Guatemala Environment Profile 2012

Ecological concerns generally take a back seat to considerations of growth. Core problems in the environmental sector include contaminated rivers, accelerating deforestation and the environmental pollution caused by sugar cane plantations. Negative environmental consequences have led to a series of conflicts related to concessions for mineral resource extraction, mostly over the use of water. In the tourism sector, there is a rising interest in attracting ecotourism. However, this has not led to any serious changes with respect to treatment of the environment, in which practices such as open garbage dumps remain the rule.

The low priority of environmental concerns is obvious when it comes to infrastructure or “megaproyectos.” The construction of a Central American road system (part of the Plan Puebla Panamá) endangers part of the Maya Biosphere (a protected area of 2 million hectares with an extremely high level of biodiversity). Activism puts environmentalists’ lives in danger; in September 2008, the director of the Legal, Environmental and Social Action Center of Guatemala (CALAS), Yuri Melini, was shot. He was not the first environmentalist victim of violence. Advocating sustainable development is dangerous because it affects the economic interests of powerful legal as well as criminal sectors of the society.