By the end of this year Guatemala will have its first integrated environmental profile, a compilation of information on land use, forests, biodiversity, water and marine resources, climate, solid waste, non-renewable resources and energy. The initiative, proposed in September 2002 by a private university, aims to study “the real economic impacts caused by environmental deterioration, such as Hurricane Mitch in 1998, and the state of the environment and its relation to poverty,” Claudio Cabrera, head of the project, told Tierramérica.

The report will be updated every two years by the Environmental Institute at the private Rafael Landívar University. Dutch institutions are providing 260,000 dollars for the first 12 months of the project.