The residents of the community of Plan Grande, on the Atlantic coast of Honduras, have built an 11-kilowatt mini hydroelectric dam which they now manage through a use and consumption agreement. In this community of 450 people in the department of Colón, the average household expenditure on electricity generated with fossil fuel was 15 dollars a month. This has now been reduced to just five dollars, Óscar Padilla, a member of the Plan Grande community council, told Tierramérica.

In addition, the community’s residents have reforested the Matías River Basin and designed an agreement that establishes schedules to optimize energy use.

The project was financed by the Small Grants Programme of the United Nations Development Programme, with support from German cooperation agencies and the Honduran Foundation for Agricultural Research.