users and for educational institutions and healthcare centers as well,” Badino said.
“Argentina has a national industry for the production of solar thermal tanks, but not for the manufacture of panels, inverters or batteries, despite the fact that the country has one of the largest reserves in the world, the main component. But we are confident that international prices will go down and drive demand,” he said.
CANDELARIA, Cuba, Dec 20 (IPS) – Mayra Rojas is one of a small but growing number of people in Cuba benefiting from the production of biogas, a renewable energy source still little used in a country highly dependent on fossil fuels.
The biodigester in the back of her house in the rural community of Carambola, Candelaria municipality in the province of Artemisa, 80 kilometers west of Havana, brings Rojas the benefits of not using firewood and electricity for cooking, with the consequent reduction in electric bills and cooking time.
It was built in 2011 with the help of her husband Edegni Puche, who worked in the installation of the gas pipes and other aspects.
Rojas and Puche, who raise pigs and grow fruits and vegetables on their small family farm, were advised by specialists from the Cuban Society for the Promotion of Renewable Energy Sources and Respect for the Environment (Cubasolar) and the Movement of Biogas Users (MUB).
Rojas also received materials from the municipal government and the local pig company to build the small-scale Chinese-type fixed-dome biodigester of about six cubic meters in size.
She estimates that the total cost of the project ranged between 500 and 600 dollars at the exchange rate at the time.
Construction costs depend on the size, type and thickness of the material, as well as the characteristics of the site.
However, experts estimate that the average minimum cost for the construction of a small-scale biodigester – which more than covers the cooking needs of a household – currently stands at around 1,000 dollars in a country with an average monthly salary equivalent to 160 dollars at the official exchange rate.
Rojas says that “before, when we cleaned the pens, the manure, urine and waste from the pigs’ food piled up in the open air, in a corner of the yard. It stank and there were a lot of flies.”
The organic matter is now decomposed anaerobically by bacteria, but in a closed, non-polluting environment that provides methane gas as an energy resource, instead of releasing it into the atmosphere.
Thanks to the alternative energy source Rojas can also keep her nails painted and her hair clean for longer.
It also helped her husband and two young children become more involved in household chores, cleaning the yard and taking care of the animals on the family farm, “and created greater awareness of environmental care.”
In addition, biogas technology provides biol and biosol – liquid effluent and sludge, respectively – which are ideal for fertilizing and restoring soils, “as well as watering and keeping plants green,” says Rojas, who has a lush garden where she grows varieties of exotic orchids.
Her biodigester has also proven useful to the community, because when there are blackouts due to tropical cyclones that frequently affect the island, “neighbors have come to heat up water and cook their food,” she adds.
There are an estimated 5,000 biodigesters in Cuba, with the potential to expand the network to 20,000 units, at least the small-scale ones, according to conservative estimates by experts.
More than 90 percent of Cuba’s electricity comes from burning fossil fuels in aging thermoelectric plants and diesel and fuel oil engines, in a nation where a significant percentage of the 3.9 million homes use electric power as the main energy source for cooking and heating water for bathing.
Government delegations celebrate the close of the historic negotiation at COP15 of the New Global Framework on Biodiversity in the early hours of the morning on Monday Dec. 19, at the Palais des Congrès in Montreal, Canada. CREDIT: Mike Muzurakis/IISD
by Emilio Godoy (montreal)
Inter Press Service
Its fate now depends on the new Kunming-Montreal Global Framework on Biodiversity, which was agreed by the 15th Conference of the Parties (COP15) to the Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD) on Monday Dec. 19, at the end of the summit held since Dec. 7 at the Palais des Congrès in Montreal.
Now, the world’s countries must translate the results into national biodiversity strategies, to comply with the new accord. In this regard, David Ainsworth, spokesman for the CBD, in force since 1993 and based in Montreal, announced the creation of a global accelerator for the drafting of national plans, with the support of U.N. agencies.
COP15 of the Convention on Biological Diversity approved a new program to protect the world’s natural heritage for the next 10 years during the summit held in the Canadian city of Montreal. The picture shows a statue of a polar bear, whose species is threatened by melting ice and habitat loss, on a street in Montreal. CREDIT: Emilio Godoy/IPS
The menu of agreements
COP15, whose theme was “Ecological Civilization: Building a shared future for all life on earth”, approved four objectives on improving the status of biodiversity, reducing species extinction, fair and appropriate sharing of benefits from access to and use of genetic resources, and means of implementation of the agreement.
In addition, the plenary of the summit, which brought together some 15,000 people representing governments, non-governmental organizations, academia, international bodies and companies, agreed on 23 goals within the Global Framework, for the conservation and management of 30 percent of terrestrial areas and 30 percent of marine areas by 2030, in what is known in U.N. jargon as the 30×30.
This includes the complete or partial restoration of at least 30 percent of degraded terrestrial and marine ecosystems, as well as the reduction of the loss of areas of high biological importance to almost zero.
Likewise, the agreement reached by the 196 States Parties at COP15 includes the halving of food waste, the elimination or reform of at least 500 billion dollars a year in subsidies harmful to biodiversity, and at least 200 billion dollars in funding for biodiversity by 2030 from public and private sources.
It also endorsed increasing financial transfers from countries of the industrialized North to nations of the developing South by at least 20 billion dollars by 2025 and 30 billion dollars by 2030, and the voluntary publication by companies for monitoring, evaluation and disclosure of the impact of their activities on biodiversity.
The Global Environment Facility (GEF) will manage a new fund, whose operation will be defined by the countries over the next two years.
With regard to digital sequence information (DSI) on genetic resources, the Global Framework stipulates the establishment of a multilateral fund for benefit-sharing between providers and users of genetic resources and states that governments will define the final figure at COP16 in Turkey in 2024.
The Global Framework also contains gender and youth perspectives, two strong demands of the process that was initially scheduled to end in the city of Kunming, China, in 2020. But because that country was unable to host mass meetings due to its zero-tolerance policy towards COVID-19, a first virtual chapter was held there and another later in person, and the final one now took place in Montreal.
The states parties are required to report at least every five years on their national compliance with the Global Framework. The CBD will include national information submitted in February 2026 and June 2029 in its status and trend reports.
With some differences, civil society organizations and indigenous peoples gave a nod to the Global Framework, but issued warnings. Viviana Figueroa, representative of the International Indigenous Forum on Biodiversity, and Simone Lovera, policy director of the Global Forest Coalition, applauded the agreement in conversations with IPS, while pointing out its risks.
“It’s a good step forward, because it recognizes the role of indigenous peoples, the use of biodiversity and the role of traditional knowledge,” said Figueroa, an Omaguaca indigenous lawyer from Argentina whose organization brings together indigenous groups from around the world to present their positions at international environmental meetings.
“It has been a long process, to which native peoples have contributed and have made proposals. The most important aspects that we proposed have been recognized and we hope to work together with the countries,” she added.
But, she remarked, “the most important thing will be the implementation.”
Goal C and targets one, three, five, nine, 13, 21 and 22 of the Global Framework relate to respect for the rights of native and local communities.
Lovera, whose organization brings together NGOs and indigenous groups, said the accord “recognizes the rights of indigenous peoples and local communities, and of women. It also includes a recommendation to withdraw subsidies and reduce public and private investments in destructive activities, such as large-scale cattle ranching and oil palm monoculture.”
But indigenous and human rights organizations have questioned the 30×30 approach on the grounds that it undermines ancestral rights, blocks access to aboriginal territories, and requires consultation and unpressured, informed consent for protected areas prior to any decision on the future of those areas.
Discussions at the Convention on Biological Diversity summit intensified in the last few days of COP15 and ran late into the night, as in this session on health and biodiversity. But in the end, agreement was reached on a new Global Framework on Biodiversity, which will be binding on the 196 states parties. CREDIT: IISD/ENB
Major challenge
While the Global Framework has indicators and monitoring mechanisms and is legally binding, it has no actual teeth, and the precedent of the failed Aichi Targets casts a shadow over its future, especially with the world’s poor track record on international agreements.
The Aichi Biodiversity Targets, adopted in 2010 in that Japanese city during the CBD’s COP10 and which its 196 states parties failed to meet in 2020, included the creation of terrestrial and marine protected areas; the fight against pollution and invasive species; respect for indigenous knowledge; and the restoration of damaged ecosystems.
Several estimates put the amount needed to protect biological heritage at 700 billion dollars, which means there is still an enormous gap to be closed.
In more than 30 years, the GEF has disbursed over 22 billion dollars and helped transfer another 120 billion dollars to more than 5,000 regional and national projects. For the new period starting in 2023, the fund is counting on some five billion dollars in financing.
In addition, the Small Grants Program has supported around 27,000 community initiatives in developing countries.
“There is little public funding, more is needed,” Lovera said. “It’s sad that they say the private sector must fund biodiversity. In indigenous territories money is needed. They can do much more than governments with less money. Direct support can be more effective and they will meet the commitments.”
The activist also criticized the use of offsets, a mechanism whereby one area can be destroyed and another can be restored elsewhere – already used in countries such as Chile, Colombia and Mexico.
“This system allows us to destroy 70 percent of the planet while preserving the other 30 percent,” Lovera said. “It is madness. For indigenous peoples and local communities, it is very negative, because they lose their own biodiversity and the compensation is of no use to them, because it happens somewhere else.”
Figueroa said institutions that already manage funds could create direct mechanisms for indigenous peoples, as is the case with the Small Grants Program.
Of the 609 commitments that organizations, companies and individuals have already made voluntarily at COP15, 303 are aimed at the conservation and restoration of terrestrial ecosystems, 188 at alliances, and 159 at adaptation to climate change and reduction of polluting emissions.
The summit also coincided with the 10th Meeting of the Conference of the Parties to the Cartagena Protocol on Biosafety and the 4th Meeting of the Conference of the Parties to the Nagoya Protocol on Access to Genetic Resources and the Fair and Equitable Sharing of Benefits from their Utilization, both components of the CBD.
Images of the planet’s sixth mass extinction reflect the size of the challenge. More than a quarter of some 150,000 species on the IUCN Red List are threatened with extinction.
The “Living Planet Report 2022: Building a nature-positive society”, prepared by the WWF and the Institute of Zoology in London, shows that Latin America and the Caribbean has experienced the largest decline in monitored wildlife populations worldwide, with an average decline of 94 percent between 1970 and 2018.
With a decade to act, each passing day represents more biological wealth lost.
The executive secretary of the Convention on Biological Diversity, Elizabeth Maruma Mrema, highlighted on Friday Dec. 16 the results of the Nagoya Protocol on access to genetic resources and fair benefit sharing at an event during COP15 in the Canadian city of Montreal. But the talks have not reached an agreement on the digital sequencing of genetic resources. CREDIT: Emilio Godoy/IPS
by Emilio Godoy (montreal)
Inter Press Service
MONTREAL, Dec 16 (IPS) – In addition to its nutritional properties, quinoa, an ancestral grain from the Andes, also has cosmetic uses, as stated by the resource use and benefit-sharing permit ABSCH-IRCC-PE-261033-1 awarded in February to a private individual under a 15-month commercial use contract.
But it also sets restrictions on the registration of products obtained from quinoa or the removal of its elements from the Andean nation, to prevent the risk of irregular exploitation without a fair distribution of benefits, in other words, biopiracy.
The licensed material may have a digital representation of its genetic structure which in turn may generate new structures from which formulas or products may emerge. This is called digital sequence information (DSI), in the universe of research or commercial applications within the CBD.
The summit has brought together some 15,000 people representing the 196 States Parties to the CBD, non-governmental organizations, academia, international bodies and companies.
The focus of the debate is the Post-2020 Global Framework on Biodiversity, which consists of 22 targets in areas including financing for conservation, guidelines on digital sequencing of genetic material, degraded ecosystems, protected areas, endangered species, the role of business and gender equality.
Like most of the issues, negotiations on DSI and the sharing of resulting benefits, contained in one of the Global Framework’s four objectives and in target 13, are at a deadlock, on everything from definitions to possible sharing mechanisms.
Except for the digital twist, the issue is at the heart of the Nagoya Protocol on Access to Genetic Resources and the Fair and Equitable Sharing of Benefits Arising from their Utilization, part of the CBD, signed in that Japanese city in 2010 and in force since 2014.
The delegations of the 196 States Parties to the Convention on Biological Diversity have failed to make progress at COP15 in the negotiations on new targets for the protection of the world’s natural heritage, in the Canadian city of Montreal. In the picture, a working group reviews a proposal on the complex issue. CREDIT: IISD/ENB
Amber Scholz, a German member of the DSI Scientific Network, a group of 70 experts from 25 countries, said there is an urgent need to close the gap between the existing innovation potential and a fair benefit-sharing system so that digital sequencing benefits everyone.
“It’s been a decade now and things haven’t turned out so well. The promise of a system of innovation, open access and benefit sharing is broken,” Scholz, a researcher at the Department of Microbial Ecology and Diversity in the Leibniz Institute’s DSMZ German Collection of Microorganisms and Cell Cultures, told IPS.
DSI stems from the revolution in the massive use of technological tools, which has reached biology as well, fundamental in the discovery and manufacture of molecules and drugs such as those used in vaccines against the coronavirus that caused the COVID-19 pandemic.
The Aichi Biodiversity Targets, adopted in 2010 in that Japanese city during the CBD COP10, were missed by the target year, 2020, and will now be renewed and updated by the Global Framework that will emerge from Montreal.
The targets included respect for the traditional knowledge, innovations and practices of indigenous and local communities related to the conservation and sustainable use of biological diversity, their customary use of biological resources, and the full and effective participation of indigenous and local communities in the implementation of the CBD.
Lack of clarity in the definition of DSI, challenges in the traceability of the country of origin of the sequence via digital databases, fear of loss of open access to data and different outlooks on benefit-sharing mechanisms are other aspects complicating the debate among government delegates.
Through the Action Agenda: Make a Pledge platform, organizations, companies and individuals have already made 586 voluntary commitments at COP15, whose theme is “Ecological civilization: Building a shared future for all life on earth”.
Of these, 44 deal with access and benefit sharing, while 294 address conservation and restoration of terrestrial ecosystems, 185 involve partnerships and alliances, and 155 focus on adaptation to climate change and emission reductions.
Genetic havens
Access to genetic resources for commercial or non-commercial purposes has become an issue of great concern in the countries of the global South, due to the fear of biopiracy, especially with the advent of digital sequencing, given that physical access to genetic materials is not absolutely necessary.
Although the Nagoya Protocol includes access and benefit-sharing mechanisms, digital sequencing mechanisms have generated confusion. In fact, this instrument has created a market in which lax jurisdictions have taken advantage by becoming genetic havens.
Around 2,000 gene banks operate worldwide, attracting some 15 million users. Almost two billion sequences have been registered, according to statistics from GenBank, one of the main databases in the sector and part of the U.S. National Center for Biotechnology Information.
Argentina leads the list of permits for access to genetic resources in Latin America under the Protocol, with a total of 56, two of which are commercial, followed by Peru (54, four commercial) and Panama (39, one commercial). Mexico curbed access to such permits in 2019, following a scandal triggered by the registration of maize in 2016.
The largest providers of genetic resources leading to publicly available DSI are the United States, China and Japan. Brazil ranks 10th among sources and users of samples, according to a study published in 2021 by Scholz and five other researchers.
The mechanisms for managing genetic information sequences have become a condition for negotiating the new post-2020 Global Framework for biodiversity, which poses a conflict between the most biodiverse countries (generally middle- and low-income) and the nations of the industrialized North.
Brazilian indigenous activist Cristiane Juliao, a leader of the Pankararu people, calls for a fair system of benefit-sharing for access to and use of genetic resources and their digital sequences at COP15, being held at the Palais des Congrès in the Canadian city of Montreal. CREDIT: Emilio Godoy/IPS
“We don’t look at one small element of a plant. We look at the whole context and the role of that plant. All traditional knowledge is associated with genetic heritage, because we use it in food, medicine or spiritual activities,” she told IPS at COP15.
Therefore, she said, “traceability is important, to know where the knowledge was acquired or accessed.”
In Montreal, Brazilian native organizations are seeking recognition that the digital sequencing contains information that indigenous peoples and local communities protect and that digital information must be subject to benefit-sharing. They are also demanding guarantees of free consultation and the effective participation of indigenous groups in the digital information records.
Thanks to the system based on the country’s Biodiversity Law, in effect since 2016, the Brazilian government has recorded revenues of five million dollars for permits issued.
The Working Group responsible for drafting the new Global Framework put forward a set of options for benefit-sharing measures.
They range from leaving in place the current status quo, to the integration of digital sequence information on genetic resources into national access and benefit-sharing measures, or the creation of a one percent tax on retail sales of genetic resources.
Scholz suggested the COP reach a decision that demonstrates the political will to establish a fair and equitable system. “The scientific community is willing to share benefits through simple mechanisms that do not unfairly burden researchers in low- and middle-income countries,” she said.
For her part, Juliao demanded a more inclusive and fairer system. “There is no clear record of indigenous peoples who have agreed to benefit sharing. It is said that some knowledge comes from native peoples, but there is no mechanism for the sharing of benefits with us.”
The World Food Program has been active in Venezuela since last year, delivering bags of food to families of schoolchildren in some poor areas, such as remote areas accessed by river in the Arismedi municipality, in the southwestern plains state of Barinas. CREDIT: Gabriel Gómez/WFP
by Humberto Marquez (caracas)
Inter Press Service
CARACAS, Dec 15 (IPS) – The social crisis and humanitarian emergency in Venezuela became international headline news again once the government and the opposition, bitter adversaries for two decades, agreed to direct three billion dollars in state funds held abroad to social programs.
When the pact was signed on Nov. 26, renowned nutritionist Susana Raffalli published a photograph of the legs of a girl whose height is eight centimeters shorter than what is appropriate for her age. “I measured her today. Her growth has been irreversibly stunted,” she said.
“Between the first announcement of the social roundtable (meetings to that purpose were already held in 2014) and the one signed today in Mexico, a generation of Venezuelans like her was born. The agreement is not a trophy. It is a commitment to hope,” Raffalli stated.
The Social Agreement signed in Mexico “is an important contribution, which could mean urgent aid for children, the elderly, the disabled and indigenous people, whose situation is extremely critical,” Roberto Patiño, founder of Alimenta la Solidaridad, a network of soup kitchens for children, told IPS.
The resources involved in the agreement are Venezuelan state funds frozen in the United States and European nations that in 2019 refused to accept the re-election of President Nicolás Maduro, in power since 2013, adopted sanctions and recognized opposition lawmaker Juan Guaidó as president.
Now, in talks between the government and the opposition, with the mediation of governments from this region and Norway, an agreement was reached to unfreeze part of the funds and allocate them to social programs under United Nations supervision.
The United States and European countries are participating in the deal as sanctioning parties and the UN as manager of the released funds and social programs covered by them.
“These are absolutely insufficient resources in the face of the crisis, but well-managed they can have a positive impact given the country’s complex humanitarian emergency,” Piero Trepiccione, coordinator of the network of social centers in Latin America and the Caribbean run by the Catholic Jesuit order Society of Jesus, told IPS.
The HumVenezuela Platform, made up of dozens of civil society organizations, has maintained since 2019 that the social situation in this South American country is a complex humanitarian emergency, based on its records on food, water and sanitation, health, basic education and living conditions.
The sharp deterioration in the living conditions in this country over the last decade has gone hand in hand with the decline of the Venezuelan economy – a collapsed oil industry and several years of hyperinflation – whose most visible international consequence has been the migration of seven million Venezuelans.
Renowned nutritionist Susana Raffalli published, as an example of a generation of children born and growing up with malnutrition and other problems in Venezuela, a photograph of the legs of a girl who, the day the government-opposition agreement was reached, was eight centimeters shorter than the appropriate size for her age. CREDIT: Susana Rafalli/Twitter
Barrier against life
In recent years, U.S. sanctions and the political clash with other governments, as in the case of Colombia, a neighbor with which the borders and the transit of people and goods were closed, have had a major impact.
For example, tragedy struck the low-income family of Michel Saraí, a five-year-old girl with pneumonia who was treated at a small hospital in La Fría, a small town in the southwest near the border with Colombia, which lacked the equipment needed for the necessary tests and treatment.
When her health took a turn for the worse on Nov. 30, her parents decided not to take her to the public hospital in the regional capital, San Cristóbal, because they did not have the dozens of dollars charged there to accept patients, who must bring their own supplies and pay for tests.
A Civil Defense ambulance, with fuel donated by a neighbor – gasoline is scarce in the state of Táchira and others – took the girl and her mother some 25 kilometers to the border bridge in the town of Boca de Grita, so that she could be treated free of charge in the cities of Cúcuta or Puerto Santander, on the Colombian side.
With the border formally closed, the Colombian military agreed to receive the ambulance due to the emergency, but the Venezuelan National Guard refused to allow passage of the vehicle carrying the little girl connected to oxygen.
“We had no money to offer them to see if they would let her get through,” the father, Jonathan Pernía, told local reporters a few days later.
In desperation, the mother and an aunt accepted what seemed like the only alternative: disconnecting her from the oxygen, placing her on a wheelbarrow – “as if she were a sack of potatoes,” Pernía lamented – and running with her through the rain to the Colombian side of the bridge, where another ambulance was waiting for them. But the little girl arrived without vital signs.
At the morgue of the hospital in San Cristobal her parents picked up the body. A week later they were still trying to find the money needed to pay the burial expenses.
Jonathan Pernía, the impoverished father of a little girl who died when an ambulance was prevented from crossing the border between Venezuela and Colombia to give her emergency treatment, shows journalists the bill for the funeral expenses, which he has not been able to cover either. CREDIT: Courtesy of Bleima Márquez
Figures behind the crisis
In Venezuela, poverty – defined as those who cannot afford the basic food basket – currently affects 81.5 percent of the population (90.9 percent in 2021), according to the Living Conditions Survey of the Andrés Bello Catholic University, which surveyed 2300 households throughout the country. This is the first time in seven years that it has gone down, partly attributable to a rebound in the economy and remittances from migrants.
Meanwhile, multidimensional poverty – which takes into account housing, education, employment, services and income – fell from 65.2 percent in 2021 to 50.5 percent in 2022, and extreme poverty dropped from 68 percent in 2021 to 53.3 percent in 2022.
Venezuela is the most unequal country in the Americas, and along with Angola, Mozambique and Namibia is one of the most unequal in the world, as the richest 10 percent earn 70 times more (553.20 dollars per month on average) than the poorest 10 percent (7.90 dollars).
Seven million children are in school, down from 7.7 million in 2019, and an estimated 1.5 million children and adolescents are not in the educational system. Preschool and daycare coverage is just 56 percent.
The survey reported an improvement in formal employment and income this year, with average monthly earnings of 113 dollars for public employees, 142 dollars for the self-employed, and 150 dollars for people working in private sector companies.
As a consequence, food insecurity declined from 88 percent of Venezuelans worried about running out of food in 2021, to 78 percent, while the proportion of people who have gone a whole day without eating dropped to 14 percent, from 34 percent in 2021.
More than 90 percent of poor households have received food assistance from the government -especially carbohydrates- but only one third receive these products monthly.
In health, according to the survey, the use of public services is decreasing (70 percent) and health care is becoming more expensive because, while prices in private clinics are skyrocketing, 13 percent of those who turned to public services had to pay in outpatient clinics and 16 percent in hospitals, and in 65 percent of the cases they had to pay themselves for the medicine that was prescribed for them.
Venezuelan government and opposition negotiators, meeting in Mexico with that country’s Foreign Minister Marcelo Ebrard and Norwegian mediator Dag Nylander, agreed to help address social needs in their country, as a preliminary step to a possible agreement to solving the political crisis. CREDIT: National Assembly of Venezuela
Mexican formula
Jorge Rodríguez, president of the legislative National Assembly and the ruling party’s lead negotiator, said that with the funds released after the agreement reached in Mexico, the infrastructure and materials in 2300 schools will be covered, and the vaccines required in accordance with the World Health Organization (WHO) guidelines will be purchased.
Medicine for oncological and HIV patients will be obtained, radiotherapy programs, blood banks and at least 21 hospitals will be revived, while more than one billion dollars will be allocated to the national electricity grid.
The World Food Program (WFP), meanwhile, which now delivers food to families of 100,000 schoolchildren in poor areas in the north of the country, hopes to raise funds to provide meals to more than one million people by the end of 2023.
According to Trepiccione, of the Jesuit network, resources should be directed “to the recovery of the infrastructure of hospitals and schools, which are in terrible condition, because that generates a chain of jobs, services and economic activity along with the obvious improvements in the provision of health care and the quality of education.”
“The same can be said of reactivating the electrical system, hit by blackouts that affect above all the economy and the life of people in the western part of the country,” he added.
Patiño, from the network of soup kitchens, said priorities were “programs for early childhood care, pregnant women, school feeding, as well as care for the elderly and indigenous communities, segments where many are dying too young due to lack of urgent health care.”
Groups of retirees and pensioners hold constant demonstrations in Caracas and other cities in protest against their tiny pensions, which in Venezuela are equal to the legal minimum wage and this December barely reached the equivalent of nine dollars for the entire month. CREDIT: Courtesy of Efecto Cocuyo
Government pensions, which are equal to the minimum wage, were equivalent to 30 dollars at the beginning of the year, but with the depreciation of the local currency they are equivalent to just nine dollars per month as of this December.
“We must also emphasize that this social agreement is absolutely insufficient in the face of the precarious conditions that exist in our country. These are resources that will be exhausted and the needs will not disappear,” said Patiño.
In his view, “the only thing that can really solve the crisis, the best possible social program, is a decent job, with a sufficient income and with a social security and public health program that takes care of the most needy.”
Funds for the agreement, frozen in banks in industrialized countries, will be released gradually under the supervision of a government-opposition committee and with UN agency management to tender, implement and oversee the programs, in 2023 and 2024.
And over the coming year new meetings will be held and further political agreements are expected, which may lead to an easing or lifting of sanctions and, eventually, to an improvement in the living conditions of Venezuela’s 28 million people.
Aerial view of the Municipal Theater of Boa Vista and its parking lot covered by solar panels, near the center of a city of wide avenues, empty spaces, abundant solar energy and high quality of life compared to other cities in Brazil’s Amazon region. In the background is seen the Branco River, which could be dammed 120 kilometers downstream for the construction of a hydroelectric plant that would flood part of the capital of the state of Roraima. CREDIT: Boa Vista city government
by Mario Osava (boa vista, brazil)
Inter Press Service
BOA VISTA, Brazil, Dec 13 (IPS) – Solar energy is booming in Roraima, a state in the far north of Brazil, to the benefit of indigenous people and children in its capital, Boa Vista, and helping to provide a stable energy supply to the entire populace, who suffer frequent electricity shortages and blackouts.
The local government of Boa Vista, a city of 437,000 people, installed seven solar power plants that bring annual savings of around 960,000 dollars.
“We have used these savings to invest in health, education and social action, which is the priority of the city government because we are ‘the capital of early childhood’,” said Thiago Amorim, municipal secretary of Public Services and Environment.
Solar panels have mushroomed on the roofs of public buildings and parking lots around the city. The largest unit was built on the outskirts of Boa Vista – a 15,000-panel power plant with an installed capacity of 5,000 kilowatts.
In the city, the parking lot of the Municipal Theater, a bus terminal, a market and the mayor’s office itself stand out, covered with panels. There are also 74 bus stops with a few panels, but many were damaged when parts were stolen, Amorim told IPS in an interview in his office.
In total, the city had a solar power generation capacity of 6700 KW at the end of 2020, equivalent to the consumption of 9000 local households. It also promotes energy efficiency in the areas under municipal management.
“Eighty percent of the city is now lit up by LED bulbs, which are more efficient. The goal is to reach 100 percent in 2023,” said the municipal secretary.
The solar energy park about 10 kilometers from downtown Boa Vista has 15,000 panels with an output of 5,000 KW. It is one of the seven electricity generation units built by the city government to save some 960,000 dollars a year in energy and thus increase the social spending that makes Boa Vista “the capital of early childhood”. The plant is located on the plains of northeastern Roraima, an extensive savannah of 42,706 square kilometers, which stands in contrast with the image of the Amazon jungle. CREDIT: Boa Vista city government
The mayor’s office, during the administration of Teresa Surita (2013-2020), was a pioneer in the installation of solar power plants and also in comprehensive care for children from pregnancy to adolescence, for youngsters in the public educational system.
The city’s Welcoming Family program provides coordinated health, education, social assistance and communication services for mothers and children, from pregnancy through the first six years of the children’s lives. The day-care centers are called Mother Houses.
In recent years, students in the local municipal elementary schools have performed above the national average, coming in fifth place in student testing among Brazil’s 27 state capitals.
This was an especially outstanding achievement because the influx of Venezuelan migrants more than doubled the number of students in Boa Vista schools in the last decade.
Despite this, the quality of teaching was not affected, according to the indicators of the Education Ministry’s Basic Education Evaluation System.
A “little Amazon jungle” in the center of the city of Boa Vista with giant animal sculptures is the main children’s park of the three dozen in the city, with animal playground toys and structures. The playgrounds in the capital of Roraima, a state in the extreme north of Brazil, aim to educate children about the Amazon rainforest. CREDIT: Mario Osava/IPS
The results of the local early childhood policy have been recognized by several national and international specialized entities, including the United Nations Children’s Fund, which awarded it the Unicef Seal of Approval in 2016 and 2020.
More visible than the solar panels are the 30 playgrounds of varying sizes scattered around the city, in some cases featuring large playground equipment and structures in the shape of national wild animals, such as crocodiles and jaguars. They are called “selvinhas” (little jungles).
The use of solar power has spread to other sectors of life in Roraima, a state with only 650,000 inhabitants, despite its large area of 223,644 square kilometers, twice the size of Honduras, for example.
In May, there were 705 solar plants in homes, businesses and private companies, in addition to public buildings, in the state, with a total installed capacity of 15,955 KW (just under one percent of the region’s total).
In Roraima there are solar plants in the courthouses in four cities, in an aim to cut energy costs through a program called Lumen.
The secretary of Public Services and Environment of Boa Vista, Thiago Amorim, stands next to a map of the city which shows the areas already illuminated by energy-efficient LED bulbs. They now light up 80 percent of the city, which stands out for its solar energy generation and for programs that prioritize children, coordinating and combining educational, health and social action policies. CREDIT: Mario Osava/IPS
The Federal University of Roraima (UFRR) is also building a 908-panel plant, to be inaugurated by March 2023, with the capacity to generate 20 percent of the electricity consumed on its three campuses.
“The main objective is to save energy costs, and the goal is to expand to cover 100 percent of consumption. But it will also be useful for electrical engineering studies,” Emanuel Tishcer, UFRR’s head of infrastructure, told IPS.
The training of specialists in renewable sources, research into more efficient and cheaper panels, the comparison of technologies and innovations all become more accessible with the availability of an operating solar power plant, which serves the university’s electrical energy laboratory.
Edinho Macuxi, general coordinator of the Indigenous Council of Roraima (CIR), the largest organization of native peoples in the state, said “the great objective (of solar energy) is to prove that Roraima and Brazil do not need new hydroelectric plants.”
The Bem Querer (Portuguese for “good will”) plant on the Branco River, Roraima’s main river, “will have direct impacts on nine indigenous territories” and will also affect other nearby indigenous areas if it is built, as the central government intends, he told IPS.
That is why the CIR is involved in three projects – two solar energy and a wind energy study – in territories assigned to different indigenous ethnic groups, he said.
A view of the Branco River, some five kilometers upstream of the point where the Brazilian government plans to build the Bem Querer hydroelectric power plant. Because the river has little gradient on the central plains of the northern state of Roraima, the reservoir would flood an extensive area, including part of the capital Boa Vista, which has 436,000 inhabitants. This has triggered heavy opposition to the project, by the local indigenous population as well. CREDIT: Mario Osava/IPS
The government’s hydroelectric plans, which currently prioritize Bem Querer, but include other uses of local rivers, have sparked a renewed debate on energy alternatives in Roraima, which has an installed electricity capacity of only 300 megawatts, since it has almost no industry.
From 2001 to 2019, Roraima relied on electricity from neighboring Venezuela, generated by the Guri hydroelectric plant in eastern Venezuela, the deterioration of which caused a growing shortage over the last decade, until the supply completely ran out in 2019, two years before the end of the contract.
Diesel thermoelectric plants had to be reactivated and new plants had to be built, including one using natural gas transported by truck from the Amazon jungle municipality of Silves, some 1,000 kilometers away, in order to guarantee a steady supply of electricity that the people of Roraima did not have until then.
It is costly electricity, but its subsidized price is one of the lowest in Brazil. The subsidy drives up the cost of electric power in the rest of the country. That is why there is nationwide pressure for the construction of a 715-kilometer transmission line between Manaus, capital of the state of Amazonas, also in the north, and Boa Vista.
With this transmission line, Roraima will cease to be the only Brazilian state outside the national grid, and local advocates believe it will be indispensable for a secure supply of electricity, a long-desired goal.
The three members of the board of the Roraima Renewable Energy Forum, Conceição Escobar (L), Ciro Campos and Rosilene Maia (R), which discusses with the local society the energy alternatives that would make it possible to avoid the construction of the Bem Querer hydroelectric plant and the environmental and social impacts of the reservoir. CREDIT: Mario Osava/IPS
To discuss this and other alternatives, a group of stakeholders created the Roraima Alternative Energies Forum in September 2019, to promote dialogue between all sectors, in search of “the strategic construction of solutions to make the use of renewable energies viable in the state.”
“Our focus is energy security. The Forum is focused on photovoltaic sources and distributed generation. But it seeks a variety of renewable energies, including biomass,” said Conceição Escobar, one of the Forum’s coordinators and president of the Brazilian Association of Electrical Engineers in Roraima.
“There is an opportunity for everyone to be involved in the discussion. The construction of transmission lines and hydroelectric plants takes a long time, we have perhaps ten years to develop alternatives,” she told IPS.
“I am against Bem Querer, but the government of Roraima supports it. The Forum listens to all parties, it does not want to impose solutions. We want to study the feasibility of combined sources, with solar, biomass and wind, and encourage the use of garbage,” said biologist Rosilene Maia, who also forms part of the three-member board of the Forum.
The Municipal Theater building, the main artistic and cultural venue in Santiago, the capital of Chile, was lit up with LED bulbs in order to show local residents the benefits of energy efficiency to reduce costs and provide bright lighting. CREDIT: Fundación Chile
by Orlando Milesi (santiago)
Inter Press Service
SANTIAGO, Dec 08 (IPS) – The Energy Efficiency Law began to gradually be implemented in Chile after the approval of its regulations, but more efforts and institutions are still lacking before it can produce results.
In Chile, the energy sector accounts for 74 percent of greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions, producing 68 million tons of carbon dioxide (CO2) per year. For this reason, energy efficiency is decisive in tackling climate change and saving on its costs.
The law passed in February 2021 and its regulations were issued on Sept. 13 of this year, but full implementation will still take time. The law itself states that its full application will take place “gradually”, without setting precise deadlines.
For example, the energy rating of homes and new buildings is voluntary for now and will only become mandatory in 2023. In addition, only practice will show whether the capacity will exist to oversee the sector and apply sanctions.
The aims of the law include reducing the intensity of energy use and cutting GHGs.
According to the public-private organization Fundación Chile, energy efficiency has the potential to reduce CO2 emissions by 44 percent – a decisive percentage to mitigate climate change in this long, narrow South American country of 19.5 million people.
“For the first time in Chile, we have an Energy Efficiency Law. This is a key step in joining efforts to achieve carbon neutrality by 2050, since energy efficiency has the potential to reduce greenhouse gases by 35 percent,” the Foundation’s assistant manager for sustainability, Karien Volker, told IPS.
The law sets standards for transportation, industry, mining and the residential, public and commercial sectors. Land transportation accounts for an estimated 25 percent of the energy used in Chile and the 250 largest companies operating in the country consume 35 percent of the total.
Volker underscored that the law incorporates energy labeling, the implementation of an energy management system for large consumers and the development of a National Plan.
“Upon implementation of the law, a 10 percent reduction in energy intensity, a cumulative savings of 15.2 billion dollars and a reduction of 28.6 million tons of CO2 are expected by 2030,” she said.
She also argued that the law will push large companies to meet minimum energy efficiency standards, which will change the way they operate.
“New homes with energy efficiency certifications will raise the standard of construction in Chile and push builders to innovate,” said Volker.
She added that “the transportation sector will also be positively impacted by establishing efficiency and performance standards for vehicles entering Chile.”
Buildings with the new standards will consume only one third of the energy compared to the current ones.
In Chile, 53.3 percent of electricity is generated with renewable energy: hydroelectric, solar, biomass and geothermal. The remaining 46.7 percent comes from thermoelectric plants using natural gas, coal or petroleum derivatives, almost all of which are imported.
The refrigerators currently sold in Chile must have a mandatory label indicating their energy efficiency, where the highest A++ and A+ levels are labelled in green to demonstrate the savings they provide. CREDIT: Orlando Milesi/IPS
Negative track record on energy efficiency
But in the recent history of this South American country the experience of energy savings has not been a positive one. There was total clarity in the assessment of the situation and concrete suggestions of measures to advance in energy efficiency, but nothing changed, said engineer and doctor in systems thinking Alfredo del Valle, a former advisor to the United Nations and the Chilean government in these matters.
Del Valle told IPS that between 2005 and 2007 he acted as a methodologist for the Chilean Ministry of Economy’s Country Energy Efficiency Program to formulate a national policy in this field.
“With broad public, private, academic and citizen participation, we discovered almost one hundred concrete energy efficiency potentials in transportation, industry and mining, residential and commercial buildings, household appliances, and even culture,” he explained.
However, he lamented, “Chilean politicians fail to understand what politicians in the (industrialized) North immediately understood 30 years earlier: that it is essential to invest money and political will in energy efficiency, just as we invest in energy supply.”
To illustrate, he noted that “the public budget for energy efficiency in 2020 is equivalent to just 10 million dollars compared to an investment in energy supply in the country of 4.38 billion dollars in the same year.”
According to the expert, “we need a new way of thinking and acting to be able to carry out social transformations and to be able to create our own future.”
Boric’s energy policy
The Energy Agenda 2022-2026 promoted by the leftist government of Gabriel Boric, in office since March, states that “energy efficiency is one of the most important actions for Chile to achieve the goal of carbon neutrality.”
The document establishes actions and commitments to be implemented as part of the National Energy Efficiency Plan. Published at the beginning of this year, it proposes 33 measures in the productive sectors, transportation, buildings and ordinary citizens, according to the Ministry of Energy.
“With all these measures, we expect to reduce our total energy intensity by 4.5 percent by 2026 and by 30 percent by 2050, compared to 2019,” the Agenda states.
The plan announces an acceleration of the implementation of energy management systems in large consumers to encourage a more efficient use in industry, “as mandated by the Energy Efficiency Law that will be progressively implemented.”
According to the government, by 2026, 200 companies will have implemented energy management systems.
The authorities also announced support to micro, small and medium-sized companies for efficient energy use and management and will support 2000 in self-generation and energy efficiency.
“Although as a country we have made progress in the deployment of renewable energies for electricity generation, we have yet to transfer the benefits of renewable energy sources to other areas, such as the use of heat and cold in industry,” the document states.
Cambia el Foco is the name of the program promoted by Fundación Chile that included educating students to raise awareness about the need for energy efficiency. CREDIT: Fundación Chile
Improvement in housing quality
In Chile there are more than five million homes and most of them do not have adequate thermal insulation conditions, requiring a high use of energy for heating in the southern hemisphere winter and cooling in the summer.
The hope is that by making the “energy qualification” a requirement to obtain the final approval, the municipal building permit, the quality of housing using efficient equipment or non-conventional renewable energies will improve. This will allow greater savings in heating, cooling, lighting and household hot water.
In four years, the government’s Agenda aims to thermally insulate 20,000 social housing units, install 20,000 solar photovoltaic systems in low-income neighborhoods, recondition 400 schools to make them energy efficient, expand solar power systems in rural housing, improve supply in 50 schools in low-income rural areas and develop distributed generation systems up to 500 megawatts (MW).
In recent years, the Fundación Chile, together with the government and other entities, has promoted energy efficiency plans with the widespread installation of LED lightbulbs along streets and in other public spaces. It also promoted the replacement of refrigerators over 10 years old with units using more efficient and greener technologies.
One milestone was the delivery of 230,000 LED bulbs to educational facilities, benefiting more than 200 schools and a total of 73,000 students, employees and teachers.
The initiative made it possible to install one million LED bulbs, leading to an estimated saving of 4.8 percent of national consumption.
Meanwhile, the campaign for more efficient cooling expects the market share of such refrigerators to become 95 percent A++ and A+ products, to achieve savings of 1.3 terawatt hours (TWh – equivalent to one billion watt hours).
That would mean a reduction of 3.1 million tons of CO2 by 2030.
An old refrigerator accounts for 20 percent of a household’s electricity bill and a more efficient one saves up to 55 percent.
There are currently an estimated one million refrigerators in Chile that are more than 15 years old.
Trains and trucks move cargo in the port of Veracruz, in southeastern Mexico, on August 30, 2022. Through that infrastructure, the second largest in the country for freight received, pass hydrocarbons, cars, electronic appliances and food, for internal and external consumption. Credit: Emilio Godoy / IPS
by Emilio Godoy (veracruz, mexico)
Inter Press Service
VERACRUZ, Mexico, Dec 05 (IPS) – Mexico has more than 11,000 square kilometers of continental coastline and intense maritime traffic. This Latin American country received 12 045 vessels as of July, compared to 11 971 on that date in 2021.
In Veracruz, in southeast Mexico, maritime traffic expanded 5% in July, receiving 1 254 vessels in 2022 compared to 1 192 in 2021.
But the country lacks measurements of pollution emitted by the shipping industry into the atmosphere and the water.
Globally, the shipping industry accounts for about 3 percent of global greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions, comparable to the total emissions from aviation. If it were its own country, shipping would rank around sixth in the world for its contributions to climate change. The current international target is to reduce GHG emissions from this sector by at least 50% by 2050.
In 2020, the International Maritime Organization (IMO) mandated that ships limit the sulfur content in fuels to 0.50% m/m (mass by mass) – a significant reduction from the previous limit of 3.5%.
However, Mexico does not have roadmaps for its reduction or concrete plans to produce marine fuels with lower sulfur content, an element harmful to human health and the environment.
Therefore, Mexico faces challenges to achieve IMO’s objectives that aim to reduce GHG emissions generated by human activities that have warmed the planet.
IMO will review their plan next year to endorse a new one, which it will check every five years, because it is estimated that GHG emissions from shipping grew from 977 million tons of CO2 in 2012 to 1 076 million in 2018 – an expansion of 9,6% – and could increase 90%-130% by 2050. Its overall level went from 2,76% to 2,89% in that period.
Emissions of sulfur dioxide (SO2) from the burning of high-sulfur fuels, derived as a residue from crude oil distillation, lead to sulfurous particles in the air, which can trigger asthma and worsen heart and lung diseases, as well as threaten marine and land ecosystems, according to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA).
In water, hydrocarbons block the entry of light and limit the photosynthesis of algae and other plants, and in fauna they can cause poisoning, alterations of reproductive cycles and intoxication, EPA adds.
SO2, which isn’t a GHG but is highly polluting, lasts only a few days in the atmosphere, but when dissolved in water it generates acids that lend its dangerous nature to human health.
Meanwhile, the emissions of nitrous dioxide (NOx), derived also from hydrocarbon consumption, stream into smog, when mixed with ground-level ozone. NOx remains 114 years in the atmosphere, according to several scientific studies.
Maritime pollution in Mexico. Infographic: Johana Claudio / IPS
Underestimated issue
IPS confirmed the impacts of this type of pollution, analyzing the data obtained through 30 public information requests to various government agencies and the consultation of satellite images of oil spills from ships that occurred in several areas of the country between 2019 and 2022.
As part of an exclusive collaboration with the Spanish company Orbital EOS (Earth Observation Solutions) – specialized in finding this type of pollution on the high seas –IPS identified through satellite images four discharges in Mexican marine areas that occurred between 2019 and 2021.
On December 14, 2021, an unidentified vessel spilled 3,14 cubic meters of a substance suspected of being a hydrocarbon, in an area of almost 79 km2, 147 kilometers off the Mexican coast, off Acapulco, in the southern state of Guerrero, according to an image taken by the European Space Agency’s Sentinel-1 satellite.
Another oil accident monitored by the Sentinel-2 satellite happened on April 14, 2019, when a ferry dumped between 0,81 and 6,08 m3 of light fuel (distillate fuels, like diesel) and between 17,65 and 176,6 m3 of thick fuel (heavy oil), 35 kilometers off the Sinaloa state coast, in the Sea of Cortez – an area of great biodiversity which is threatened by real estate development and overfishing.
The light hydrocarbon covered 20,26 km2 and the rest, 3,53 km2, according to Orbital EOS analysis.
The ship was built in 2001, and changed its name and navigation flag in May 2019, weeks after the spill. Its last location was reported in a port in central Italy.
Sentinel-1 detected another spill on December 8, 2021, when an unidentified ship spilled 1,15 m3 of probable hydrocarbon over 28,6 km2, 180 kilometers off the Veracruz coast.
In addition, this satellite recorded on September 27, 2021, another spill of 0,28 m3 of probable hydrocarbon in 7,1 km2, 390 kilometers from the coast, in the Gulf of Mexico.
The most recent accident occurred on August 21, 2022, when a private yacht sank and leaked fuel in Balandra, in Southern Baja California, an area afforded special protection for its biodiversity.
Moreover, the US non-governmental SkyTruth, devoted mainly to tracking spills, recorded 11 discharges of oily wastewater into Mexican waters between July 2020 and December 2021.
Ian McDonald, a Department of Terrestrial, Oceanic and Atmospheric Sciences researcher at the Florida State University (United States), underlined the presence of oil in the water due to the operation of hydrocarbon platforms and wells for decades; oil leaks from natural fractures in the seafloor and maritime shipping in Mexican marine areas.
“Preventive maintenance (of the facilities) has been lacking. The problem is the cumulative impact on an area. Ship activities, such as dredging and waste generation, have a significant footprint on marine ecosystems. The potential impact can be very large,” he told IPS from Miami.
The “Chronic Oiling in Global Oceans” research, which McDonald co-authored and was released last June, found that 97% of oil slicks come from vessels and land discharges and 3% from seafloor fumes off the Aztec coast.
An IMO spokesperson said to IPS it cannot comment on a country’s situation and informed that it will run a review on Mexico in 2024. Meanwhile, the Mexican shipping industry association declined to comment for this reportage and the navy, Semar, didn’t answer a comment request.
Hydrocarbon pollution on the high seas depends on the volume and where it happens, and chronic contamination has long-term effects.
“Any spill is going to have an impact. Where it is less direct is in open waters, because there’s more dilution, but it tends to accumulate in the depth of the ocean and affect some organisms. The impact is bigger when the spill reaches the beaches, because it has less movement there,” explained Adolfo Gracia, researcher at the National Autonomous University of Mexico’s Institute of Sea Sciences and Limnology.
Speaking from Mexico City, he highlighted a key element: the analysis of chronic pollution, coming from industries, agriculture and shipping, as a growing threat that marine flora and fauna are exposed to.
An oil accident, monitored by the Sentinel-2 satellite, happened on April 14, 2019, when a ferry dumped light and heavy fuels –the blue color identifies the former–, 35 km off the coast, in the Sea of Cortez – an area of great biodiversity which is threatened by many factors, in the northeastern Mexican state of Sinaloa. The vessel got away with it and it’s missing from public records.Credit: Emilio Godoy / IPS
Worrisome sample
Of the 819 incidents that Semar has tracked since 2017, only 16 are classified as marine pollution; of these, two consisted of oil spills and one of “serious damage to the environment”, without specifying their cause, according to data obtained through public information requests. Semar only sanctioned in two cases but did not specify what the penalty consisted of.
Of the total, a hydrocarbon spill and a pollution incident occurred in Veracruz.
Semar also registered 42 fires on boats and 13 sunk ships that may pose a pollution risk.
“There is legislation (Law on Dumping in Mexican Marine Zones), but there is no enforcement. There is no accurate measurement. Petroleos Mexicanos (Pemex) is not investigating the issue,” Rodolfo Navarro, the non-governmental organization Comunicar para Conservar director, told IPS.
Semar said it doesn’t have registries of violations to this law.
Navarro, whose organization focuses on environmental issues, works in the Cozumel area, in the southeastern state of Quintana Roo which is one of the world’s largest cruise ship recipients, and is witness to the impact of shipping on ecosystems.
Semar, responsible for the administration of the ports since 2017 – including pollution control –, the Ministry of the Environment (Semarnat), the state-owned Pemex and the port administrations of the facilities located in the Gulf of Mexico, all lack pollution records in port areas.
As noted earlier, they also lack roadmaps to achieve the objectives of the Initial Strategy adopted in 2018 by the IMO to reduce carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions by at least 40% by 2030, for all international shipping, and to aim for a reduction of 70% by 2050 compared to 2008 levels.
In ports like Veracruz, in southeastern Mexico, the daily movement of ships and freight is constant, which generates pollution. But the Mexican government lacks measurements of contamination emitted by the shipping industry into the atmosphere and the water, as well as policies to control it, for complying with international agreements.Credit: Emilio Godoy / IPS
A decisive convention
The International Convention for the Prevention of Pollution from Ships (MARPOL), in force since 1978, is one of the vital tools to meet the IMO goals and which is composed of Annex I on the prevention of oil pollution, II on harmful liquid substances transported in bulk and III on those transported in packages.
It also consists of Annex IV on sewage, V on garbage and VI on atmospheric pollution from shipping. Mexico is a signatory to annexes I, II and IV, but not to III, V, and VI.
From 2020, the IMO applies regulations limiting the sulfur content used in cargo ships to 0,5%, from a previous rate of 3,5%. Thus, the body seeks its abatement by 77%, equivalent to 8,5 million tons of SO2.
The omission on the management of hydrocarbon pollution constitutes a violation of Annex I. By belonging to IMO, the country must achieve its goals.
In addition, the Canada-United States-Mexico Agreement (T-Mec) Chapter 24 on the environment, in force since 2020 and which replaced the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA), stipulates the control of the production, consumption and trade of substances that damage the ozone layer, as well as the reduction of air pollution.
This section stipulates air quality priorities, including the reduction of emissions from maritime traffic.
But Mexico lacks regulations to limit shipping emissions and also did not sign last November during the Glasgow climate summit the “Clydebank Declaration for Green Maritime Corridors”, which was signed only by 24 countries and which aims to create at least six low-emission routes by 2025.
The omission in pollution control implies the difficulty of achieving Sustainable Development Goals (SDG) 13 and 14, adopted by the UN General Assembly in 2015 to be achieved by 2030.
The number 13, of 17 SDGs, deals with fighting the climate crisis and its effects, while the 14 focuses on the conservation and sustainable use of the oceans, seas and marine resources for sustainable development.
Merchant vessels wait for docking at the port of Veracruz, in southeastern Mexico, on August 30, 2022. The International Maritime Organization has established mid-and-long term pollution reduction goals, so that the global shipping industry has cleaner operations, but this Latin American country lacks plans for achieving those goals. Credit: Emilio Godoy / IPS
Busy docks
The Aztec port system handled 169,77 million tons of cargo as of last July, a growth of 3% compared to the same period in 2021, according to Semar figures.
Export cargo totaled 66,4 million tons, 2,6% lower than the 2021 level – 68,19 million – while imports grew 8,8% – from 66,51 million to 72,36. In the Port of Veracruz, which has 17 docks, this has been on the rise since 2008. Off the coast you can see the row of boats waiting to head to port. A line of red and green headlights and buoys points the route to the harbor.
Inside the port area, the hustle and bustle does not stop. Vehicles, trucks, trains and cranes come and go to remove and put the cargo, on which the economic activity of the region and partially of the second economy in Latin America depends.
In their bowels, these vessels move fuel, goods, vehicles or raw materials, and also carry an environmental threat, of which there is evidence.
In 2020, the seaport managed 26,2 million tons, an amount that increased 22% the following year – 32 million. As of last July, it mobilized 19,97 million, 7,6% higher than the same period of 2021. The maritime industry represents 5% of the Mexican GDP.
Annex VI, in force since 1997, is relevant for Mexico, since, by addressing the control of emissions of SO2, NOx and particulate matter (PM), it implies the creation of an emission control area (ECA) in its maritime zone.
The ECA involves the adoption of mandatory special technological methods for the prevention of marine pollution of ships, by oil, wastewater or garbage, such as low sulfur fuel oil, on-board incinerator for sludge and a cleaning system for emitted gas from combustion, according to the oceanographic and ecological conditions of the area and the peculiarities of maritime traffic.
Semarnat and the U.S. EPA argue that an ECA creation would have positive effects on public health and the environment, without exorbitant costs for Mexico.
Between 2009 and 2018, the US and Mexico, with the support of the CEC – instituted by NAFTA – collaborated, so that this Latin American country adhered to Annex VI and created the ECA.
But Enrique Peña Nieto’s government (2012-2018) did not send that request to the Senate for approval nor does the current administration of Andrés Manuel López Obrador seem interested in doing so. Between 2010 and 2019, the Mexican Senate sent six exhortations to the Executive to vote on the incorporation of Annex VI.
At the 2016 North American Leaders’ Summit, then-U.S. President Barack Obama; Peña Nieto, and Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau agreed to work together to finalize the design of the Mexican ECA and send it to the IMO, which never happened.
Navarro, the Cozumel expert, emphasized that Mexico is not on track to reach global goals. “It could do it, but there is not the slightest will. And in international waters nobody watches anything,” he denounced.
McDonald urged attention to the problem. “The government must address it. Mexico has enormous marine resources, and it is a pity that it does not protect them. There are economic benefits to the conservation of marine ecosystems. Ships are good for governments because they represent revenue, but the environmental damage can be substantial,” he said.
Gracia questions the efficacy of high seas surveillance. “It depends on everybody’s good conscience. It’s a little bit complicated. In Mexico, the sole control exists when a ship enters into port. There isn’t a general surveillance plan,” he said.
Before an unconcerned Mexico, the boats will continue with their arrival and their trail of pollution.
Discarded refrigerators. Scientists continue to stress the need for proper disposal of old fridges as some emit ozone-destroying chemicals. Credit: Alison Kentish/IPS
by Alison Kentish (dominica)
Inter Press Service
DOMINICA, Nov 24 (IPS) – The world celebrates the International Day for the Preservation of the Ozone Layer once a year, but for Saint Lucia, the annual month-long observance highlights year-round work on ozone protection.For countries across the globe, September 16th is a day to reflect on progress in protecting the ozone layer. The United Nations designated day for the preservation of the ozone layer is marked by speeches, and educational and social media campaigns.
For that country, Ozone ‘day’ caps a month-long observance, and ozone protection is a year-round effort.
“The National Ozone Unit was established in 1997 and is responsible for coordinating our activities and programmes to ensure that we meet our targets under the Montreal Protocol,” Sustainable Development and Environment Officer in Saint Lucia’s Department of Sustainable Development Kasha Jn Baptiste told IPS.
“Our main obligation is reporting on our progress with the phasing out of ozone-depleting substances and coordinating relevant projects. Other duties include education and awareness, technician training, implementation and enforcement of legislation, and coordinating partners to ensure that we meet our obligations under the convention. This is a year-round job.”
Following summer activities with youth aged 15-18, the Department of Sustainable Development held a month-long observance in September. Events included media appearances and updates on Saint Lucia’s progress toward achieving the model protocol. The Department has held awareness events at all school levels, with more activities scheduled for October.
It is part of a year-round effort to educate the public and put youth at the center of ozone protection.
“One of the most important ways to continue to highlight the ozone layer is through increased awareness. We started with ozone day and usually concentrated on education activities around that day, but we realised that we must have activities year-round. We are also encouraging the teaching of ozone issues as part of our science curriculum,” said Jn Baptiste, who is the Focal Point for the Montreal Protocol in Saint Lucia.
Refrigeration and Air Conditioning Sector
A major component of maintaining compliance with the Montreal Protocol involves stringent monitoring of the refrigeration and air conditioning sector. This includes refrigerants such as chlorofluorocarbons or CFCs, a group of ozone-depleting chemicals that have been banned but remain in older fridge and air condition models.
In Saint Lucia, the Sustainable Development Department conducts year-round training for technicians.
“The refrigeration air conditioning sector is where we use the bulk of those products and technicians are the ones servicing these items. We want them to be aware of what is happening, how the sector is transitioning, and what new alternatives are available,” Jn Baptiste told IPS.
In a 2016 amendment to the Montreal Protocol, nations agreed to phase out the use of hydrofluorocarbons (HFCs), which were being used as substitutes to CFCs. Known as the Kigali Amendment, its signatories agreed that these HFCs represent powerful greenhouses gases (hydrogen, fluorine, and carbon) and contribute to climate change.
“What is really important now is that countries like Saint Lucia have targets on the Montreal Protocol. We have been saying ‘HFC-free by 2030,’ so in October, Saint Lucia will launch phase two of our HPMP, the HFC Phase Out Management Plan. That will include activities needed to help us achieve that 2030 target. We will expand on what has been done in the past and include activities for training of technicians.”
Legislative changes
Officials are currently reviewing the country’s legislation to ensure compliance with Kigali Amendment targets.
“Our legislation needs to be updated to expand our licensing and quota system to include HFCs so that we can target these gases and control them under the Montreal Protocol,” Jn. Baptiste said.
“What is interesting is that the HFC phase-down can contribute to prevention of 0.4 degrees of warming by the end of the century. That’s important. 0.4 degrees is small, but we know that the Paris Agreement targets a 1.5 degree. The Kigali Amendment, if countries implement it, will be doing some of the work of the climate agreement. The Montreal Protocol started off with the goal of preserving the ozone layer, but it has evolved to address climate change issues – global warming issues.”
A couple participate in the gay pride parade in San Salvador, held before the state of emergency was declared on Mar. 27, under which the government is carrying out massive raids in search of suspected gang members. Members of the LGBTI community are among those arbitrarily detained, victims of police homophobia and transphobia. CREDIT: Edgardo Ayala/IPS
by Edgardo Ayala (san salvador)
Inter Press Service
SAN SALVADOR, Nov 21 (IPS) – Police raids against gang members in El Salvador, under a state of emergency in which some civil rights have been suspended, have also affected members of the LGBTI community, and everything points to arrests motivated by hatred of their sexual identity.
Personal accounts gathered by IPS revealed that some of the arrests were characterized by an attitude of hatred towards gays and especially transsexuals on the part of police officers.
“Cases like this, which reveal hatred towards gay or trans people, are happening, but the organizations are not really speaking out, because of the fear that has been generated by the ‘state of exception’,” an activist with Cultura Trans, a San Salvador-based organization of the LGBTI (lesbian, gay, bisexual, trans and intersex) community, told IPS.
Hatred of homosexuals and transgender people
The activist, who asked to remain anonymous, said that another member of his organization, a gay man known as Carlos, has been detained since Jul. 13, after he complained about the arrest two months earlier of his sister Alessandra, a trans teenager.
The authorities have accused them of “illicit association,” the charge used to arrest alleged gang members or collaborators, under the state of emergency.
“The case against Carlos was staged, it was invented,” said the source. “He is a human rights activist in the trans community, we have documents that show that he participates in our workshops, in our activities.”
A police officer stops a young man in San Salvador and checks his back and other parts of his body for gang-related tattoos, one of the elements used by authorities to track down gang members in El Salvador. Since the state of emergency was declared, 58,000 people have been detained, in many cases arbitrarily, among them members of the LGBTI community. CREDIT: National Civil Police
The state of exception, under which some civil rights are suspended, has been in force in El Salvador since Mar. 27, when the government of Nayib Bukele launched a crusade against criminal gangs, with the backing of the legislature, which is controlled by the ruling New Ideas party.
Gangs have been responsible for the majority of crimes committed in this Central American country for decades.
According to the constitution, a state of exception can be in place for 30 days, and can be extended for another 30. But a legal loophole has allowed the government and Congress to renew the measure every month, under the argument that this was already done during the 1980-1992 civil war.
This interpretation could only be modified by the Constitutional Chamber of the Supreme Court of Justice. But Bukele, with the backing of the legislature, named five hand-picked magistrates to that chamber in May 2021, in what his critics say marked the beginning of a shift towards authoritarianism, two years into his term.
Since Mar. 27, the police and military have imprisoned some 58,000 people.
In most cases no arrest warrants were issued by a judge, and the arrests are generally based on gang members’ police files.
In addition, anonymous tips by the public to a hotline set up by the government have gradually expanded the number of people arrested.
“The state of emergency exposes you to an inefficient prosecutor, incapable of investigating and linking people to crimes,” William Hernández, director of Entre Amigos, an LGBTI organization founded in 1994, told IPS.
He added: “If a police officer decides to detain someone and make a report of the arrest, they go out to look for them, but there’s no record of who reported that individual, where the information came from, and no one knows who investigated them.”
Among the 58,000 detainees are some 40 people from the LGBTI community, according to a report made public in October by Cristosal and other human rights organizations that monitor abuses committed by the Salvadoran authorities under the state of exception.
These organizations have collected some 4,000 complaints of arbitrary detentions and other abuses, including torture, committed against detainees. Some 80 people have died in police custody and in prison.
Carlos is a gay man who spoke out against the arrest of his younger sister Alessandra, a trans woman seized in May by Salvadoran police, accused of belonging to a gang. In July he was also arrested and so far little is known about their situation, under the state of emergency in El Salvador, which has led to the imprisonment of 58,000 people. CREDIT: Courtesy of Cultura Trans
Police homophobia
In the case of Carlos, 32, and his sister Alessandra, 18, the information available is that she was arrested in May in one of the police sweeps, in a poor neighborhood in the north of San Salvador.
She was arrested for not having a personal identity card. She had recently turned 18, the age of majority, and she should have obtained the document, which is needed for any kind of official procedure.
The police officers who arrested Alessandra told her mother that she was only being taken for 72 hours, while the situation was clarified.
However, something that could have been easily investigated and resolved turned into an ordeal for her and her family, especially her mother, who was facing several health ailments, said the Cultura Trans activist.
“She was in the ‘bartolinas’ (dungeons) of the Zacamil (a police station in that poor neighborhood),” the source said. “We went to leave food for her, then they sent her to the Mariona prison. We realized that she had been beaten and sexually abused, because she was being held in a men’s facility.”
He added: “When they took Alessandra, her mother told us that the police told the girl ‘culero, we are going to take you to be raped, to be f**ked,’ which is what actually did happen. ‘We’re going to take you so that you learn not to dress like a woman’.”
Culero is a pejorative term used in El Salvador against gays.
Meanwhile, her brother Carlos spoke out against Alessandra’s arrest, during activities carried out by the LGBTI community.
In May, in a march against “homo-lesbo-transphobia” – hatred of gays, lesbians and trans people – he carried several handmade signs calling for his sister’s release from prison.
The authorities visited Carlos’ house, and threatened to arrest him as well, which they did on Jul. 13.
According to the source, the police and prosecutors put together a case and accused him of illicit association. They are asking for a 20-year prison sentence.
“It’s not because of illicit association, we know that very well. It’s because he’s a human rights activist in the LGBTI community, and because he has been demanding the release of his sister,” said the Cultura Trans activist.
“We want him back with us, and his sister too,” he said.
William Hernández, director of the association Entre Amigos, said that the police and the Attorney General’s Office stage raids against alleged gang members without carrying out proper investigations to substantiate the arrests or to release detainees if they are innocent. The Salvadoran government has been on a crusade against gangs since March, but in the process there have been numerous abuses and illegal detentions, according to human rights organizations. CREDIT: Edgardo Ayala/IPS
Underreporting hides the real number of cases
According to reports by the NGOs, while the 40 people from the LGBTI community who have been detained represent a small proportion of the total number of people arrested, there could be an underreporting of undocumented cases, especially in rural areas.
“In this country, although it’s small, there may be cases in remote places involving people who have never contacted an NGO. These are cases that remain invisible,” Catalina Ayala, a trans woman activist with Diké, an LGBTI organization whose name refers to justice in Greek mythology, told IPS.
Ayala said that, although she has not personally experienced transphobia from the authorities on the streets of San Salvador, and her organization has not received concrete reports of cases like Alessandra’s, she did not rule out that they could be happening.
“I think it’s a positive thing that the authorities are arresting gang members, but not people who have nothing to do with crime, or just because they are LGBTI,” she said.
The organization’s lawyer, Jenifer Fernández, said Diké has provided legal assistance to 12 people from the LGBTI community who have been detained, mainly because they were not carrying their identity documents.
In one of the cases, the police said things that could be construed as transphobic, although there was also a basic suspicion, since she was a trans woman without an identity document.
“She was a 25-year-old woman who had never had a DUI, an identity document, because she suffered from gender dysphoria and was afraid to go to register, afraid of being asked to cut her hair or to remove her make-up,” said Fernández.
Gender dysphoria is a sense of unease caused by a mismatch between their biological sex and their gender identity and has repercussions on their ability to function socially.
“The arrest report said that she was a gang member disguised as a woman, that they did not know who she was, that she gave a name but that it could not be proven without a DUI,” the lawyer explained.
But Fernández added that, in general, with or without a state of exception, trans women suffer the most from harassment, mockery and aggression.
Of the 12 cases, 11 of the individuals were released, and only one remains in custody because, according to the police, there is evidence that the person may have had ties to a gang, although the details of that evidence are unknown.
Call to stop abuses
On Nov. 11, the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights (IACHR) expressed concern over “the persistence of massive and allegedly arbitrary arrests” by Salvadoran authorities under the state of emergency.
It also reported non-compliance with judicial guarantees, and called on the government “to implement citizen security actions that guarantee the rights and freedoms established in the American Convention on Human Rights and in line with Inter-American standards.”
Among the constitutional rights suspended since the beginning of the state of emergency on Mar. 27 are the rights of association and assembly, although the government says this only applies to criminal groups meeting to plan crimes.
It also restricts the right to a defense and extends the period in which a person can be detained and presented in court, which Salvadoran law sets at a maximum of three days.
On Nov. 16, Congress, which is controlled by the governing party, approved a new extension of the state of emergency, which it has done at the end of each month.
New Ideas lawmakers have said that the restriction of civil rights will be extended as long as necessary, “until the last gang member is arrested.”
In this country of 6.7 million people, there are an estimated 60,000 to 70,000 gang members.
Bukele’s party holds 56 seats in the 84-member legislature, and thanks to three allied parties they have a total of 60 votes, which gives them a large absolute majority.
Egyptian Foreign Minister Sameh Shoukry, chair of COP27, reads the nine-page Sharm El Sheikh Implementation Plan, the document that concluded the climate summit on Sunday Nov. 20, to an exhausted audience after tough and lengthy negotiations that finally reached an agreement to create a fund for loss and damage, a demand of the global South. CREDIT: Kiara Worth/UN
by Daniel Gutman (sharm el sheikh)
Inter Press Service
SHARM EL SHEIKh, Nov 20 (IPS) – They were on the brink of shipwreck and did not leave happy, but did feel satisfied that they got the best they could. The countries of the global South achieved something decisive at COP27: the creation of a special fund to address the damage and loss caused by climate change in the most vulnerable nations.
The fund, according to the Sharm El Sheikh Implementation Plan, the official document approved at dawn on Sunday Nov. 20 in this Egyptian city, should enable “rehabilitation, recovery and reconstruction” following extreme weather events in these vulnerable countries.
Decisions on who will provide the money, which countries will benefit and how it will be disbursed were left pending for a special committee to define. But the fund was approved despite the fact that the issue was not even on the official agenda of the summit negotiations, although it was at the center of the public debate before the conference itself.
“We are satisfied that the developed countries have accepted the need to create the Fund. Of course, there is much to discuss for implementation, but it was difficult to ask for more at this COP,” Ulises Lovera, Paraguay’s climate change director, told IPS, weary from a longer-than-expected negotiation, early Sunday morning at the Sharm El Sheikh airport.
“This COP has taken an important step towards justice. I welcome the decision to establish a loss and damage fund and to operationalize it in the coming period,” said U.N. Secretary-General António Guterres. He also described as an achievement that a “red line” was not crossed, that would take the rise in global temperature above the 1.5-degree limit.
More than 35,000 people from nearly 200 countries participated in the 27th Conference of the Parties (COP27) on Climate Change in Sharm El Sheikh, an Egyptian seaside resort on the Red Sea, where the critical dimension of global warming in the different regions of the world was on display, sometimes dramatically.
Practically everything that has to do with the future of the modes of production and life of humanity – starting with energy and food – was discussed at a mega-event that far exceeded the official delegations of the countries and the great leaders present, such as U.S. President Joe Biden and the Brazilian president-elect, Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva.
Hundreds of social organizations, international agencies and private sector stakeholders came here to showcase their work, seek funding, forge alliances, try to influence negotiations, defend their interests or simply be on a stage that seemed to provide a space for all kinds of initiatives and businesses.
At the gigantic Sharm El Sheikh International Convention Center there was also a global fair with non-stop activities from morning to night in the various pavilions, in stands with auditoriums of between 20 and 200 seats, where there was a flurried program of presentations, lectures and debates, not to mention the more or less crowded demonstrations of activists outside the venue.
In addition, government delegates negotiated on the crux of the summit: how to move forward with the implementation of the Paris Agreement, which at COP21 in 2015 set global climate change mitigation and adaptation targets.
United Nations Secretary-General António Guterres (3rd-R) walks hurriedly through the Sharm El Sheikh Convention Center during the last intense hours of the COP27 negotiations, when there were moments when it seemed that there would be no agreement and the climate summit would end in failure. CREDIT: Daniel Gutman/IPS
On the brink of failure
Once again, the nine-page Sharm El Sheikh Implementation Plan did not include in any of its pages a reference to the need to abandon fossil fuels, but only coal.
The document was the result of a negotiation that should have ended on Friday Nov. 18, but dragged on till Sunday, as usually happens at COPs. What was different on this occasion was a very tough discussion and threats of a walkout by some negotiators, including those of the European Union.
But in the end, the goal of limiting the temperature increase to 1.5 degrees Celsius, established in the Paris Agreement, was maintained, although several countries tried to make it more flexible up to 2.0 degrees, which would have been a setback with dramatic effects for the planet and humanity, according to experts and climate activists.
“Rapid, deep and sustained reductions in global greenhouse gas emissions (are) required – lowering global net greenhouse gas emissions by 43 percent by 2030 relative to the 2019 level – to limit global warming to 1.5°C target,” reads the text, although no mention is made of oil and gas, the fossil fuels most responsible for those emissions, in one of the usual COP compromises, since agreements are reached by consensus.
The Bolivian delegation in Sharm El Sheikh, which included officials as well as leaders of indigenous communities from the South American country, take part in a meeting with journalists at COP27 to demand more ambitious action. CREDIT: Daniel Gutman/IPS
The priorities of the South
Developing countries, however, focused throughout the COP on the Loss and Damage Fund and other financing mechanisms to address the impacts of rising temperatures and mitigation actions.
“We need financing because we cannot deal with the environmental crisis alone. That is why we are asking that, in order to solve the problem they have caused, the rich nations take responsibility,” Diego Pacheco, head of the Bolivian delegation to Sharm El Sheikh, told IPS.
Environmental organizations, which showed their power in Egypt with the presence of thousands of activists, also lobbied throughout COP27 for greater commitments, including mitigation actions.
“This conference cannot be considered an implementation conference because there is no implementation without phasing out all fossil fuels,” the main cause of the climate crisis, said Zeina Khalil Hajj of the international environmental organization 350.org.
“Together for implementation” was precisely the slogan of COP27, calling for a shift from commitments to action.
“A text that does not stop fossil fuel expansion, that does not provide progress from the already weak Glasgow Pact (from COP26) makes a mockery of the millions of people living with the impacts of climate change,” said Khalil Hajj, head of global campaigning at 350.org.
One of the demonstrations by climate activists at COP27 held in Egypt Nov. 6-20, demanding more ambitious climate action by governments, as well as greater justice and equity in tackling the climate crisis. CREDIT: Busani Bafana/IPS
The crises that came together
Humanity – as recognized by the States Parties in the final document – is living through a dramatic time.
It faces a number of overlapping crises: food, energy, geopolitical, financial and economic, combined with more frequent natural disasters due to climate change. And developing nations are hit especially hard.
The demand for financing voiced by countries of the global South thus takes on greater relevance.
Cecilia Nicolini, Argentina’s climate change secretary, told IPS that it is the industrialized countries, because of their greater responsibility for climate change, that should finance developing countries, and lamented that “the problem is that the rules are made by the powerful.”
However, 80 percent of the money now being spent worldwide on climate change action is invested in the developed world, according to the Global Environment Facility (GEF), the world’s largest funder of climate action, which has contributed 121 billion dollars to 163 countries over the past 30 years, according to its own figures.
In this context, the issue of Loss and Damage goes one step further than adaptation to climate change, because it involves reparations for the specific impacts of climate change that have already occurred, such as destruction caused by droughts, floods or forest fires.
“Those who are bearing the burden of climate change are the most vulnerable households and communities. That is why the Loss and Damage Fund must be established without delay, with new funds coming from developed countries,” said Javier Canal Albán, Colombia’s vice minister of environmental land planning.
“It is a moral and climate justice imperative,” added Canal Albán, who spoke at a press conference on behalf of AILAC, a negotiating bloc that brings together several Latin American and Caribbean countries.
But the text of the outcome document itself acknowledges that there is a widening gap between what developing countries need and what they actually receive.
The financing needs of these countries for climate action until 2030 were estimated at 5.6 trillion dollars, but developed countries – as the document recognized – have not even fulfilled their commitment to provide 100 billion dollars per year, committed since 2009, at COP15 in Copenhagen, and ratified in 2015, at COP21 which adopted the Paris Agreement.
It was the absence of any reference to the need to accelerate the move away from oil and natural gas that frustrated several of the leaders at the COP. “We believe that if we don’t phase out fossil fuels there will be no Fund that can pay for the loss and damage caused by climate change,” Susana Muhamad, Colombia’s environment minister, who was at the two-week conference in Sharm El Sheikh held Nov. 6-20, told IPS.
“We have to put the victims first in order to make an orderly and just transition,” she said, expressing the sentiments of the governments and societies of the South at COP27.
Representatives of native women from Latin America and other continents pose for pictures at COP27, taking place in the Egyptian city of Sharm el-Sheikh. Some 250 indigenous people from around the world are attending the 27th climate conference. CREDIT: Daniel Gutman/IPS
by Daniel Gutman (sharm el-sheikh)
Inter Press Service
SHARM EL-SHEIKH, Nov 12 (IPS) – Indigenous peoples are no longer content just to attend as observers and to be seen as victims of the impacts of the current development model, at the 27th Conference of the Parties (COP27) on Climate Change. That is why they came to the summit in Egypt with an agenda of their own, including the demand that their communities directly receive funding for climate action.
Billions of dollars in aid funds are provided each year by governments, private funds and foundations for climate adaptation and mitigation. Donors often seek out indigenous peoples, who are now considered the best guardians of climate-healthy ecosystems. However, only crumbs end up actually reaching native territories.
“We are tired of funding going to indigenous foundations without indigenous people,” Yanel Venado Giménez told IPS, at the indigenous peoples’ stand at this gigantic world conference, which has 33,000 accredited participants. “All the money goes to pay consultants and the costs of air-conditioned offices.”
“International donors are present at the COP27. That is why we came to tell them that direct funding is the only way to ensure that climate projects take into account indigenous cultural practices. We have our own agronomists, engineers, lawyers and many trained people. In addition, we know how to work as a team,” she added.
That indigenous peoples, because they often live in many of the world’s best-conserved territories, are on the front line of the battle against the global environmental crisis is beyond dispute.
For this reason, a year ago, at COP26 in Glasgow, Scotland, the governments of the United Kingdom, Norway, the United States, Germany, the Netherlands and 17 private donors pledged up to 1.7 billion dollars for mitigation and adaptation actions by indigenous communities.
However, although there is no precise data on how much of that total has actually been forthcoming, the communities say they have received practically nothing.
“At each of these conferences we hear big announcements of funding, but then we return to our territories and that agenda is never talked about again,” Julio César López Jamioy, a member of the Inga people who live in Putumayo, in Colombia’s Amazon rainforest, told IPS.
“In 2021 we were told that it was necessary for us to build mechanisms to access and to be able to execute those resources, which are generally channeled through governments. That is why we are working with allies on that task,” he added.
Colombian President Gustavo Petro (grey suit) poses for pictures with a group of Latin American indigenous people at the end of a meeting they held in Sharm el-Sheikh during COP27. CREDIT: Courtesy of Jesús Amadeo Martínez
“Up to a certain point we needed them to work with us, but now it is time to act through our own organizational structures,” he said.
Latin American presence
There is no record of how many indigenous Latin Americans are in Sharm el-Sheikh, a seaside resort in the Sinai Peninsula in southern Egypt, thanks to different sources of funding, but it is estimated to be between 60 and 80.
Approximately 250 members of indigenous peoples from all over the world are participating in COP27, in the part of the Sharm el-Sheikh Convention Center that hosts social organizations and institutions.
From there, they are raising their voices and their proposals to the halls and stands that host the delegates and official negotiators of the 196 parties to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC), the organizer of these annual summits.
The space shared by the indigenous people is a large stand with a couple of offices and an auditorium with about 40 chairs. Here, during the two weeks of COP27, from Nov. 6 to 18, there is an intense program of activities involving the agenda that the indigenous people have brought to the climate summit, which has drawn the world’s attention.
Panamanian indigenous activist Yanel Venado Giménez poses for a photo at the stand that indigenous peoples from around the world share at COP27, at the Sharm el-Sheikh Convention Center in Egypt. She leads a fund to help indigenous women, one of the few that receive direct financing for Latin American indigenous peoples. CREDIT: Daniel Gutman/IPS
At the start of the Conference, a group of Latin American indigenous people were received by Colombian President Gustavo Petro. They obtained his support for their struggle against extractive industries operating in native territories and asked him to liaise with other governments.
“Generally, governments make commitments to us and then don’t follow through. But today we have more allies that allow us to have an impact and put forward our agenda,” Jesús Amadeo Martínez, of the Lenca people of El Salvador, told IPS.
The indigenous representatives came to this Conference with credentials as observers – another crucial issue, since they are demanding to be considered part of the negotiations as of next year, at COP28, to be held in Dubai.
The proposal was led by Gregorio Díaz Mirabal, a representative of the Kurripaco people in Peru’s Coordinating Body for the Indigenous Organizations of the Amazon Basin (COICA), who told a group of journalists that “We existed before the nation-states did; we have the right to be part of the debate, because we are not an environmental NGO.”
Eric Terena of the indigenous people of the same name, who live in southern Brazil, stands in the corridors of the 27th Climate Change Conference in Egypt. He is hopeful about President-elect Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva’s return to power, but argues that indigenous peoples must have direct access to environmental and climate funds. CREDIT: Daniel Gutman/IPS
From beneficiaries to partners?
Native communities have always been seen as beneficiaries of climate action projects in their territories, channeled through large NGOs that receive and distribute the funds.
But back in 2019, the United States Agency for International Development (USAID) issued a Policy for Promoting the Rights of Indigenous Peoples (PRO-IP), which explores the possibility of funding reaching native communities more effectively.
Among the hurdles are that project approval times are sometimes too fast for the indigenous communities’ consultative decision-making methods, and that many communities are not legally registered, so they need an institutional umbrella.
Experiments in direct financing are still in their infancy. Sara Omi, of the Emberá people of Panama, told IPS that they were able to receive direct financing for Mexican and Central American communities from the Mesoamerican Fund for capacity building of indigenous women.
“We focus on sustainable agricultural production and in two years of work we have supported 22 projects in areas such as the recovery of traditional seeds. But we do not have large amounts of funds. The sum total of all of our initiatives was less than 120,000 dollars,” she explained.
Omi, a lawyer who graduated from the private Catholic University of Santa María La Antigua in Panama and was able to study thanks to a scholarship, said indigenous peoples have demonstrated that they are ready to administer aid funds.
“Of course there must be accountability requirements for donors, but they must be compatible with our realities. Only crumbs are reaching native territories today,” she complained.
Brazil’s president-elect, Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, will participate in the second week of COP27, and this is cause for hope for the peoples of the Amazon jungle, who in the last four years have suffered from the aggressive policies and disregard of outgoing far-right President Jair Bolsonaro regarding environmental and indigenous issues.
“In the Bolsonaro administration, funds that provided financing were closed,” Eric Terena, an indigenous man who lives in southern Brazil, near the border with Bolivia and Paraguay, told IPS. “Now they will be revived, but we don’t want them to be accessed only by the government, but also by us. The systems today have too much bureaucracy; we need them to be more accessible because we are a fundamental part of the fight against climate change.
“We see that this COP is more inclusive than any of the previous ones with regard to indigenous peoples, but governments must understand that it is time for us to receive funding,” said Terena, one of the leaders of the Terena people.
A local resident of the Sitio el Zapotal community in El Zapote canton, El Salvador, turns on the tap to fill his sink to collect the water he will need for the day. A total of 10,000 people have benefited from the five solar-powered community water projects in El Salvador since 2010. CREDIT: Edgardo Ayala/IPS
by Edgardo Ayala (suchitoto, el salvador)
Inter Press Service
SUCHITOTO, El Salvador, Nov 11 (IPS) – Several community-run water projects powered by solar energy have improved the quality of life of thousands of rural families in areas that were the scene of heavy fighting during El Salvador’s civil war in the 1980s.
The families now have running water, thanks to a collective effort launched when the war ended in 1992, after they returned to their former homes, which they had fled years earlier because of the intense fighting.
The largest of these community water systems driven by solar power is located in the canton of El Zapote, Suchitoto municipality, in the central Salvadoran department of Cuscatlán.
“The first step was to come together and buy this place to drill the well, do tests and build the tank, and we had a lot of help from other organizations that supported us,” Ángela Pineda, president of the Zapote-Platanares Community-Rural Association for Water, Health and the Environment, told IPS.
The association is a “junta de agua” or water board, which are community organizations that bring water to remote areas of El Salvador where the government does not have the capacity to supply it, such as the one installed in the canton of El Zapote.
There are an estimated 2,500 water boards in the country, providing service to 25 percent of the population, or some 1.6 million people. The vast majority of them operate with energy from the national power grid.
But five of the boards, located in the vicinity of Suchitoto, obtained financial support from organizations such as Companion Communities Development Alternatives (CoCoDA), based in Indianapolis, Indiana, for taking a technological leap towards operating with solar energy.
“The advantage is that the systems are powered by clean, renewable energies that do not pollute the environment,” Karilyn Vides, director of operations in El Salvador for the U.S.-based CoCoDA, told IPS.
Four previous projects of this type, supported since 2010 by CoCoDA, were small, with less than 10 solar panels. But the one mounted in the canton of El Zapote was planned to be equipped with 96 panels, when it was conceived in 2021.
It was inaugurated in June 2022, although it had been operating since 2004, with hydropower from the national grid.
This effort benefits more than 2,500 families settled around Suchitoto and on the slopes of Guazapa mountain which during the 12-year civil war was a stronghold of the then guerrilla Farabundo Marti National Liberation Front (FMLN), now a political party that governed the country between 2009 and 2019.
However, when including the four other small solar water projects, plus five that continue to operate with electricity from the national grid, all financially supported by CoCoDA after the end of the war, the total number of beneficiaries climbs to 10,000 people.
El Salvador’s bloody armed conflict left some 75,000 people dead and more than 8,000 missing. between 1980 and 1992.
Aerial view of the community water system located in the canton of El Zapote, in the municipality of Suchitoto in central El Salvador. Mounted on the roof are the 96 solar panels that generate the electricity needed to power the entire electrical and hydraulic mechanism that brings water to more than 2,500 families in this rural area of the country, which in the 1980s was the scene of heavy fighting during the Salvadoran civil war. CREDIT: Alex Leiva/IPS
by Edgardo Ayala (suchitoto, el salvador)
Inter Press Service
SUCHITOTO, El Salvador, Nov 03 (IPS) – The need for potable water led several rural settlements in El Salvador, at the end of the 12-year civil war in 1992, to rebuild what was destroyed and to innovate with technologies that at the time seemed unattainable, but which now benefit hundreds of families.
Several communities located in areas that were once the scene of armed conflict are now supplied with water through community systems powered by clean energy, such as solar power.
“The advantage is that the systems are powered by clean, renewable energies that do not pollute the environment,” Karilyn Vides, director of operations in El Salvador for the U.S.-based organization Companion Community Development Alternatives (CoCoDA), told IPS.
Hope where there was once war
The organization, based in Indianapolis, Indiana, has supported the development of 10 community water systems in El Salvador since 1992, five of them powered by solar energy.
These initiatives have benefited some 10,000 people whose water systems were destroyed during the conflict. Local residents had to start from scratch after returning years later.
A local resident of the Sitio el Zapotal community in El Zapote canton, El Salvador, turns on the tap to fill his sink to collect the water he will need for the day. A total of 10,000 people have benefited from the five solar-powered community water projects in El Salvador since 2010. CREDIT: Edgardo Ayala/IPS
This small Central American country experienced a bloody civil war between 1980 and 1992, which left some 75,000 people dead and more than 8,000 missing.
“Before leaving their communities, some families had water systems, but when they returned they had been completely destroyed, and they had to be rebuilt,” Vides said, during a tour by IPS to the Junta Administradora de Agua Potable or water board in the canton of El Zapote, Suchitoto municipality, in the central Salvadoran department of Cuscatlán.
In El Salvador, the term Junta Administradora de Agua Potable refers to community associations that, on their own initiative, manage to drill a well, build a tank and the entire distribution structure to provide service where the government has not had the capacity to do so.
There are an estimated 2,500 such water boards in the country, which provide service to 25 percent of the population, or some 1.6 million people, according to local environmental organizations.
But most of the water boards operate with hydroelectric power provided by the national grid, while the villages around Suchitoto have managed, with the support of CoCoDA and local organizations, to run on solar energy.
The community water project in the Salvadoran community of Sitio El Zapotal was driven by the efforts of local residents and international donors. At the foot of the catchment tank stand Karilyn Vides of CoCoDA, consultant and former guerrilla fighter René Luarca (front) – a member of the project’s water board – and former guerrilla Luis Antonio Landaverde (left), together with two technicians. CREDIT: Edgardo Ayala/IPS
This area is located on the slopes of the Guazapa mountain north of San Salvador, which during the civil war was a key stronghold of the then guerrilla Farabundo Martí National Liberation Front (FMLN), now a political party that governed the country between 2009 and 2019.
Some of the people behind the creation of the water board in the canton of El Zapote were part of the guerrilla units entrenched on Guazapa mountain.
“This area was heavily bombed and shelled, day and night,” Luis Antonio Landaverde, 56, a former guerrilla fighter who had to leave the front lines when a bomb explosion fractured his leg in July 1985, told IPS.
“A bomb dropped by an A37 plane fell nearby and broke my right leg, and I could no longer fight,” said Landaverde, who sits on the El Zapote water board.
The Junta de Agua del Cantón El Zapote, in central El Salvador, is the largest solar-powered community water project in the country, although it uses electricity from the national grid, from hydroelectric sources, as backup. CREDIT: Edgardo Ayala/IPS
Peasant farmers in the technological vanguard
At the end of the war in 1992, communities in the foothills of Guazapa began to organize themselves to set up their community water systems, at first using the national power grid, generated by hydroelectric sources.
Then they realized that the cost of the electricity and bringing the grid to remote villages was too high, and necessity and creativity drove them to look for other options.
“I was already very involved in alternative energy, and we thought that bringing in electricity would be as expensive as installing a solar energy system,” René Luarca, one of the architects of the use of sunlight in the community systems, told IPS.
The first solar-powered water system was built in 2010 in the Zacamil II community, in the Suchitoto area, benefiting some 40 families.
And because it worked so well, four similar projects followed in 2017.
Two were carried out around that municipality, and another in the rural area of the department of Cabañas, in the north of the country.
Given the project’s success, an effort was even made to develop a similar system in the community of Zacataloza, in the municipality of Ciudad Antigua, in the department of Nueva Segovia in northwestern Nicaragua.
The total investment exceeded 200,000 dollars, financed by CoCoDA’s U.S. partner organizations.
However, these were smallscale initiatives, benefiting an average of 100 families per project.
“There were eight panels, they were tiny, like little toys,” said Luarca, 80, known in the area as “Jerry,” his pseudonym during the war when he was a guerrilla in the National Resistance, one of the five organizations that made up the FMLN.
Then came the big challenge: to set up the project in the canton of El Zapote, which would require more panels and would provide water to a much larger number of families.
“This has been the biggest challenge, because there are no longer four panels – there are 96,” said Luarca.
A valve connected to the pump of the community water system in central El Salvador measures the pressure at which the liquid is being pumped to a catchment tank, located on a hill five kilometers away. The water flows down by gravity to the beneficiary families, who pay a monthly fee of six dollars for 12 cubic meters of water. CREDIT: Edgardo Ayala/IPS
The water system in El Zapote is a hybrid setup. This allows it to use solar energy as the main source, but it is backed up by the national grid, fueled by hydropower, when there is no sunshine or there are other types of failures.
“Since it is a fairly large system, it is not 100 percent solar, but is hybrid, so that it has both options,” explained Eliseo Zamora, 42, who is in charge of monitoring the operation of the equipment.
Using the pump, driven by a 30-horsepower motor, water is piped from the well to a tank perched on top of a hill, about five kilometers away as the crow flies.
From there, water flows by gravity down to the villages through a 25-kilometer network of pipes that zigzag under the subsoil, until reaching the families’ taps.
The project started when the armed conflict ended, but it took several years to buy the land, with resources from the six communities involved, and to acquire the machinery for the hydraulic system. It began operating in 2004 with electricity from the national grid, before CoCoDA switched to supporting the solar infrastructure.
For the installation of the panels and the adaptation of the system, the water board contributed 14,000 dollars, part of it from the hours worked by the villagers.
The new solar power system was inaugurated in June 2022 and benefits some 10 communities in the area – more than 2,500 families.
The service fee is six dollars per month for 12 cubic meters of water. For each additional cubic meter, the users are charged 0.55 cents.
“Our water is excellent, it is good for all kinds of human consumption,” the president of the water board, Ángela Pineda, told IPS.
