Electrifying Rural Guatemala: Central Policy and Rural Reality

Abstract

Towards the end of the 20th century Guatemala embarked on an ambitious rural electrification plan: central planners in the Ministry of Energy and Mines hope to connect 90% of homes to the national electricity grid by 2004. Energy for the increased demand comes from floating power plants anchored in Guatemala's Pacific port, a new coal-fired power plant, and numerous small-scale hydroelectric plants. So far, rural electrification, in terms of connected households, has proceeded to plan. However, the success of the rural electrification program belies energy realities and the development needs of rural Guatemala. Data from in-depth interviews and household surveys in Ixcán, Guatemala, show that rural residents prefer other forms of development—like the introduction of potable water, or improved schooling. Electricity, farmers state, only provides rural families with a few hours of light at night because they cannot afford to pay for appliances or for increased consumption of electricity. Fieldwork in rural areas also reveals that the introduction of electricity will not change patterns of firewood consumption; firewood is the basic survival fuel for most rural Guatemalans. Development funds may be better spent on locally run and organized forestry initiatives to ensure reliable sources of firewood for the future.

Land and leña: linking transnational migration, natural resources, and the environment in Guatemala

“…Quite simply, energy budgets from the developing world continue to reflect a heavy dependence on biomass (Ezzati and Kammen 2002;Heltberg 2005), yet little work captures local variations in the use of biomass fuels like firewood because government officials and ministries rarely regard it as a commercial fuel (Taylor 2005). At least a quarter of the world's population, especially in the Global South, relies on biomass fuels to meet their energy needs, mainly for cooking.…”

Transforming tropical rivers: an environmental perspective on hydropower development in Costa Rica

“…In 2004, private generators provided $10% of Costa Rica's electricity, and much of private hydropower development had been concentrated on the San Carlos and Sarapiquıẃ atersheds in north-eastern Costa Rica. In other parts of Central America, electricity privatization has thus far favoured thermoelectric generation over hydropower in terms of added installed generation capacity (CEPAL, 2005;Taylor, 2005). Thermoelectric projects may be more appealing to international companies than hydropower since they require a lower upfront investment, have shorter lifetimes and are therefore less risky from an economic standpoint.…”

“…In El Salvador, new projects are being proposed for the already dammed Lempa River watershed, the largest basin draining the Pacific slope of Central America. In Guatemala, it has been estimated that an additional 900 MW of generation capacity will be needed to meet domestic electricity demands in 2010; the government hopes that a substantial part of this electricity will be supplied by several new hydropower projects (Taylor, 2005). The governments of Honduras and Nicaragua are encouraging private investment in renewable electricity sources, especially small hydropower plants.…”

Militarism and the environment in Guatemala

“…Refugees slowly returned to devastated home communities during the 1990s and began to reweave the fabric of everyday life (Taylor 1998;Manz 2004). Today, four-fifths of Ixcán residents live in poverty and more than 95% lack basic services like potable water, drainage, and electricity (Taylor 2005). From this hopeful and then horrific history we can point to several types of communities that evolved in Ixcán and how those communities use their available resources.…”

“…Guatemala's rise in population over the last 50 years, continued inequality of land distribution, and perpetual fragmentation of smallholdings led to documented internal migration to forest frontiers beginning in the 1960s (Handy 1984;Schwartz 1990). Later, massive streams of migrants, on the order of 10% of the population, headed to the United States (Taylor et al 2005). In addition to spontaneous internal migration to the Petén and the Northern Transversal Strip (which includes Ixcán), church-sponsored settlement schemes in Guatemala's unpopulated Ixcán region began in the late 1960s and continued through the mid 1970s (Manz 1988a ;CEIDEC 1990;Garst 1993).…”