The rainwater harvesting cistern is everywhere in Brazil's semi-arid region, a social technology that reduced water scarcity for its inhabitants. Elizabete Sousa Soares wanted to leave Jatobá when her daughter Maria was born 11 years ago, but decided to stay in her small rural town thanks to the cistern and other social technologies that have improved her life. Credit: Mario Osava / IPS

By Mario Osava
USERRA DAS ALMAS, Brazil, Dec 29 2025 (IPS)

“The work of collecting seeds saved me from depression,” caused by her daughter’s suicide at the age of 29, said Maria do Desterro Soares, 64, who lives in the poor rural community of Jatobá in northeastern Brazil.

She drew her younger sister, Maria de Jesus Soares, 45, who lost her husband in a car accident and also struggles to avoid falling into depression, into the activity. The two walk together for nearly two hours to reach the forests where seeds abound.“The reserve is a great water reservoir. A study we conducted on avoided runoff showed this 6,285-hectare area can retain an astonishing 4.78 billion liters per year” - Gilson Miranda.

They only earn some 1,000 reais (US$185) in a “good year,” but “it’s my work, my pleasure, it’s what I want and I like doing it,” claimed Maria do Desterro, who also makes ice cream and medicines for flu and other illnesses with locally sourced juices, teas, peels, and honey.

She is one of the 121 people trained by the Caatinga Association (AC) through 2023 for the collection and management of seeds from native plants of this biome exclusive to Brazil, as a way to generate income and restore forests.

The association, founded in 1998 to protect the caatinga, the biome of the semi-arid region in the Brazilian northeast, manages the Serra das Almas Natural Reserve (RNSA) and disseminates social technologies for coexistence with the semi-arid ecoregion in surrounding communities.

The caatinga occupies 10% of Brazil’s vast territory and is home to 27 million people. Its vegetation is generally low, with twisted branches and trunks, appearing dead in the dry season and turning green just days after rain. It also features large trees that reach heights of tens of meters.

Maria de Jesus Soares and her older sister, Maria do Desterro Soares, extract seeds from the buriti coconut, a palm tree also known as moriche, found in several parts of Brazil, including its exclusive caatinga biome. Credit: Mario Osava / IPS

Coexistence, instead of fighting against nature

To coexist, rather than fighting droughts, is a guiding principle of the actions that are improving life in Brazil’s poorest region, the Northeast, offering a climate lesson for the country and the world.

This slogan, set in motion by civil society organizations, spurred several social technologies as solutions for water scarcity. Best known is the rainwater harvesting cistern for domestic use, with over 1.2 million units built since 2003.

Cisterns, bio-water (a system that cleans household water for reuse in planting), green septic tanks (a concrete tank with soil, filters, and a banana plant base), solar ovens, and eco-efficient stoves are the five tecghnologies being disseminated.

The AC website reports that 1,481 of these “technologies” have been implemented.

The AC has the RNSA for environmental education and as a source of income through eco-tourism. It works in 40 communities nearby where some 4,000 families live, implementing social technologies and supporting the conservation of the reserve and the entire caatinga.

Headquartered in Fortaleza, the capital of the northeastern state of Ceará, and in Crateús, in the west of that same state near the RNSA, the association stands out from other non-governmental organizations by having this conservation unit of 6,285 hectares of dense forests and four streams.

The green septic tank, also called a biosepitic bed, treats wastewater from toilets with microorganisms that process the waste, leaving the water ready to irrigate crops in the semi-arid region of Northeast Brazil. Credit: Mario Osava / IPS

The caatinga mitigates climate change

“The reserve is an open-air laboratory, where research on fauna, flora, carbon, and water takes place, so we can understand the importance of this area, and of the entire caatinga,” explained Gilson Miranda, a biologist and manager of the RNSA for the Caatinga Association.

In 2015 – 2022, the caatinga was responsible for nearly 40% of the carbon removed from the atmosphere in Brazil, he said, based on a study by São Paulo State University on greenhouse gas capture.

This is because the rapid regreening of the vegetation, an indicator of intense photosynthetic activity when it rains, makes the caatinga a major greenhouse gas sink, different from the Amazon, which is an immense carbon reservoir.

“That is why preserving and conserving the caatinga is strategic in a climate adaptation scenario,” said Miranda in an interview with IPS.

This biome, exclusive to Brazil, covers an area of 844,453 square kilometers.

Water is another wealth of Serra das Almas, which was designated a Private Natural Heritage Reserve (RPPN) in the year 2000.

“The reserve is a great water reservoir. A study we conducted on avoided runoff showed this 6,285-hectare area can retain an astonishing 4.78 billion liters per year,” said Miranda.

Around the springs, there are very tall, green trees that differ from the usual biome. The gameleira (Ficus gomelleira), can reach up to 40 or 50 meters, according to Jair Martins, the tourist guide on hikes along the six trails of Serra das Almas.

This water, retained in the soil by the forests, actually drains slowly. The four springs preserved in the reserve do not dry up, but are unable to sustain year-round the streams that feed the Poti River, whose course passes to the east and north of Serra das Almas.

Nor is this moisture enough to keep the caatinga vegetation green, which is very dry in December, with the green of some shrubs or trees more resistant to water stress.

Maria Clemente da Silva was only able to cultivate her garden when she gained access to bio-water, because the public water supply is limited to three hours a day in Jatobá, a poor community in the Brazilian caatinga. Credit: Mario Osava / IPS

Mitigated drought

In the surroundings of the RNSA, the drought is harsher.

Maria Clemente da Silva, 59, relies on bio-water to supplement the water she uses to irrigate her small garden. The public water supply only operates for two to three hours per day, which is not enough for cultivating vegetables, such as lettuce and onions, or fruit trees like papaya, banana, acerola, orange, and cashew.

About 100 meters behind her house, a forest of tall, very green trees reveals that, with water, the caatinga vegetation gains exuberance. It is the moisture that remained in a low-lying area of a river that practically dried up due to deforestation and fires set to “clear” the land, explained Elisabete de Souza Soares.

Water is the most keenly felt shortage, according to Souza and other women who spoke to IPS and a group of journalism students visiting the Jatobá community, in the municipality of Buriti dos Montes, in the state of Piauí, where the AC’s socio-environmental actions benefit the population and the protection of the RNSA.

All of them received cisterns, the small three-burner ecological stove, and other “technologies” that reduced difficulties in their lives. “Before the cistern, we would fetch water from a public fountain about a kilometer away, carrying cans on our heads,” recalled Souza.

When she was pregnant with her daughter Maria, 11 years ago, she thought about moving away from the community where she had always lived in search of water. “Now I won’t leave here, where I was born,” she said.

The dry vegetation in December, the peak of the annual dry season, displays some resistant shrubs and trees that maintain green patches in the caatinga forests of Brazil’s Northeast region. Credit: Mario Osava / IPS

The Caatinga Association adopted a comprehensive conservation model with broad participation from the local population, including in the economic benefits of work within the RNSA, such as guiding ecotourists and providing other services.

The AC’s approach is always socio-environmental, a main component in protecting the reserve and the caatinga in general, stated Miranda.

Inside the reserve, there is a modest hotel that can accommodate up to 36 people. Local tourism tends to expand due to promotion by the governments of the states of Ceará and Piauí, which share the Serra das Almas Natural Reserve.

The nearby Poti River flows through a 140-kilometer-long canyon and has become a major tourist attraction.

The reserve is a legacy of the US Johnson family, owners of the SC Johnson company, which, because it uses vegetable wax for its furniture cleaning and conservation products, imported carnauba wax, a palm abundant in Ceará, Piauí, and Rio Grande do Norte, another Northeastern state.

In 1998, the leader of the family’s fourth generation, Samuel Johnson, repeated an expedition to Ceará that his father had made in 1935 and decided to establish a Caatinga Conservation Fund, using part of his fortune. This led to the RNSA and the Caatinga Association, composed of environmental specialists in the biome.

By Mario Osava
NITERÓI, Brazil, Dec 29 2025 (IPS)

“We moved from a context of socio-environmental exclusion to one of environmental justice,” said Dionê Castro, coordinator of the Sustainable Oceanic Region Program which led Brazil’s largest nature-based solutions project.

Having won national and global awards, the Orla Piratininga Park (POP) built 35,000 square meters of filtering gardens and improved the water quality of the Piratininga lagoon, in the oceanic south of Niterói, a municipality in metropolitan Rio de Janeiro, across the Guanabara Bay.

The project, named after the late Brazilian environmentalist Alfredo Sirkis, began in 2020, and aims to environmentally restore an area of 680,000 square meters on the lagoon’s shores whose waters cover an area of 2.87 square kilometers.

At the heart of the project are the treatment systems for the waters of the Cafubá, Arrozal, and Jacaré rivers, which flow into the lagoon. Sedimentation and pollution were deteriorating the water resource and the quality of life in the surrounding area.

A weir, which receives the river flow, a sedimentation pond, which removes solid waste, and the filtering gardens make up the chain that partially cleans the water before releasing it into the lagoon, reducing environmental impacts, in a process called phytoremediation.

The gardens are small reservoirs where aquatic plants called macrophytes are planted, which feed on the nutrients from the pollution, explained Heloisa Osanai, the biologist specialized in environmental management of the Sustainable Oceanic Region Program (PRO Sustainable).

Three polluted water treatment stations are in the neighborhoods crossed by the rivers, based on natural resources, “without the use of electrical energy, chemicals, or concrete,” explained Castro, the coordinator of PRO Sustainable.

Furthermore, some macrophytes produce abundant flowers. Only native Brazilian species are planted, with priority given to biodiversity, added Osanai.

Along with these water treatment systems, 10.8 kilometers of bike paths, 17 recreation centers, a 2,800-square-meter Eco-Cultural Center, and other environmental works with social goals were built.

The bike path, generally along a pedestrian sidewalk, caters to physical and leisure activities but is also a factor in protecting the lagoon shoreline by blocking urban occupation and real estate invasions, explain the officials.

The area where the water system was built at the mouth of the Cafubá river was highly degraded by an open-air dump and flooding. A reformed “belt channel,” in some sections also reinforced by macrophyte islands, corrected the waterlogging.

On the other side of the lagoon, 3.2 kilometers of bioswales improve the drainage of rainwater. They are trenches with pipes, stones, and other materials, plus vegetation, that accelerate drainage and prevent pollutants from reaching the lagoon.

The main result, according to Castro, reconciled the local population with the lagoon. The old houses that “turned their backs on the lagoon” are joined by new buildings facing the water, some with balconies overlooking the new landscape, said Mariah Bessa, the engineer in charge of hydraulic aspects of the project.

The local population was highly involved in the design and construction of the new environmental and social facilities that transformed the lagoon shoreline. This led to new attitudes, such as not littering on the ground or in the water and preventing others from doing so, according to Castro.

The Ecocultural Center promotes permanent environmental education, with films, children’s games, audiovisual resources, and a large space for visits and classes.

“We moved from a context of socio-environmental exclusion to one of environmental justice,” said the coordinator of PRO Sustainable.

The first USSR nuclear test Joe 1 at Semipalatinsk, Kazakhstan, 29 August 1949. Credit: CTBTO

By John Burroughs
SAN FRANCISCO, USA, Dec 2 2025 (IPS)

In a Truth Social post that reverberated around the world, on October 29 President Donald Trump wrote: “Because of other countries’ testing programs, I have instructed the Department of War to start testing our Nuclear Weapons on an equal basis.”

A month later, it remains unclear what “testing programs” Trump had in mind. Other than North Korea, which last tested in 2017, no country has carried out nuclear-explosive testing since 1998.

Some commentators speculated that Trump was referring to tests of nuclear weapons delivery systems, since Russia had just carried out tests of innovative systems, a long-range torpedo and a nuclear-powered cruise missile.

Perhaps to underline that the United States too tests delivery systems, in an unusual November 13 press release Sandia National Laboratories announced an August test in which an F-35 aircraft dropped inert nuclear bombs.

It appears, though, that the testing in question concerns nuclear warheads. In what was clearly an effort to contain the implications of Trump’s announcement, on November 2, Energy Secretary Chris Wright said regarding US plans that “I think the tests we’re talking about right now” involve “noncritical” rather than “nuclear” explosions. The Energy Department is responsible for development and maintenance of the nuclear arsenal.

In contrast, Trump’s remarks in an interview taped on October 31 point toward alleged underground nuclear-explosive testing by Russia, China, and other countries as the basis for parallel US testing. His remarks perhaps were sparked by years-old US intelligence assessments that Russia and China may have conducted extremely low-yield experiments that cannot be detected remotely.

The prudent approach is to assume that Trump is talking about a US return to nuclear-explosive testing. That assumption is reinforced by the fact that a few days after Trump’s social media post, the United States was the sole country to vote against a UN General Assembly resolution supporting the Comprehensive Nuclear-Test-Ban Treaty (CTBT).

The Russian government is taking this approach. On November 5, President Vladimir Putin ordered relevant agencies to study the possible start of preparations for explosive testing of nuclear warheads.

US resumption of nuclear-explosive testing would be a disastrous policy. It would elevate the role of nuclear arms in international affairs, making nuclear conflict more likely. Indeed, nuclear tests can function as a kind of threat.

It likely would also stimulate and facilitate nuclear arms racing already underway among the United States, Russia, and China. Over the longer term nuclear-explosive testing would encourage additional countries to acquire nuclear weapons, as they come to terms with deeper reliance on nuclear arms by the major powers.

Resumption of nuclear test explosions would also be contrary to US international obligations. The United States and China have signed but not ratified the CTBT. Russia is in the same position, having withdrawn its ratification in 2023 to maintain parity with the United States. Due to the lack of necessary ratifications, the CTBT has not entered into force. Since the CTBT was negotiated in 1996, the three countries have observed a moratorium on nuclear-explosive testing.

That posture is consistent with the international law obligation, set forth in the Vienna Convention on the Law of Treaties, of a signatory state to refrain from acts which would defeat the object and purpose of a treaty.

The object and purpose of the CTBT is perfectly clear: to prevent and prohibit the carrying out of a nuclear weapon test explosion or any other nuclear explosion.

The CTBT is a major multilateral agreement with an active implementing organization that operates a multi-faceted world-wide system to verify the testing prohibition. It stands as a precedent for a future global agreement or agreements that would control fissile materials used to make nuclear weapons, control missiles and other delivery systems, and reduce and eliminate nuclear arsenals.

The sidelining or evisceration of the CTBT due to an outbreak of nuclear-explosive testing would reverse decades of progress towards establishing a nuclear-weapons-free world.

A return to nuclear-explosive testing would similarly be incompatible with compliance with the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT). Its Article VI requires the negotiation of “cessation of the nuclear arms race at an early date.”

Nuclear-explosive testing has long been understood as a driver of nuclear arms racing. The preamble to the NPT recalls the determination expressed in the 1963 Partial Test Ban Treaty, which prohibits above-ground nuclear tests, “to seek to achieve the discontinuance of all test explosions of nuclear weapons for all time and to continue negotiations to this end.”

In 1995, as part of a package enabling the NPT’s indefinite extension, a review conference committed to completion of negotiations on the CTBT by 1996, which was accomplished. In 2000 and 2010, review conferences called for bringing the CTBT into force.

To resume nuclear-explosive testing though a comprehensive ban has been negotiated, and to support design and development of nuclear weapons through such testing, would be a thoroughgoing repudiation of a key aim of the NPT, the cessation of the nuclear arms race.

That would erode the legitimacy of the NPT, which since 1970 has served as an important barrier to the spread of nuclear arms. The next review conference will be held in the spring of 2026. Resumption of nuclear-explosive testing, or intensified preparations to do so, would severely undermine any prospect of an agreed outcome.

It is imperative that the United States not resume explosive testing of nuclear weapons. It would be a very hard blow to the web of agreements and norms that limit nuclear arms and lay the groundwork for their elimination, and it could even lead toward the truly catastrophic consequences of a nuclear conflict.

IPS UN Bureau

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Excerpt:

Plagued by drought, farming families living within the boundaries of the Dry Corridor in eastern Guatemala have resorted to rainwater harvesting, an effective technique that has allowed them to cope

By Edgardo Ayala
SAN LUIS JILOTEPEQUE, Guatemala, Nov 21 2025 (IPS)

Plagued by drought, farming families living within the boundaries of the Dry Corridor in eastern Guatemala have resorted to rainwater harvesting, an effective technique that has allowed them to cope.

This enables them to obtain food from plots of land that would otherwise be difficult to farm.

Funded by the Swedish government and implemented by international organizations, some 7,000 families benefit from a program that seeks to provide them with the necessary technologies and tools to set up rainwater catchment tanks, alleviating water scarcity in this region of the country.

These families live around micro-watersheds in seven municipalities in the departments of Chiquimula and Jalapa, in eastern Guatemala. These towns are Jocotán, Camotán, Olopa, San Juan Ermita, Chiquimula, San Luis Jilotepeque, and San Pedro Pinula.

“We are in the Dry Corridor, and it’s hard to grow plants here. Even if you try to grow them, due to the lack of water, (the fruits) don’t reach their proper weight,” Merlyn Sandoval, head of one of the beneficiary families, told IPS in the village of San José Las Pilas, in the municipality of San Luis Jilotepeque, Jalapa department.

The Central American Dry Corridor, 1,600 kilometers long, covers 35% of Central America and is home to more than 10.5 million people. Here, over 73% of the rural population lives in poverty, and 7.1 million people suffer from severe food insecurity, according to FAO data.

As part of the project, the young Sandoval has taken action to harvest rainwater on her plot, in the backyard of her house. She has installed a circular tank, whose base is lined with an impermeable polyethylene geomembrane, with a capacity of 16 cubic meters.

When it rains, water runs off the roof and, through a PVC pipe, reaches the tank they call a “harvester,” which collects the resource to irrigate the small garden and fruit trees, and to provide water during the dry season, from November to May.

In the garden, Sandoval and her family of 10 harvest celery, cucumber, cilantro, chives, tomatoes, and green chili. For fruits, they have bananas, mangoes, and jocotes, among others.

They also have a fish pond where 500 tilapia fingerlings are growing. The structure, also with a polyethylene geomembrane at its base, is eight meters long, six meters wide, and one meter deep.

Another beneficiary is Ricardo Ramírez. From the rainwater collector installed on his plot, he manages to irrigate, by drip, the crops in the macro-tunnel: a small greenhouse next to the tank, where he grows cucumbers, tomatoes, and green chili, among other vegetables.

“From one furrow I got 950 cucumbers, and 450 pounds of tomatoes (204 kilos). And the chili, it just keeps producing. But it was because there was water in the harvester, and I just opened the little valve for just half an hour, by drip, and the soil got well moistened,” Ramírez told IPS with satisfaction.

En español: Video: La sequía en el este de Guatemala se alivia con la cosecha de agua de lluvia

Entrance to the Hangar Convention Center of the Amazonia in the northeastern Brazilian city of Belém. The climate summit, which began on November 10 and is due to conclude on Friday the 21st, is debating issues such as the phase-out of fossil fuels and adaptation goals. Credit: Emilio Godoy / IPS

By Emilio Godoy
BELÉM, Brazil, Nov 20 2025 (IPS)

The heat in the Hangar Convention Center of the Amazonia, in the northeastern Brazilian city of Belém, has reached the negotiation rooms of the climate summit. Over the past 72 hours, one of the most delicate and significant discussions of this climate meeting has been taking place: the path to progressively abandon the production and use of coal, gas, and oil.

In recent hours, a global coalition of rich and developing countries, led by Colombia, has doubled down on pushing for a fossil fuel phase-out roadmap, while major producer countries resist it.

“The plan must have differentiated commitments, the elimination of fossil fuel subsidies, and the reform of the international financial system, because foreign debt payments are punishing us,” Colombian Environment Minister Irene Vélez explained to IPS.

For the official, the 30th United Nations Conference of the Parties (COP30) on climate change must result in a roadmap. “People are mobilizing, demanding climate action; we have to start now,” she urged.

In Belém, the gateway to the planet’s largest rainforest, it is no longer just about reducing emissions but about transforming the foundation of the energy system, thus acquiring a moral, political, and scientific urgency. What was initially meant to be the “Amazon COP” has mutated into the “end-of-the-fossil-era-COP,” but the roadmap to achieve it is a toss-up.“The plan must have differentiated commitments, the elimination of fossil fuel subsidies, and the reform of the international financial system, because external debt payments are punishing us” –Irene Vélez.

Two years after the world agreed at COP28, held in 2023 in Dubai, to move away from fossil fuels, Belém is the moment of truth, upon which the effort to keep global warming below the 1.5° Celsius limit largely depends—a goal considered vital to avoid devastating and inevitable effects on ecosystems and human life.

Thus, the discussion among the 197 parties to the United Nations climate convention has shifted from the “what” to the “how,” and especially to the “when,” questions that have turned potential coordinates into a geopolitical labyrinth.

In that vein, a coalition of over 80 countries emerged on Tuesday the 18th to push the roadmap, including Colombia, Chile, Guatemala, and Panama among the Latin American countries.

One challenge for the roadmap advocates is that the issue is not explicitly part of the main agenda, a resource that the Brazilian presidency of COP30 could use to shirk responsibility on the matter.

The issue appears on the thematic menu of COP30, which started on the 10th and is scheduled to conclude on the 21st, and whose official objectives include approving the Global Goal on Adaptation to climate change and securing sufficient funds for that adaptation.

Approximately 40,000 people are attending this climate summit, including government representatives, multilateral agencies, academia, and civil society organizations.

An unprecedented indigenous presence is also in attendance, with about 900 delegates from native peoples, drawn by the ancestral call of the Amazon, a symbol of the menu of solutions to the climate catastrophe and simultaneously a victim of its causes.

Also present and very active in Belém are about 1,600 lobbyists from the hydrocarbon industry, 12% more than at the 2024 COP, according to the international coalition Kick Big Polluters Out.

The clamor from civil society demands an institutional structure with governance, clear criteria, measurable objectives, and justice mechanisms.

“The roadmap has become a difficult issue to ignore; it is already at the center of these negotiations, and no country can ignore it. The breadth of support is surprising, with rich and poor countries, producers and non-producers, indicating that an agreement is about to fall,” Antonio Hill, Just Transitions advisor for the non-governmental and international Natural Resource Governance Institute, told IPS.

Activists protest on Wednesday the 19th against fossil fuel exploitation at the entrance to the venue of the Belém climate summit, in the Amazonian northeast of Brazil. Credit: Emilio Godoy / IPS

Poisoned

The push for the roadmap comes from the Fossil Fuel Non-Proliferation Treaty, promoted by civil society organizations, strongly adopted by Colombia, and which so far has the support of 18 nations, but no hydrocarbon-producing Latin American country, such as Argentina, Brazil, Ecuador, Mexico, or Venezuela.

Colombia, despite also being a producer and exporter of fossil fuels, has presented its Roadmap for a Just Energy Transition, with which it seeks to replace income from coal and oil with investments in tourism and renewable energy.

Colombia’s 2022-2052 National Energy Plan projects long-term reductions in fossil fuel production. The country announced US$14.5 billion for the energy transition to less polluting forms of energy production.

But for the rest of the region, the duality between maintaining fossil fuels and promoting renewable energies persists.

A prime example of this duality is the COP30 host country itself, Brazil. While the host President, Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, and his Minister of Environment and Climate Change, Marina Silva, have insisted on the need to abandon fossil fuels, the government is promoting expansive oil and gas extraction plans.

In fact, just weeks before the opening of COP30, the state-owned oil group Petrobras received a permit for oil exploration in the Atlantic, just kilometers from the mouth of the Amazon River.

But Lula and his team committed that this summit in the heart of the Amazon would be “the COP of truth” and “the COP of implementation,” and the issue of fossil fuels has become central to the negotiations, which Lula joined on Wednesday the 19th to give a push to the talks and the outcomes.

In their Nationally Determined Contributions (NDCs)—the set of mitigation and adaptation policies countries must present to comply with the Paris Agreement on climate change signed in 2015 at COP21—Argentina, Brazil, Mexico, or Chile avoid mentioning a managed phase-out of fossil fuels.

Simply put, they argue they cannot let go of the old vine before grasping the new one. This stance also involves a delicate aspect, as nations like Ecuador depend on revenues from hydrocarbon exploitation.

Therefore, the Global South has insisted on its demand for funding from rich nations, due to their contribution to the climate disaster through fossil fuel exploitation since the 17th century.

The result of the presented policies is alarming: although many countries have increased their emission reduction targets on paper, they lack details on phasing out production. The only existing roadmap is the growing extractive one.

In fact, the Global Stocktake of the Paris Agreement process, originating from COP28, demanded that countries take measures to move towards a fossil-free era.

The argument is unequivocal: various estimates indicate that fossil fuels contribute 86% of greenhouse gas emissions, the cause of global warming.

But a key point is where to start. For Uitoto indigenous leader Fanny Kuiru Castro, the new general coordinator of the Coordinator of Indigenous Organizations of the Amazon Basin –which  brings together the more than 350 native peoples of the eight countries sharing the biome–, the starting point must precisely be at-risk regions like the Amazon.

“It is a priority. If there isn’t a clear signal that we must proceed gradually, it means the summit has failed and does not want to adopt that commitment. We will have another 30 years of speeches,” she told IPS, alluding to that number of summits without substantial results.

In the Amazon, oil blocks threaten 31 million hectares or 12% of the total area, mining threatens 9.8 million, and timber concessions threaten 2.4 million.

And in that direction, a major obstacle arises: how to finance the phase-out. The roadmap has a direct link to the financial goals aimed at the Global South, with a demand for US$1.2 trillion in funding for climate action starting in 2035.

“Can the COP deliver the financial backing that countries need to reinvent their economies in time to guarantee just and inclusive development?” Hill questioned.

The atmosphere in Belém is of a different urgency compared to Dubai or Baku, where COP29 was held a year ago. The roadmap to a world free of fossil fuel smoke remains a blurry map, drawn freehand on ground that is heating up far too quickly.

In Belém, humanity is deciding whether to brake gradually or to accelerate, with the air conditioning on and a full tank.

Kumi Naidoo with Brazilian First Lady Janja Lula da Silva and Brazilian Cultural Minister Margareth Menezes and others at a panel called “Narratives and Storytelling to Face the Climate Crisis” during the 30th Conference of the Parties (COP30). Credit: Aline Massuda/COP30

By Joyce Chimbi
BELÉM, Brazil, Nov 18 2025 (IPS)

Decades ago, a little girl was born in a place called Cleveland, Ohio, in the heart of the United States of America. Born to a woman from the deep South, the place of Martin Luther King, her mother left her ancestral lands for the economic opportunities in the north.

“Off she went, making it all the way to the east side of Cleveland,” says Rev. Dr. Angelique Walker-Smith. “To the place where most people who look like me lived, and still live, and are subjected to policies of injustice, race and gender.”

Here, she found a more pressing issue.

“I couldn’t breathe, my mother couldn’t breathe, and we all couldn’t breathe,” she narrates.

This urbanization, driven by fossil fuels, occurred in Cleveland, Ohio, where her mother relocated and where her relatives still live today. During the Great Migration, over six million people of African descent traveled from the South, believing that economic opportunities would be better in the North.

Rev. Dr Angelique Walker-Smith, regional president of the World Council of Churches, speaks at an event titled ‘Faith for Fossil Free Future.’ Credit: IPS

“Upon our arrival, we discovered that we just couldn’t breathe.”

As one of eight regional presidents representing the World Council of Churches, Walker-Smith says for the World Council of Churches in over 105 countries, over 350 million adherents, and over 350 national churches all over the world, supporting the Fossil Fuel Non-Proliferation Treaty “is all about the issue of injustice, life and life more abundantly.”

“We are saying yes to the transition from fossil fuels to renewable life-giving energy.”

Kumi Naidoo, a prominent South African human rights and environmental justice activist and the President of the Fossil Fuel Non-Proliferation Treaty, says if the goal is renewable life-giving energy, the world has been going the wrong way for the past 30 years.

“If you come home from work and see water coming from the bathroom, you pick up the mop. But then you realized you left the tap running and the sink stopper on. What will you do first? Of course! You’ll turn off the water and pull the stopper. You will not start mopping the floor first.”

“For 30 years since the time science told us we need to change our energy system and many of our other systems, what we’ve been doing is mopping up the floor. If fossil fuels—oil, coal, and gas—account for 86 percent of what drives climate change, then we must turn off the tap.”

Masahiro Yokoyama was speaking at an event titled Faith for a Fossil-Free Future co-sponsored by Soka Gakkai International. Credit: Joyce Chimbi/IPS

Naidoo was speaking at an event titled ‘Faith for Fossil Free Future’ co-sponsored by several organizations, including Soka Gakkai International (SGI), Laudato Si’ Movement, GreenFaith—a global interfaith environmental coalition and EcoJudaism, a Jewish charity leading the UK Jewish Community’s response to the climate and nature crisis.

He spoke about the contradiction of the climate talks at the doorsteps of the Amazon, while licensing for drilling is still ongoing in the Amazon even as the people in the Amazon protest, calling for a fossil-free Amazon.

Continuing with the thread of contradictions, Naidoo said, “Some of you might be shocked that even though fossil fuels are 86 percent of the cause of climate change, it took 28 years before the words ‘fossil fuels’ could even be mentioned in the COP document. It is as absurd as Alcoholics Anonymous holding 28 years of conferences before they get the backbone to mention alcohol in an outcome document. If we continue on this path, we'll warm up the planet to the point where we destroy our soil and water, and it becomes so hot we can't plant food. The end result is that we'll be gone. The planet will still be here. And the good news is, once we become extinct as a species, the forests will grow back, and the oceans will recover.

“And actually, staying with that analogy, can you imagine how absurd it is that the largest delegation to this COP this year, last year, and every year is not even the host country?

“It’s not even Brazil—for every 25 delegates that are attending the COP, one of them is from the fossil fuel industry. That’s the equivalent of Alcoholics Anonymous having the largest delegation to its conference annually from the alcohol industry.”

People, groups and movements of different faiths and consciousness are increasingly raising their voices in robust support of a rapid fossil fuel phase-out, a massive and equitable upsurge in renewable energy, and the resources to make it happen—in the form of a Fossil Fuel Non-Proliferation Treaty.

Naidoo says the treaty is “a critical success ingredient for us not (only) to save the planet, but to secure our children and their children’s future, reminding ourselves that the planet does not need any saving.

“If we continue on this path, we warm up the planet to the point where we destroy our soil and water, and it becomes so hot we can’t plant food. The end result is that we’ll be gone. The planet will still be here. And the good news is, once we become extinct as a species, the forests will grow back, and the oceans will recover.”

This treaty is a proposed global agreement to halt the expansion of new fossil fuel exploration and production and to phase out existing sources like coal, oil, and gas in a just and equitable manner.

The initiative seeks to provide a legal framework to complement the Paris Agreement by directly addressing the supply side of fossil fuels.

Its ultimate goal is to support a global transition to renewable energy and is supported by a growing coalition of countries, cities, organizations, scientists, and activists. More importantly, it has multi-faith support.

Masahiro Yokoyama of the SGI, which is a diverse global community of individuals in 192 countries and territories who practice Nichiren Buddhism, spoke about the intersection between faith and energy transition and why the fossil fuel phase-out cannot wait.

“The just transition is also about how young people in faith can be the driving force to transformations.”

“So, a fossil fuel non-proliferation treaty, in my view, is not only about phasing out other fossil fuels but it also represents an ethical framework.”

“It’s a way to move forward while protecting people’s livelihoods and dignity within the context of the environment and also the local business and economies. So, a just transition is not merely a technical issue but a question of ethics, inclusion and solidarity,” Masahiro Yokoyama said.

The most pressing issue at hand is how to implement the treaty in the current environmental context.

“The pathway that we are following is a pathway that has been followed before. We are not going to negotiate this treaty within the COP or within the United Nations system. We’re going to do what the Landmine Treaty did.

“The landmine treaty was negotiated by 44 countries outside of the UN system and then brought to the UN General Assembly for ratification. The second question that people ask, justifiably, is, what about the powerful exporting countries, for example?” Naidoo asked.

“They’re not going to sign it. And to that we find answers in the landmine treaty. Up to today, the United States, Russia and China have not signed the Landmine treaty. But once the treaty was signed, the social license to continue as business as usual was taken away. And you saw a drastic change.”

Note: This article is brought to you by IPS Noram in collaboration with INPS Japan and Soka Gakkai International in consultative status with ECOSOC.

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Excerpt:

Merlyn Sandoval next to the rainwater collection tank built on the small plot where she lives, in the village of San Jose Las Pilas, in eastern Guatemala. She and her family participate in a program to alleviate the effects of the drought in the Central American Dry Corridor. Credit: Edgardo Ayala / IPS

By Edgardo Ayala
SAN LUIS JILOTEPEQUE, Guatemala, Oct 30 2025 (IPS)

Water scarcity that relentlessly hits the rural communities in eastern Guatemala, located in the so-called Central American Dry Corridor, is a constant threat due to the challenges in producing food, year after year. But it is also an incentive to strive to overcome adversities.

The peasant families living in this region struggle to counter hopelessness and, with the help of international cooperation, manage to confront water scarcity. With great effort, they produce food, aware of the importance of caring for and protecting the area’s micro-watersheds."Unfortunately, last year the rainy season also ended in September and we harvested almost nothing, there was no rainy season, there was no water. So it's difficult for us here, that's why they call it the Dry Corridor, because we don't have water" –Ricardo Ramirez.

“We are in the Dry Corridor, and it’s hard to produce the plants here, even if you’ve tried to produce them, because due to the lack of water (the fruits) don’t reach their proper weight,” Merlyn Sandoval, head of one of the families benefiting from a project that seeks to provide the necessary tools and knowledge for people to overcome water insecurity and produce their own food, told IPS.

Sandoval is a native of the village of San Jose Las Pilas, in the municipality of San Luis Jilotepeque, in the department of Jalapa, in eastern Guatemala. Her community has been included in the program, funded by Sweden and implemented by several organizations, such as the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO), together with the Guatemalan government.

The initiative, which began in 2022 and ends this December, reaches 7,000 families living around the micro-watersheds of seven municipalities in the departments of Chiquimula and Jalapa, in eastern Guatemala. These towns are Jocotan, Camotan, Olopa, San Juan Ermita, Chiquimula, San Luis Jilotepeque, and San Pedro Pinula.

The project focuses on creating the conditions to promote food and nutritional security and the resilience of the population, prioritizing water security that allows for food production.

“The strength of the (project’s) goals lies in the training and the action of the micro-watershed concept… people were trained depending on whether they were upstream, downstream, or in the middle of the watershed,” Rafael Zavala, FAO representative in Guatemala, told IPS.

He added: “The area is highly expulsive of labor due to migration, and this causes women to be the heads of households.”

The San Jose River basin is one of the watersheds being targeted for protection and preservation due to its importance for the water security of the towns in San Luis Jilotepeque, in eastern Guatemala. Credit: Edgardo Ayala / IPS

Drought and poverty

A report from the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) indicates that the area included in the program shows a significant deterioration of livelihoods and a scarcity of economic opportunities.

It adds that in the department of Chiquimula, 70.6% of the population lives in poverty, while in Jalapa, the figure reaches 67.2%.

The Central American Dry Corridor, which is 1,600 kilometers long, covers 35% of Central America and is home to more than 10.5 million people.

In this belt, over 73% of the rural population lives in poverty and 7.1 million people suffer from severe food insecurity, according to FAO data.

Central America is a region of seven nations, with 50 million inhabitants, of which 18.5 million live in Guatemala, the most populous country, with high inequality and where a large part of poor families are indigenous.

In the home of Merlyn Sandoval’s family in San Jose Las Pilas, the granary for storing the corn and beans, which are so difficult to produce due to the lack of water in the area of eastern Guatemala, is never missing. Credit: Edgardo Ayala / IPS

Learning to Harvest Rainwater

As part of the project, the young Sandoval has learned the key points about micro-watershed management and has developed actions to harvest rainwater on her plot, in the backyard of her house. There, she has set up a circular tank, whose base is lined with an impermeable polyethylene geo-membrane, with a capacity of 16 cubic meters.

When it rains, water runs down from the roof and, through a PVC pipe, reaches the tank they call a “harvester,” which collects the resource to water the small garden and the fruit trees, and to provide water during the dry season, from November to May.

In the garden, Sandoval and her family of 10, harvest celery, cucumber, cilantro, chives, tomatoes, and green chili. In fruits, they harvest bananas, mangoes, and jocotes, among others.

Next to the rainwater harvester is the fish pond where 500 tilapia fingerlings are growing. The structure, also with a polyethylene geo-membrane at its base, is eight meters long, six meters wide, and one meter deep.

When the fish reach a weight of half a kilo, they can be sold in the community.

“The harvesters fill up with what is collected from the rains, and that helps to give a water change for the tilapia and also to give water to the fruit trees,” said Sandoval, 27.

The young woman also produces corn and beans, on another nearby plot, of approximately half a hectare. These plantings, more extensive than the garden and fruit trees in the backyard, cannot be covered by irrigation from the tank.

Ricardo Ramirez shows the inside of the macro-tunnel (a small greenhouse) where he has managed to harvest cucumbers, tomatoes, and green chilies, and where the plants of the new tomato planting can already be seen, on his small farm in eastern Guatemala. Credit: Edgardo Ayala / IPS

As a result, these crops, in this region of the Dry Corridor, are always vulnerable to climatic fluctuations: they can be ruined both by lack of rain and by excess rain during the same rainy season, from May to November.

Sandoval has already lost 50% of her harvest due to excess rain, she stated, with a hint of sadness.

This has also happened to Ricardo Ramirez, another resident of San Jose Las Pilas, who has experienced these fluctuations of lack and excess of water in his crop of corn and beans, staples in the Central American diet.

“Unfortunately, last year the rainy season also ended in September and we harvested almost nothing, there was no rainy season, there was no water. So it’s difficult for us here, that’s why they call it the Dry Corridor, because we don’t have water,” said Ramirez, 59, referring to his bean crop, planted on two plots totaling half a hectare, of which he has lost roughly half.

From the rainwater collection tank, Ricardo Ramirez manages to drip-irrigate the crops in the macro-tunnel, as this type of greenhouse is called. The system has allowed him to harvest produce despite water insecurity in eastern Guatemala. Credit: Edgardo Ayala / IPS

Green Hope

However, the support from the program driven with Swedish cooperation funds has been vital for Ramirez, not only to stay afloat economically as a farmer, but also to bet, with hope and enthusiasm, on the land where he was born.

Through this international initiative, Ramirez was also able to set up a rainwater collection tank with a capacity of 16 cubic meters, as well as an agricultural macro-tunnel: a kind of small greenhouse, with a modular structure covered by a mesh that protects the crops from pests and other bugs.

Inside the macro-tunnel, he planted cucumbers, tomatoes, and green chili, among others, and watered them by drip irrigation through a hose that carried water from the tank, just three meters away.

“From one row I got 950 cucumbers, and 450 pounds (204 kilos) of tomatoes, and the chili, it just keeps producing. But it was because there was water in the harvester and I just opened the little valve, gave it just half an hour, by drip, and the soil got wet,” Ramirez told IPS, while checking a bunch of bananas or guineos, as they are known in Central America.

All of that generated sufficient income for him to save 2,000 quetzales (about 160 dollars), with which he was able to install electricity on his plot and also buy an electric generator to pump water from a spring within the property, for when the collection tank runs out in about two months.

In this way, Ramirez will be able to maintain irrigation and production.

San José Las Pilas has a community water system, supplied by a spring located nearby. The tank is installed in the high area of the village so that water flows down by gravity, but the resource is rationed to just a few hours a day, given the scarcity.

Nicolas Gomez still has to walk two hours, like many others, to get water from a river when his collection tank runs out during the dry season in eastern Guatemala. Credit: Edgardo Ayala / IPS

Long Walks to Obtain Water

However, not everyone is as lucky as Ramirez, to have a water spring on their property and to irrigate gardens when the collection tank runs out.

When that happens, Nicolas Gomez has to walk almost two hours to reach the San Jose River, the closest one, and carry water from there, loading it on his shoulder in containers, to meet basic hygiene and cooking needs.

“So now, in the rainy season, we have water stored in this tank. But for the dry season we have nothing, we go to the river to fetch water, to a spring that is quite far, about a two-hour walk, that’s how hard it is for us to obtain it,” said Gomez, a 66-year-old farmer who has also suffered the climate onslaughts of drought and excess water on his corn crops.

Gomez lives in Los Magueyes, a rural settlement, also within San Luis Jilotepeque. Poverty here is more acute and visible than in San Jose Las Pilas. There is no community water system or electricity, and families have to light themselves with candles at night.

“Life here is hard,” stated Gomez, amidst the smoke produced by the wood-fired stove he was using to cook a meal when IPS visited on October 21.

Brazil has become a major producer of ethanol, a biofuel that competes with gasoline. Monocultures of sugar cane form a monotonous landscape in the southern state of São Paulo and in the country's central-west region, but they help decarbonize transport in the country. Credit: Mario Osava / IPS

By Mario Osava
RIO DE JANEIRO, Oct 22 2025 (IPS)

Quadrupling the production and use of sustainable fuels by 2035 is the goal of a new international initiative to drive energy transition and mitigate the climate crisis, which will be launched during Brazil’s climate summit in November.

The Belem Commitment on Sustainable Fuels, led by Brazil with the support of India, Italy, and Japan, awaits the support of other countries after its official launch during the so-called Climate Summit on November 6 and 7 in Belem, northern Brazil.

The meeting of heads of state and government will this time precede the 30th Conference of the Parties (COP30) on climate change, which will be hosted by Belem from November 10 to 21. The unusual separation between the COP and the summit aims to mitigate the accommodation problems of the Amazonian city.

The commitment, nicknamed “Belem 4x,” is based on a report by the International Energy Agency that points to the possibility of quadrupling the volume, adding new alternatives such as green hydrogen, sustainable aviation fuels (SAF), and shipping and synthetic fuels to ethanol and biodiesel.

At COP28, held in 2023 in Dubai, it was agreed to initiate “a transition away from fossil fuels” as an indispensable measure to contain global warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius. In Belem, the goal is to implement that consensual decision.

“Brazil was careful not to limit the initiative to biofuels in order to include various sustainable fuels, an important distinction because there are countries, especially in Europe, that oppose biofuels,” warned Claudio Angelo, international policy coordinator for Climate Observatory, a Brazilian coalition of 133 social organizations.

Objections to biofuels include potential environmental damage, land conflicts, and competition with food production, he said by phone to IPS from Brasilia.

Extensive cattle ranching has degraded 100 million hectares in Brazil. One third of this area can be recovered for the cultivation of sugar cane, corn, and oilseeds to double biofuel production, according to a study by the Institute for Energy and Environment. Credit: Mario Osava / IPS

Biofuels market

It is an old Brazilian dream to create a large international biofuels market, due to its large ethanol production and its potential to expand it.

Brazil tried, unsuccessfully, to promote this market in the 1990s and early 21^st century, based on the existence of many sugar cane producing countries, the crop with the highest productivity for this biofuel.

Cuba, once the world’s largest sugar exporter, rejected the proposal with the argument of prioritizing food, despite the decline of its sugar industry and its lack of energy, due to its dependence on imported oil, which became scarce after the fall of the Soviet Union, its major supplier, in 1991.

Brazil became the largest sugar exporter in the mid-1990s, two decades after launching its National Alcohol Program to replace part of its gasoline with ethanol.

It sought to mitigate the economic crisis caused by the rising oil prices, which tripled in 1973 and doubled again in 1979. At that time, the country imported about 80% of the crude oil it consumed; today it exports oil and ethanol.

Many countries use ethanol, blended into gasoline, as a way to reduce pollution. In Brazil, the blend already reaches 30%, and pure ethanol is also used as automotive fuel.

But most passenger cars in the country today are “flex,” consuming gasoline or ethanol and blends in any proportion.

In 2023, the Global Biofuels Alliance was born in New Delhi during the annual summit of the Group of 20 (G20) most relevant industrial and emerging economies, in a new attempt to promote its production.

The City Park, under construction in January, in the Amazonian city of Belem, which will host the debates and negotiations among government delegations and the United Nations at COP30, from November 10 to 21. Credit: Rafa Neddermeyer / COP30

Ambitious goal

Now, at COP30, the aim is to expand the attempt to replace fossil fuels with an ambitious goal: to quadruple the current production of alternative fuels within 10 years.

This follows the path charted at COP28, held in Dubai in 2023, where it was agreed to initiate “a transition away from fossil fuels” as an indispensable measure to contain global warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius. In Belem, the goal is to implement that consensual decision.

Currently, this production, basically of biofuels, reaches 175 billion liters, about two-thirds ethanol and one-third biodiesel. The United States surpasses Brazil as the largest producer.

Brazil produced 36.8 billion liters of ethanol and 9.07 billion liters of biodiesel in 2024. In recent years, production of corn-based ethanol has grown, utilizing the surplus of this grain in the country’s central-west region. Its share is already close to 20% of the total.

A study by the Institute for Energy and Environment (Iema), released on October 9, states that Brazil will be able to double this production by 2050 without deforesting new areas. The utilization of degraded pastureland would be sufficient to achieve the goal.

The country has about 100 million hectares of such pastureland, almost entirely abandoned. This is equivalent to twice the territory of Spain and is set to increase, as Brazil has 238 million cattle, far exceeding its 213 million human inhabitants.

From this total, the cultivation aimed at doubling biofuels could occupy 25 to 30 million hectares. Plenty of land would remain for the expansion of food agriculture, emphasized Felipe Barcellos e Silva, a researcher at Iema and author of the study.

According to his calculations, a portion of the pastureland would be allocated to reforestation for biome restoration and environmental protection areas, another part to the recovery of the pasturelands themselves for more productive cattle ranching.

Between 55 and 60 million hectares would remain for energy and food agriculture, with about half for each.

The area for biofuels would vary depending on the choice for more biodiesel, which requires the cultivation of oilseeds, or more ethanol, in which case expanding the area of sugar cane or corn.

The alternatives comprise six scenarios that combine priorities for different raw materials and the option to produce other fuels, such as SAF and green diesel, which is different from biodiesel.

Soy is another monoculture that occupies vast expanses of land in central-western and southern Brazil. Its oil fuels the biodiesel industry by offering surpluses at a low price, since soybean bran is the most in-demand byproduct for livestock feed. Credit: Mario Osava / IPS

Persistent alternatives

“Biodiesel has a problem because it is a degradable organic compound,” unstable, while green diesel is a product of the same vegetable oil but subjected to hydrotreatment and has “physicochemical properties similar to mineral diesel,” explained Roberto Kishinami, a physicist and strategic specialist at the non-governmental Institute for Climate and Society.

Green diesel, he assured, fully replaces fossil diesel without damaging vehicles and has the advantage of emitting fewer urban pollutants than biodiesel, such as fine particulate matter, carbon monoxide, and nitrogen oxide.

“The dozens of biodiesel plants (installed in Brazil) will disappear at some point. They were a temporary solution, favored by the soybean oil surplus, when soybean bran had growing demand,” as livestock feed, Kishinami told IPS by phone from São Paulo.

In his assessment, the energy transition and the decarbonization of transport and industry need sustainable fuels, since electrification is not economically viable for all activities. A combination of the two solutions will have to prevail.

The creation of an international market for these fuels, especially biofuels, depends on standardizing norms and patterns worldwide, a difficult task especially given the rigid European demands.

Furthermore, it faces geopolitical issues, such as “the US-China trade war that will dominate the coming decades,” concluded Kishinami.

Biofuel production in Brazil is growing not only through the expansion of crops but also through technological advances and the utilization of waste.

Second-generation ethanol is already being produced from cane straw, and biomethane, which is equivalent to natural gas, is produced through the biodigestion of vinasse generated in ethanol production, noted Silva.

There is also the beginning of cultivation of the macauba palm (Acrocomia aculeata), which has different names in Latin America and has high oil productivity.

Electrification will take time. It is relatively fast for light vehicles but slow for heavy vehicles, whose useful life reaches about 20 years. This is where decarbonization is achieved through biofuels, argued Silva.

“The transition in transport will continue until at least 2050,” after which biofuels will be able to meet other demands, including power generation, he concluded in a telephone interview with IPS from São Paulo.

The commitment to quadruple sustainable fuels is positive, but it cannot in “any way” dominate the energy debate at COP30, warned Angelo.

“The success of COP30 depends on promoting the implementation of a just, orderly, and equitable transition to eliminate fossil fuels, which are the main cause of global warming,” he concluded.

View of a plant owned by Aguas Antofagasta, a company created 20 years ago that now has three desalination plants to supply drinking water to 184,000 families in that desert city in northern Chile. Credit: Courtesy of Acades

By Orlando Milesi
SANTIAGO, Oct 22 2025 (IPS)

Desalination projects are booming in Chile, with 51 plants planned to process seawater and a combined investment of US$ 24.455 billion. However, these initiatives hardly benefit small-scale farmers, who are threatened by the prolonged drought, and cause environmental concerns.

A survey by the Capital Goods Corporation and the Chilean Desalination and Reuse Association (Acades) revealed that these projects, already in the engineering and construction phases, will add 39,043 liters of water per second in production capacity."Using seawater, desalinated or saline, and reusing wastewater relieves pressure on rivers and aquifers, ensuring water for people, ecosystems, and productive activities" –Rafael Palacios.

Fifteen of these projects belong to the mining sector, eight to the industrial sector, eight to the water utility sector, and 20 are linked to green hydrogen, a clean fuel but very water-intensive, which the country aims to be a major producer of.

Of the future plants, 17 are located in the desert region of Antofagasta, in the far north of this elongated South American country, which lies between the Andes mountain range and the Pacific Ocean.

There are 11 projects in the southern region of Magallanes, followed in number by the regions of Atacama, Coquimbo, and Valparaíso, in the north and center of Chile, which concentrate most of the investment.

Rafael Palacios, executive director of Acades, told IPS that this country “faces a scenario in which water availability in northern and central Chile could decrease by up to 50% by 2060, so we cannot continue to depend solely on continental sources.”

“Using seawater, desalinated or saline, and reusing wastewater relieves pressure on rivers and aquifers, ensuring water for people, ecosystems, and productive activities,” he emphasized.

Currently, 23 desalination plants are already operating in Chile with a capacity of 9,500 liters per second. They primarily serve mining needs, but also industrial and human consumption.

One of the large greenhouses for the hydroponic cultivation of vegetables irrigated with desalinated water, on the farm of one of the 90 members of the Association of Agricultural Producers of Altos de la Portada, in the northern Chilean region of Antofagasta. Credit: Courtesy of the Association of Agricultural Producers of Altos de la Portada.

Small-scale farmers benefit

Dolores Jiménez has been president for the last eight years of the Association of Agricultural Producers of Altos de la Portada, in Antofagasta. The association has 90 active members who collectively own 100 hectares where they have created a Hydroponic City.

“We have no water problems thanks to an agreement with Aguas Antofagasta. We have an oasis which we would otherwise not have without that agreement,” Jiménez told IPS by telephone from Antofagasta, the capital of the region of the same name.

Aguas Antofagasta is a private company that desalinates water in the north of this country of 19.7 million inhabitants. The company draws water from the Pacific Ocean using an outfall that extends 600 meters offshore to a depth of 25 meters.

In desalination, outfalls are the underwater pipes that draw seawater and return and disperse the brine in a controlled manner, far from the coast and at an adequate depth.

Founded 20 years ago, the company currently desalinates water in three plants in the municipalities of Antofagasta, Tocopilla, and Tal Tal, supplying 184,000 families in that region.

Dolores Jiménez, president of the Association of Agricultural Producers of Altos de la Portada, shows the strength of the crops thanks to the use of desalinated water that reaches small farmers due to an agreement with Aguas Antofagasta. Credit: Courtesy of the Association of Agricultural Producers of Altos de la Portada

In its project to supply the general population, it included the association of small-scale farmers who grow carrots, broccoli, Italian zucchini, cucumbers, medicinal herbs, and edible flowers.

“They support us with water from the pipeline that goes to Mejillones (a coastal city in the region). They financed the connection for us to fill six 30,000 liter tanks, installed on a plot at the highest point. From there, we distribute it using a water tanker truck,” informed Jiménez.

“Now, thanks to a project by the (state) National Irrigation Commission, we were able to secure 280 million pesos (US$294,000) for an inter-farm connection that will deliver water through pipes to 70 plots,” she added.

This will mean significant savings for the farmers.

Jesús Basáez in his farm in Pullally, on the central coast of Chile. There he grows quinoa, which he irrigates with highly saline water that the grain tolerates without problems. Previously, that saline water forced him to stop producing strawberries. Credit: Orlando Milesi / IPS

In Pullally, in the municipality of Papudo, in the central Valparaíso region, 155 kilometers northwest of Santiago, Jesús Basáez used to grow strawberries alongside a dozen other small farmers. But the crop failed due to the salinity of the groundwater, apparently caused by the drought affecting the La Ligua and Petorca rivers and proximity to the sea.

He then switched to quinoa, which tolerates salinity well. Today he is known as the King of Quinoa, a grain valued for its nutritional properties and versatility, which was an ancestral food of Andean highland peoples and has now spread among small Chilean farmers.

Basáez has three hectares planted with white, red, and black varieties of quinoa, which he irrigates with water obtained from a well, as he told IPS during a visit to his farm.

The public University of Playa Ancha, based in the city of Valparaíso, installed a mobile desalination plant on his farm that uses reverse osmosis to remove components from the saltwater that are harmful for irrigation. Pressure is applied to the saltwater so that it passes through a semipermeable membrane that filters the water, separating the salts.

After successful tests, Basáez is now about to resume his strawberry cultivation.

“It was three years of research, and it was concluded that it is viable to produce non-brackish water to grow strawberries again. The problem is that the cost remains very high and prevents replicating this experience for other farmers,” he said. The mobile plant cost the equivalent of US$ 84,000.

The mobile desalination plant installed on Jesús Basáez’s farm to research the high salinity of the water at the site. For three years, teachers and students from the University of Playa Ancha, in the central Chilean region of Valparaíso, researched how to reduce the water salinity on this agricultural property. Credit: Orlando Milesi / IPS

Debating the effects of desalination

Since 2010, Chile has been facing a long drought with water deficits of around 30%. There was extreme drought in 2019 and 2021, and the country benefited from a normal period in 2024, although the resource deficit persists, in a country where water management is also privatized.

A report from the Climate and Resilience Center of the public University of Chile, known as CR2, indicated that current rates of groundwater use are higher than the recharge capacity of the aquifers, causing a decline in reserves.

In the 23 already operational desalination plants, seawater is extracted using outfalls that are not very long, installed along the coastline of a shore that has numerous concessions and uses dedicated to aquaculture, artisanal fishermen, and indigenous communities.

The main problem is the discharge of brine following the industrial desalination process.

“I will never be against obtaining water for human consumption. Although this highly concentrated brine that goes to the seabed has an impact where a large part of our benthic resources (organisms from the bottom of water bodies) are located. On a local scale, except in the discharge area, this impact has never been evaluated,” Laura Farías, a researcher at the public University of Concepción and at CR2, told IPS.

“There is literature that points out that there is undoubtedly an impact. There are different stages of biological cycles, from larvae to settled organisms. There is even an impact on pelagic organisms that have the ability to move. And also an impact at the ecosystem level,” the academic specified by telephone from Concepción, a city in central Chile.

She added that this impact is proportional to the volume of desalinated water.

Jesús Basáez, in the municipality of Papudo, poses showing a mature quinoa plant in one hand and in the other a container designed to sell each kilogram of the grain he produces in its white, red, and black varieties. Credit: Orlando Milesi / IPS

According to Farías, the water crisis has led to desalination being part of the solution, despite its impact on marine ecosystems, coastal vegetation, and wildlife.

“It is a maladaptation, because in the end it will have impacts that will affect the coastal inhabitants who depend on those resources,” she emphasized.

There are currently initiatives to legislate on the use of the coastal zone, but according to Farías, they seek to “normalize, regularize, and standardize those impacts, after these plants already exist and there are others seeking approval.”

Palacios, the director of Acades, has a different opinion.

The concerns about the environmental impact of desalination on coastal ecosystems are legitimate, but current evidence and technology demonstrate that this impact can be managed effectively, he says.

“In Chile, recent studies show no evidence that the operation of desalination plants has so far caused significant environmental impacts, thanks to constant monitoring and advanced diffusion systems,” he detailed.

He added that “in most cases, the natural salinity concentration is restored within two or three seconds and at less than 20 meters from the outfalls.”

Palacios explained that research by the Environmental Hub of the University of Playa Ancha “confirms increases in salinity of less than 5% within 100 meters.” And in areas like Caldera, a coastal city in the northern Atacama region, they are “less than 3% within 50 meters, limiting the areas of influence to small zones.”

“We are already implementing the first Clean Production Agreement in desalination and water reuse, promoted together with the (state) Agency for Sustainability and Climate Change, advancing towards voluntary standards for sustainable management, transparency, and strengthening the link with communities,” he emphasized.

By Orlando Milesi
SAN ANTONIO, Chile, Oct 17 2025 (IPS)

Maritime transport is key for Chile, which has 34 free trade agreements with countries and blocs of nations, one of the broadest trade networks in the world with access to over 86% of the global gross domestic product (GDP).

In 2024, this South American country surpassed US$100 billion in exports for the first time, mostly of copper, forest products, fresh fruits, fish, and organic foods. In turn, it imported US$78.025 billion, mostly diesel oil, clothing, accessories, and footwear.

Faced with growing trade, experts predict enormous port demand by 2036 in this long and narrow South American country squeezed between the Andes and the Pacific Ocean.

To avoid a collapse in 10 years, the San Antonio Outer Port project will triple the capacity of Chile’s main route for the exit and entry of products.

San Antonio currently handles 29% of the tonnage of maritime foreign trade, 34% of exports, and 71% of Chile’s imports by value.

The high agricultural and mining production from Chile’s central area, which contributes 59% of the country’s GDP and is home to 63% of its 19.7 million inhabitants, passes through this port.

The outer port will allow for the movement of six million containers thanks to two new port terminals, 1,730 meters long and 450 meters wide, with eight new berthing fronts for state-of-the-art container ships.

The total estimated investment for the project is US$4.45 billion, which will be financed by the government and by international companies applying for concessions.

The first months of 2026 will be key for awarding the dredging works, the construction of the breakwater, the protective infrastructure for the new port, and for learning the authorities’ decision on the environmental impact of the San Antonio Outer Port works.

Measures will be taken to mitigate that impact, including the protection of two wetlands located on port land and support for the work of fishermen in nearby coves. To decarbonize, the port project will also use energy produced from renewable sources.

San Antonio, 110 kilometers west of Santiago and south of the historic port of Valparaiso, which it has surpassed in relevance, is aiming for a revival by promoting the largest port infrastructure project in Chile’s history.

It currently provides 10,200 direct jobs to port workers with an average monthly income of US$1,110.

San Antonio aims to consolidate its ninth place among the largest ports in Latin America and expand its role in the movement of cargo to and from Asia and the Americas.

Its managers also seek to show that infrastructure development can be harmonized with the protection and improvement of environmental conditions through a project that is a model of sustainability.

The current port of San Antonio, on the central coast of Chile, on a day of full activity with its cranes deployed and loading two container ships with products for export. Credit: Orlando Milesi / IPS

By Orlando Milesi
SAN ANTONIO, Chile, Sep 30 2025 (IPS)

The port of San Antonio, Chile’s main port, is promoting a historic and sustainable expansion with its own investment and that of international consortiums, aiming to improve its current ninth place among the largest and busiest ports in Latin America.

The port, located in the Valparaíso region, 110 kilometers north of Santiago and in the municipality of the same name, San Antonio, is state-owned and currently operates with five concessions granted to private operators, receiving container ships carrying millions of products.

In 2024, it handled 23 million tons of import and export goods worth US$42.766 billion. It received 1,024 ships and 1.8 million TEUs, the unit of cargo in maritime transport equivalent to the capacity of a standard 20-foot container.“The most important thing is for the project to be inaugurated when demand requires it. We trust that, regardless of the government that comes in from next March, this project will follow the desired schedule. We are working as quickly as possible”–Juan Carlos Muñoz

For several years now, San Antonio’s cargo movement has tripled that of the historic port of Valparaiso, located 100 kilometers to the north, and serves an area stretching from the regions of Coquimbo, north of Valparaiso, to Maule, south of the Santiago metropolitan region.

This is a strip of land where 63% of Chile’s 19.7 million people live and where 59% of the gross domestic product (GDP) of this long South American country, which narrows between the Andes mountain range and the Pacific Ocean, is produced.

Chile has free trade agreements with 34 countries or trading blocs, representing 88% of global GDP. In 2024, its exports reached a record US$100.163 billion, and imports amounted to US$84.155 billion.

The San Antonio Outer Port project, which represents a major expansion of the current port, is key to strengthening international openness and solidifying connections with the main routes to and from Asia, the Americas, and Europe.

Copper, fruits, wine, salmon, fruit pulp, and other products are shipped out through San Antonio, while grains, vehicles, machinery, technological equipment, and chemicals are brought in.

“When you project Chile’s cargo movement, especially in the central macro-zone, you realize that by the years 2035-2036, the installed capacity in San Antonio and Valparaiso will be exceeded. Therefore, we must work on a port expansion because otherwise, we will have significant congestion of trucks and ships,” explained the Minister of Transport and Telecommunications, Juan Carlos Muñoz, to IPS.

Such congestion, he added, “is an inefficiency we cannot afford because it would significantly affect the country’s competitiveness.”

The Outer Port is a strategic and emblematic project for Chile’s development, according to Muñoz.

The major expansion includes two new semi-automated terminals, 1,730 meters long and 450 meters wide, with eight berthing fronts.

By 2036, when the expansion is fully operational, eight state-of-the-art 400-meter-long container ships will be able to dock simultaneously, and move six million containers annually. This capacity will double the current one.

San Antonio was chosen as the most suitable location for this unprecedented port expansion.

Currently, the project is progressing through environmental approval and a bidding process for the breakwater, along with updates to the infrastructure for protecting its docks from winds and waves—a fundamental aspect for the installation of concessionaires for the next 30 years.

Regarding the potential impact of the November presidential elections, Muñoz reminded IPS that “in this project, we are taking the baton from those who came before. And we plan to hand it over improved and advanced to those who come next, regardless of political color.”

“The most important thing is for the project to be inaugurated when demand requires it. We trust that, regardless of the government that comes, this project will follow the desired schedule. We are working as quickly as possible,” he explained.

Map showing the projected location of the Outer Port of the port of San Antonio, the main port in Chile, on the central coast of the Pacific Ocean. The expansion will almost triple its current capacity and will be fully operational in 2036. Credit: Courtesy of the San Antonio port

Key Definitions

The Exterior Port includes the construction of an L-shaped breakwater nearly four kilometers long. Two kilometers will extend out to sea, and the other two will follow the coastline.

The total investment will be US$4.45 billion, of which $1.95 billion will be contributed by the state-owned San Antonio Port Company and US$2.5 billion by the private sector.

The transfer capacity will be expanded to six million TEUs per year.

In March, the project obtained a US$150 million credit from the Development Bank of Latin America and the Caribbean, CAF, to finance enabling works such as the construction of the breakwater and to implement environmental compensation measures.

On Wednesday, September 24, Eduardo Abedrapo, president of the San Antonio port, confirmed during a visit to the port facilities by international journalists, including IPS, that two other consortia were prequalified, raising the number of bids for the initial works to five.

The tender process will close the receipt of bids in January 2026 and will award the contracts two months later.

The first contracts are for building the breakwater, carrying out the dredging, and related works.

The preliminary works are new access roads and a railway station to transport project construction material. Next comes the construction of the seawall and the deep dredging (18.5 meters) of the harbor basin.

The breakwater will be 1,230 meters facing the sea and 2,700 meters extending inland and requires 16 million cubic meters of rock.

The companies prequalified so far are Van Oord (Netherlands), Jan de Nul (Belgium), China Harbour Engineering Company CHEC (China), Acciona-Deme (Spain-Belgium), and Hyundai Engineering & Construction Co. Ltd. (South Korea).

The container ship Valentina, 366 meters long, docked at pier 1 of the Chilean port of San Antonio in the middle of loading operations. Less than 10 minutes pass from when the truck arrives alongside the ship until it leaves the port having delivered the container. Credit: Orlando Milesi / IPS

Environmental Sustainability

The project aims to ensure port operational quality through execution that is sustainable with the social and environmental surroundings.

“Chile has a very sophisticated and complex environmental assessment system. Obviously, these works have a set of impacts in their construction and operation phases,” Abedrapo told IPS.

He emphasized that “the port will be 100% electric. From the point of view of particulate matter pollution, it will be the opposite, as it will strongly contribute to decarbonization.”

However, he admitted that a port emits noise and has other impacts on the marine ecosystem or life in the surrounding areas.

He explained that as a result of meetings with the San Antonio municipality and social and environmental organizations, it was decided to protect two water bodies located in the new port facility by declaring them urban wetlands. They had emerged naturally 50 years after the original port was established in 1912.

“This is a demonstration of the company’s commitment to safeguarding biodiversity in the area and coastal land. It means that major infrastructure developments can be perfectly compatible and harmonized with the safeguarding and improvement of environmental conditions,” he asserted.

The removal of 16 million rocks to build the breakwater, for example, includes their reuse. Part of the environmental efficiency involves using the removed material to fill in other platforms.

Trucks move among dozens of already unloaded containers that are waiting for customs procedures before being sent to their destination. In 2024, 23 million tons of products passed through the Chilean port of San Antonio. Credit: Orlando Milesi / IPS

Progress of the Major Expansion

The environmental qualification resolution for the Outer Port is still being processed, awaiting technical reports from the involved public services and the conclusion of a citizen consultation.

Abedrapo believes that in October 2025 the environmental assessment service will issue a report that must be responded to by those responsible for the San Antonio port.

“The environmental assessment service could, towards the first half of next year, make a decision regarding the environmental qualification resolution for the project,” he estimated.

Abedrapo maintains that the Outer Port will ensure the sustainability and modernization of Chile’s public port infrastructure with high levels of efficiency and modern equipment.

He highlights direct benefits for Chilean foreign trade, lower-cost imported goods, and a competitive logistics chain.

Meanwhile, in the operation of the current port, the improvement of the breakwater, built last century, has been completed with the placement of 5,100 cubic meters of concrete and 3,400 cubic meters of prefabricated blocks. The parapet wall was raised from 10.6 to 11 meters.

Ten million dollars were invested to increase the safety of port operations relating the effects of climate change.

The work, which began last May, also included the installation of 2,300 cubic meters of large-tonnage rockfill.

The Chancay Port in Peru

Minister Muñoz dismissed any concerns about potential competition with the port of Chancay in Peru, funded by China in Chile’s northern neighbor and located near Lima.

“Rather than generating competition between different ports and countries, there is instead complementarity. It is good for us that Peru has ports of this level because there are ships that visit several ports to make a route along a certain coastline attractive,” he claimed.

He insisted that the demand projections in Chile require investing in a large-scale port that anticipates them.

He added that Chile can also attract cargo from other South American nations through the proposed bioceanic corridors.

“The existence of other ports of similar scale in other countries on the Pacific coast means that shipping lines visiting this part of the world can have more than one port of call. Ports like those being developed by our brother country Peru are an attractive complement to the project we are carrying out here, in San Antonio,” he concluded.

The complexity of the Brazilian electricity system has evolved from a model based on hydroelectricity supplemented by thermoelectricity to a combination of diverse sources, without planning and with little control, whose excess intermittent generation threatens to cause blackouts. Credit: Mario Osava / IPS

By Mario Osava
RIO DE JANEIRO, Sep 25 2025 (IPS)

Wind and solar power sources, essential for the energy transition to mitigate the climate crisis, have become a risk of power outages in Brazil.

It is a remedy that, in excess, becomes poison. The rapid and unplanned growth of these alternatives has created operational difficulties for the Brazilian electricity system, which is nationally interconnected.“Brazil has one of the most complex electricity systems in the world. No other country has such a diversity of sources”–Luiz Barata.

A blackout on August 15, 2023, which affected 27% of the supply throughout most of the country, was a major wake-up call about insecurity. It began with the transmission of wind and solar power plants in the state of Ceará, in northeastern Brazil.

It almost happened again in April and August of this year due to excess generation, according to the  National System Operator (ONS), a private organization that represents consumers and all sectors involved, which coordinates and controls supply nationwide.

A functional electrical system requires surpluses; energy must be available at all outlets for eventual consumption. But “too much excess causes problems,” said Luiz Barata, former director general of the ONS and current president of the non-governmental National Front of Energy Consumers.

The proliferation of solar and wind power plants in Brazil has created imbalances between supply and consumption that caused operational difficulties in effective distribution, such as power outages in 25 of Brazil’s 26 states on August 15, 2023. Credit: Fotos Públicas

Renewables in question

The intermittent nature of wind and solar power, which have grown the most in the last decade, exacerbates the risks due to their uncontrollable origin. This type of energy depends on nature, on when there is wind and sun.

The plot thickens with distributed generation, also known as decentralized generation, which turns consumers into producers of their own electricity in 3.8 million residential micro-plants or groups of individuals or small businesses.

This dispersed generation already exceeds 43 gigawatts of power, according to data from the National Electric Energy Agency (Aneel), the sector’s regulatory body.

This amounts to 18% of the country’s total generating capacity, with solar photovoltaic power dominating the segment with a 95% share.

“In addition to being uncontrollable, because it depends on the sun, distributed generation cannot be interrupted, as it is beyond the control of the ONS,” warned Barata, an electrical engineer.

What the ONS does is curtail the contribution of some generating sources when excess supply threatens the system. In general, the interruption affects wind and solar generation, which are further away from the area of highest consumption.

The Northeast, favored by strong and regular winds and solar radiation, concentrates most of these sources, while the highest electricity consumption occurs in the Southeast, Brazil’s most populous and industrialized region.

Wind farms occupy hills and mountains throughout the Northeast region of Brazil, which has become a supplier of electricity for the entire country. The intermittency of this source, with generation concentrated at night, contributed to the risk of blackouts in the country. Credit: Mario Osava / IPS

Uncertain future

The trend is for operational problems in the electricity system to worsen because distributed generation continues to expand, due to the legal incentives it enjoys, and without planning, as it is the result of individual decisions.

From January to August 2025, the ONS discarded 17.2% of the country’s potential wind and solar generation, which corresponds to 7% of the country’s monthly consumption. This tripled the cuts compared to the same period in 2024, according to an analysis by Volt Robotics, an energy consulting firm.

In August, the rejection reached 57% of new renewable generation due to excess supply.

“Brazil has one of the most complex electricity systems in the world. No other country has the diversity of sources that we have,” Barata told IPS by telephone from Brasilia.

Of a total of 236 gigawatts of installed capacity at the end of 2024, hydroelectricity continues to account for a majority, with 46.5% of the total, according to the state-owned Energy Research Company. But it is no longer as dominant as it was in 2000, when it accounted for 89%.

Solar energy, with 20.5%, wind energy with 12.5% and thermal energy, which consumes fossil fuels and biomass, with 18.6%, already exceeded hydroelectricity in 2024, with a trend towards further growth.

Necessary reform

There has been a change in the electricity matrix, which has shifted from hydrothermal, basically hydroelectric and supplemented by thermal power plants, to a growing incorporation of new renewable sources, given the lower cost of their implementation and distributed generation, Barata pointed out.

However, legislation and regulations have not kept pace with this transformation, said the expert, who believes the sector needs a comprehensive structural reform in order to reduce risks and restore better operating and planning conditions.

“It is a complex system that cannot be solved with simple measures,” he said.

Joilson Costa, coordinator of the non-governmental Front for a New Energy Policy for Brazil and also an electrical engineer, considers it “incorrect” to attribute systemic risks solely to excess wind and solar generation.

“Excess supply is only part of the problem, not the only one. Another cause is the deficiency of the transmission system, which makes it impossible to transport the energy generated in the Northeast to other regions at certain times. This then necessitates a cut in generation,” he argued.

Nor can it be said that distributed generation is outside the scope of planning. The Energy Research Company, part of the Ministry of Mines and Energy, does consider this modality in its plans because “its studies and simulations allow it to make estimates,” even though it cannot control the expansion of microplants, Costa noted.

Electricity distribution companies also monitor the evolution of distributed generation in their networks and can update their data monthly, he told IPS by telephone from São Luis, capital of the northeastern state of Maranhão.

Distributed generation, which is small-scale and generally consists of photovoltaic panels on residential or commercial roofs, already accounts for 43 gigawatts of installed capacity in Brazil. There are 3.8 million plants benefiting seven million consumer units, without the necessary control over the operation of the national electricity system. Credit: Mario Osava / IPS

Daily asynchrony

The major risk factor, however, is the lack of synchrony between the generation and consumption of new sources of electricity in their daily cycles.

Solar generation occurs during the day, peaking around noon, when consumption is low. It declines just as consumption increases at the end of the day and beginning of the night, when lights and household appliances are turned on, especially electric showers, which are widely used in Brazil.

Wind farms, concentrated in the Northeast, generate electricity mainly late at night, when consumption drops again.

Pericles Pinheiro, director of New Business at CHP, a gas generation equipment and solutions company in Rio de Janeiro, identifies a trend toward crisis in the Brazilian electricity system in his ongoing analysis of the sector. “Every summer, new emotions,” he jokes.

In previous years, he identified a risk in the proliferation of diesel generators that many companies used to avoid the higher cost of electricity during peak consumption hours in the early evening.

But they abandoned this resource because they migrated to the free market, which has expanded in Brazil in recent years, lowering energy costs for large consumers by allowing them to choose their supplier.

Diesel generators, which helped reduce the upward curve of consumption during peak hours, disappeared or declined, exacerbating daily fluctuations in demand, in cycles opposite to those of wind and solar sources, Pinheiro told IPS.

Distributed generation reduces demand on the grid and the share of electricity managed by the system operator, in a trend that exacerbates insecurity, he added.

The ONS estimates that by 2029 it will control less than half of the country’s installed generation capacity, increasing the operational uncertainty of the national interconnected system.

The proliferation of digital data centers in Brazil, which the government is trying to promote, is seen as a way to balance electricity consumption and supply in the country.

But these huge energy sinks would consume the excess during the day but increase demand at night, as they operate 24 hours a day, warned Pinheiro, who identifies another risk in electric vehicles whose batteries consume the electricity of several homes when recharging.

A wind farm in the state of Baja California, in Northwestern Mexico. This territory depends on fossil fuels for electricity generation, while the contribution of renewables is still low, but it is gradually moving towards residential solar generation. Credit: Sempra

By Emilio Godoy
MEXICO, Sep 15 2025 (IPS)

Over the past four months, Mexican researcher Nicolás Velázquez has paid around US$23 for electricity, thanks to the photovoltaic system installed in his home in the northern city of Mexicali.

“You can see the direct benefit. My neighbor received a bill over US$400. The problem is the high temperatures, which double demand” from March to August, said Velázquez, coordinator of the  Center for Renewable Energy Studies at the Engineering Institute of the public Autonomous University of Baja California.

Due to the high temperatures in cities such as Mexicali, capital of the northwestern state of Baja California, people need air conditioning systems during the summer, which increases electricity consumption in a state with 3.77 million inhabitants, affected by a shortage of infrastructure and generation.“Distributed generation is better for us. It is done by Mexican companies. We import the technology, but there is a chain of Mexican participation. We participate from engineering onwards, activating the economy to a certain level, helping the residential sector”–Nicolás Velázquez.

In late August, residents of several neighborhoods in Mexicali blocked the highway between that city and neighboring Tijuana due to a lack of electricity.

In an attempt to alleviate the situation, the Mexican government launched the Techos Solares del Bienestar (Solar Roofs for Welfare) program in March, aimed at low-income homeowners who pay high rates and consume between 400 and 1,000 kilowatt hours between July and August, so they receive solar panels for their homes in Mexicali and the neighboring municipality of San Felipe.

It is one of the steps to relaunch the energy transition to less polluting sources that the previous government halted in 2018.

The initial plan is to install solar panels in 5,500 homes in Mexicali with an investment of around US$10 million. The ultimate goal is to cover 150,000 homes by 2030. The scheme promises to reduce electricity bills from 49% to 89%.

For Velázquez, the central question revolves around the advisability of resorting to centralized or distributed generation, which consists of electricity production by systems of many small generation sources close to the end consumer.

“Distributed generation is better for us. It is done by Mexican companies. We import the technology, but there is a chain of Mexican participation. We participate from engineering onwards, activating the economy to a certain level, helping the residential sector,” he said from Mexicali.

In his opinion, “there has to be a balance between centralized and distributed generation, because there will not be a single solution. More energy justice is achieved through distributed generation.”

In Mexico, home to some 129 million people, there are at least 12,000 communities without electricity and some 9,000 homes without connection to the national grid, a quarter of which are located in Mexicali, which had 1.05 million inhabitants according to the 2020 census.

Small-scale or distributed generation is on the rise in the country.

Since 2007, the government’s Energy Regulatory Commission has authorized 518,019 licenses for a distributed energy generation capacity of 4,497 megawatts (MW). In 2024, it approved 106,934 interconnections for 1,086 MW.

The western state of Jalisco and the northern states of Nuevo León and Chihuahua top the list, while Baja California ranks 14th among the 32 Mexican states.

In July, the government’s National Energy Commission updated the regulations for interconnected self-consumption for installations between 0.7 and 20 MW, which expands the margin for distributed generation, also known as citizen generation.

Solar panels in a community in the municipality of Ensenada, in the northwestern state of Baja California. The existing microgrid in that town provides electricity to the small community. Credit: Secihti

More promises

The energy policy of president Claudia Sheinbaum, in office since October 1, has so far been marked more by proposals than by concrete actions, and Baja California is no exception to this dynamic.

Her government will allocate US$12.3 billion for electricity generation, US$7.5 billion for transmission infrastructure, and US$3.6 billion for decentralized photovoltaic production in homes.

The plan would add 21,893 MW to the national energy matrix, reaching 37.8% clean energy from the current 22.5%, so that the state-owned Federal Electricity Commission (CFE) would hold 54% of the market, with the rest going to private and individual entities.

On August 26, the president announced the construction of two solar thermal plants in the state of Baja California Sur, which shares a peninsula with Baja California, with a public investment of US$800 million to generate more than 100 MW. The territory is also isolated from the national grid and suffers from a chronic energy deficit.

Solar thermal energy converts solar radiation into electricity using mirrors to generate steam and drive turbines, as well as enabling energy storage.

The CFE plans to tender phase II of the Puerto Peñasco photovoltaic plant, in the town of the same name in the northern state of Sonora, with a capacity of 300 MW and 10.3 MW of battery backup. The first 120 MW phase of this facility has been operating since 2023. Completed in 2026, it will contribute 1,000 MW at a cost of US$1.6 billion.

However, the Mexican government continues to promote fossil fuels, despite the urgency of phasing them out, as it seeks to strengthen the CFE and the state-owned Petróleos Mexicanos.

All of this impacts places such as Baja California, where 16 public and private power plants operate, with an installed capacity of 3,461 MW, including three wind farms with more than 300 MW of capacity and three solar farms with 50 MW.

The private company Sempra Infraestructura, a subsidiary of the US company Sempra, is building a wind farm with a capacity of 300 MW, which is expected to be operational in 2026. In addition, CFE operates a 340 MW geothermal plant.

Despite its shortcomings, the state exports around 1,100 MW to the neighboring US state of California and imports around 400 MW. Baja California could produce 6,550 MW of solar power, 3,495 MW of wind power, and 2,000 MW of geothermal power.

In addition, CFE is building two combined-cycle power plants in Baja California that burn gas and generate steam to drive turbines, which would reduce blackouts.

The country faces insufficient production to meet annual demand growth of about 4% and an obsolete power grid.

In the first half of 2025, the country generated 310.49 terawatt-hours, virtually the same as during the same period last year. Some sources, such as gas, hydroelectric, wind, and photovoltaic, increased, but others, such as thermoelectric and nuclear, decreased.

In Mexico, electricity generation depends mainly on fossil gas, followed by hydroelectricity and nuclear energy. Renewable sources have a capacity of 33,517 MW, but only contribute one-fifth of the electricity produced.

Energy map of the northern Mexican state of Baja California. Electricity generation is not enough to meet growing demand, causing frequent blackouts. Credit: Government of Baja California

New schemes

Baja California’s 2022-2027 Energy Program consists of four strategies, including providing access to electricity to remote communities and unregulated housing, as well as promoting the rapid transition to decarbonization and the use of clean energies.

In addition, it envisions eight outcomes, including the promotion of two annual microgrid power generation projects for isolated communities and a 3% increase in alternative electricity generation. However, there is no evidence of progress toward these goals.

If it so desired, the Mexican government could transform its national electricity subsidy of more than US$5 billion annually into distributed generation.

The Universal Electricity Service Fund is a case in point. Intended to cover marginalized communities, available data indicate that it has covered more than 1,000 municipalities out of a total of 2,469, including two in Baja California, since 2019.

Velázquez proposed that these funds could finance solar panels and microgrids.

“Year after year, they give a subsidy, but if these families were provided with a photovoltaic system, it would solve the problem at its root. We need to look for more far-reaching measures; the actions have to be different,” he said.

In December 2023, during the climate summit in Dubai, United Arab Emirates, Mexico joined the Global Renewables and Energy Efficiency Pledge, which consists of tripling alternative installed capacity and doubling the energy efficiency rate by 2030. In comparison, Sheinbaum’s plans fall short.

Google's first data center in Chile lies in the industrial sector of the municipality of Quilicura, on the northern outskirts of Santiago. It has no symbols or logos to identify it, but covers an extensive area. Water vapor is visibly emitted as part of the process to cool the servers. Credit: Orlando Milesi / IPS

By Orlando Milesi
SANTIAGO, Sep 4 2025 (IPS)

Chile wants to be a hub in Latin America in data storage and transmission by developing data centers, leveraging its wealth of renewable energy, and its optimal digital interconnection.

In contrast, the massive water required for cooling servers and resistance from social and local organizations who were not consulted are the main obstacles in this strategy.

The authorities are promoting a tech hub, as the concentrator or logistical connection point for centralizing numerous nodes of a computer network is called, where companies, investments, and talent converge.“Chile's technological development is at a turning point that will define our position as a relevant player in the region. In the future, this could mean having the capacity to host infrastructure for training large artificial intelligence models”–Andrés Díaz.

A key step in this direction is the National Data Center Plan (PData), launched by the government of leftist president Gabriel Boric in December 2024.

PData complemented the Cybersecurity Framework Law, enacted in April 2024, which established minimum requirements for the prevention, containment, resolution, and response to cybersecurity incidents, applicable to state agencies and private companies.

PData aims to position this elongated South American country as a Latin American hub for data centers.

It was launched 10 months after an environmental court in Santiago, the capital of this country of 18.4 million people, halted a multi-million dollar Google project in the municipality of Cerrillos, on the outskirts of Santiago, preventing it from using water to cool its servers.

The stoppage was a victory for residents organized in the Socio-Environmental Community Movement for Water and Territory (Mosacat), an environmental coalition that emerged in Cerrillos.

Google had announced it would modify the cooling system to use less than the planned 169 liters of water per second. But, following the court decision, it suspended the project and a US$40 million investment in what would have been its second data center in the country, after the one operating since 2015 in Quilicura, also on the outskirts of Santiago.

Tania Rodriguez, a spokesperson for Mosacat, praised the strength of the residents to “convince a multinational that its project was not possible with such scarce water resources. Companies are the ones that must become aware of the excessive use of our resources,” she stated in an interview with a union media outlet.

New reality

To promote data centers, the Boric government brought all interested parties together and managed to finalize PData, with the goal of providing certainty to all sectors and enabling their massive installation in the country.

Chile has abundant low-cost renewable energy, 62,000 kilometers of optical fiber, a network of 69,000 kilometers of submarine cables, as well as 3.8 million devices connected to the 5G network.

Alejandro Barros, a professor of engineering and researcher at the Public Systems Center  of Industrial Engineering at the public University of Chile, told IPS that the main lesson after the crisis with Google was the need to equip Chile with a public policy for the establishment and management of data centers.

According to Barros, PData “advances very significantly by establishing the governance model for these projects because multiple state institutions will be involved. How synergy and coordination is achieved across all sectors linked to these projects is relevant.”

“My concern is that the plan was presented at the end of an administration,” he said, recalling that Boric’s term concludes in March 2026.

“The question is what will the next administration do. Data centers will have to be built, but how do we agree so that Chile meets standards, has good dialogue with communities, and we don’t start from scratch again?” he asks.

Google’s fenced and patrolled data center in Quilicura, on the outskirts of Santiago, where huge water tanks are visible. The tech company was unable to establish another data center in the Chilean capital due to a court ruling against the massive use of water. Credit: Orlando Milesi / IPS

Microsoft installs its regional cloud

In 2017, there were six data center projects in Chile. Today, 38 are in operation.

It seems more likely that companies of various sizes will export data and processed information from Chile to meet external demand.

According to Fitzgerald Cantero, Director of Studies and Projects at the  Latin American Energy Organization  (Olade), the growth in the use of artificial intelligence will exceed an annual rate of 31% by 2029.

In the Latin American region, 78% of data centers are currently concentrated in Argentina, Brazil, Chile, Colombia, and Mexico.

During the Data Centers and Energy forum, organized by the Institute of the Americas  and held in Santiago on August 21, Cantero said that investment in artificial intelligence in 2025 will be 7 billion dollars and will jump to 10 billion in 2029.

Juan Carlos Olmedo, Chile’s electrical coordinator, stated at the forum that the electrical energy required by data centers in this country will quadruple by 2032, rising from the current 325 megawatts (MW) to 1,360.

On June 18, Microsoft opened its first Data Center Region in Santiago to support economic growth, technological innovation, and social development, indicated the transnational tech company.

According to Microsoft, this state-of-the-art infrastructure will provide digital services to businesses and public organizations, improving their speed, privacy, security, and data storage in compliance with local regulations and high availability

The new network of data centers, called the Microsoft Cloud Region, is also located in Santiago, consisting of three independent physical locations, each with one or more data centers, and will provide services to several South American countries.

According to the U.S.-based software developer, the opening of this regional Data Center will generate US$35.3 billion in net income over the next four years, both for Microsoft and for partners and customers using its cloud.

“Of that total, approximately US$3.3 billion will be invested directly in Chile, contributing to this country’s development and creating about 81,041 jobs between 2025 and 2029,” detailed the tech company.

At the time, Boric expressed his joy for this new project, calling it a show of confidence for Chile to continue integrating and transforming into a major tech hub in Latin America.

Chile is now connected to a global network that spans the planet, he said, which reinforces the country as “an excellent destination for investment, placing us at the regional forefront of innovation and technology.”

“Data centers and the digital economy are transforming society, and this is not just for some sectors—it is for everyone,” emphasized the president.

Representatives from companies, Latin American energy institutions, Chilean electrical sector authorities, and academics gathered in Santiago for a forum on Data Centers and Energy, which debated the challenges and conditions for Chile to become a regional hub. Credit: Orlando Milesi / IPS

The pros and cons of data centers

Andrés Díaz, director of the School of Industrial Engineering at the private Diego Portales University, believes that Chile has managed to position itself as a tech hub by attracting investments in digital infrastructure.

Regarding the projections for this strategic industry, he maintains that the important thing is to send clear signals of stability and security.

“The country has favorable conditions, from natural resources to technical capabilities; however, confidence to ensure the attraction of investment remains key,” he told IPS.

According to this academic, “Chile’s technological development is at a turning point that will define our position as a relevant player in the region. In the future, this could mean having the capacity to host infrastructure for training large artificial intelligence models.”

Data centers enable the operation of applications such as instant messaging or viewing content on platforms. And they are essential for sending, storing, and interconnecting information for companies, public administration, hospitals, and banking entities.

If a data center stops functioning, it would affect everything from traffic lights to email and ATMs. Teleworking, video calls, food delivery, and home cinema are also activities derived from their operation.

So-called data centers have thus become critical infrastructure, like other basic services.

“Both in Europe and the United States, the demand for massive data processing is exponential, especially because of what is happening with artificial intelligence,” professor Barros told IPS.

“This is what we see in the technological infrastructure plans driven by the United States and China, with all their positive and negative variables,” he added.

He warned of risks and challenges as a result, especially for the environment, including the type of energy that will be used: renewable or fossil-based.

“In Europe, they are starting to reuse nuclear energy again, and in the United States, they are beginning to use fossil-based energy. Chile has the advantage of its very significant renewable energy production,” he explained.

In 2024, renewable energies contributed nearly 68% of Chile’s electricity generation, with 35% coming from variable sources such as solar and wind.

But the main challenge is water due to the large volumes consumed to cool the servers, given that air cooling is less efficient.

“That means having clarity about how much water will be consumed, what impact it will have on the area where the data centers will be installed, and knowing if it is an area with water problems or drought for long periods,” emphasized Barros.

He also highlighted the importance of providing greater transparency and access to information when discussing the issue of water with local communities, specifying how much will be required and what impact it will have on basins or human consumption.

Droughts have affected various regions of Chile over a 40-year period, from 1979 to 2019. Furthermore, northern Chile is one of the driest regions in the world, and the central region, which is home to 70% of the national population, has had a permanent water deficit since 2010.

Leaders of the involved localities insist that data centers be required to undergo the Environmental Impact Assessment System, which includes a government evaluation and a citizen consultation.

Currently, to install a data center, only an Environmental Impact Declaration must be made, where the company itself reports on potential risks.

An Asian mother is taking care of her baby while cooking with traditional stove. Approximately one billion people in Asia and the Pacific still rely on traditional polluting cooking fuels that lead to poor indoor air quality. Credit: Unsplash/Quang Nguyen Vinh

By Armida Salsiah Alisjahbana
BANGKOK, Thailand, Aug 28 2025 (IPS)

The future of the global energy landscape will be shaped by Asia and the Pacific. Over the past two decades, our region has been the principal driver of global energy demand and emissions. Energy has powered prosperity, lifted millions out of poverty and transformed societies.

This progress, however, has come at a cost: widening inequalities, entrenched fossil fuel dependencies and increasing climate vulnerability – which make achieving the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) and climate objectives challenging.

The gaps we must close

What will it truly take for the region to realize the energy transition and achieve SDG 7 – clean, affordable, reliable and modern energy for all – by 2030? The new Regional Trends Report on Energy for Sustainable Development shows that universal access to electricity is within reach. Yet other dimensions of sustainable energy require urgent acceleration.

Clean cooking remains the most pressing challenge. Nearly one billion people in Asia and the Pacific still rely on traditional fuels, exposing households – especially women and children – to dangerous levels of indoor air pollution. Renewable energy is growing, although the pace still falls short of what is needed to meet rising demand and lower emissions at the scale required.

Per capita, Asia and the Pacific’s installed renewable energy capacity remains lower than in other parts of the world. At the same time, energy efficiency continues to be underutilized, leaving untapped potential to reduce consumption, lower energy costs and reduce carbon emissions.

These challenges are compounded by emerging pressures. Securing access to and sustainably developing critical raw materials is essential for advancing energy transitions, while expanded regional power grid connectivity is crucial to improving energy security and keeping electricity affordable.

Rapidly growing sectors, such as data centres, also need to shift toward low-carbon pathways. Meeting these priorities will demand strategic planning, coordinated action and a strong commitment to fairness and equity.

Emerging momentum

The Asia-Pacific region is showing encouraging signs in recent years with many emerging initiatives to draw inspiration from. Subregional initiatives, including the ASEAN Power Grid and the Nepal-India-Bangladesh trilateral power trade, are fostering cross-border electricity exchanges, improving reliability and enabling greater renewable integration.

China and India are at the forefront of renewables, while Pacific countries such as Fiji, Solomon Islands and Vanuatu have set targets for 100 per cent renewable electricity by 2030. Indonesia and the Philippines are expanding geothermal capacity. Grid-scale battery storage in Australia is helping manage renewable fluctuations and strengthen system resilience.

Industries, urban centres and the transport sector are also driving change. Countries are rapidly expanding the adoption of electric vehicles through investment and infrastructure. Japan and Singapore are improving building energy efficiency with strict standards and incentive programmes, and the Republic of Korea is deploying smart grid technologies to optimize usage.

These examples illustrate that innovation, investment and cooperation are creating the conditions for scalable energy progress across the region.

A just transition for all

The energy transition is not only a technological shift, but also a social transformation. For many such as workers in fossil fuel industries, those in energy-poor households and youths entering the job market, the transition will be a lived reality. Reskilling, education and social protection must accompany this shift, while creating decent jobs in the renewable and energy efficiency sectors.

Women are disproportionately affected by energy poverty and remain underrepresented in the energy workforce and decision-making roles. Unlocking women’s full participation in the sector is needed to accelerate innovation and inclusive growth. A just energy transition must be gender-responsive, with policies and investments designed to close gaps in access, employment and leadership.

Turning ambition into action

Three ingredients stand out:

1. Ambition in policy and planning.

• Countries need bold, integrated policies that align national energy plans with climate commitments, including net-zero targets. This means setting higher renewable energy ambitions, phasing down coal dependency, embedding energy efficiency into every sector, and ensuring policies are just and inclusive.

2. Scaled-up investment.

• Delivering SDG 7 requires mobilizing trillions in sustainable energy investment. Governments alone cannot bear this burden. De-risking mechanisms, innovative financing and public-private partnerships will be critical to unlock capital flows.

3. Regional cooperation.

Regional grid integration and cross-border power trade, and shared approaches to the development of critical energy transition minerals and technology standards can create efficiencies and resilience.

The region has shown that transformative change is possible. Just twenty years ago, hundreds of millions lacked access to electricity. Today, universal access is within reach, proving that the seemingly insurmountable gaps in clean cooking, renewable deployment and efficiency can be overcome with decisive political will and bold action.

As Asia-Pacific countries gather in September at the ESCAP Committee on Energy, the message is clear: we must act with urgency, ambition and solidarity, or risk being locked in high-carbon pathways. The decisions made in the coming years will define the region’s energy future well beyond 2030.

IPS UN Bureau

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Excerpt:

The turbines in a wind farm, like this one in the Northeast region of Brazil, contain magnets made from rare earths in their generators. This makes rare earths, which Brazil has in abundance, indispensable for both decarbonized electricity generation and the development of electric motors in the automotive sector and others. Credit: Fotos Públicas

By Mario Osava
RIO DE JANEIRO, Aug 27 2025 (IPS)

Brazil, which stands out for exporting basic products such as iron ore, oil, coffee, and soybeans, rather than industrialized goods with higher added value, now intends to make a shift regarding rare earths, a key component in new technologies that it has in abundance.

Brazil is the second country in reserves of this natural resource, estimated at 21 million tons, surpassed only by China, with 44 million tons, explained Julio Nery, director of Mining Affairs at the  Brazilian Mining Institute (Ibram). Together, the two countries account for about two-thirds of the total."The critical phase of processing which adds the most value is the separation of the rare earth elements, with high costs due to numerous and successive treatments, not so much because of the technology" –Fernando Landgraf.

But Brazil is only just beginning to exploit this wealth on a large scale, while China practically holds a monopoly on its refining, about 90% of the world total, to supply its own electronics industry, electric vehicles, wind turbines, and many other equipment, as well as the industry of almost the entire world.

Rare earths have become the new mining and technological fever, due to the accelerated growth in their demand and, now, due to the trade war unleashed by the United States under the presidency of Donald Trump.

China’s threat to condition the exports of its rare earth chemical elements forced Trump to backtrack on his escalation of additional tariffs against its biggest economic rival, which reached 145% in April, and to enter into negotiations that continue with the tariff reduced to 30%.

Rare earths get their name not because of their scarcity, as they exist in many places, but because of their physical properties, such as magnetism, which are indeed limited, explained Nery to IPS, by phone from Brasilia, about this sector comprised of 17 chemical elements that also have other unique properties such as electrochemical and luminescent ones.

Geopolitical disputes tend to accentuate a movement by many countries to reduce their dependence on China’s rare earths.

Launch of the MagBras project to develop the entire rare earth chain in Brazil, from mining to permanent magnets, key components of electric motors, wind turbines, and numerous electronic products, on July 14, 2025, at the laboratory and factory that will serve the project, near Belo Horizonte, the capital of the state of Minas Gerais. Credit: Sebastião Jacinto Junior / Fiemg

Adding value

In Brazil, an alliance of 38 companies, scientific institutions, and development foundations, driven by the Federation of Industries of the State of Minas Gerais (Fiemg), through its arm of the National Service for Industrial Training, aims to develop the entire rare earth chain, “from mining to the permanent magnet.”

That magnet, which contains four of the 17 rare earth chemical elements, is the derivative with the highest added value due to its now indispensable use in electric motors, cell phones, many electronic devices, wind turbines, and defense and space technologies.

This will be the focus of the project called MagBras, as the Industrial Demonstrator for the complete production cycle of Brazilian rare earth permanent magnets was named and officially launched on July 14 in Belo Horizonte, the capital of the state of Minas Gerais.

The goal is to unite industry with universities and research centers so that Brazil does not continue primarily as a major exporter of raw materials, without added value, as is the case with coffee, iron, oil, and soybeans.

Rare earth processing technology was developed decades ago in many countries, which abandoned the activity in the face of China’s low-cost production, recalled André Pimenta, who leads the project as coordinator of the Rare Earths Institute of Fiemg.

Some of the 17 chemical elements of rare earths, critical for the future and whose demand is projected to multiply 30 times in the coming decades. After China, Brazil is the second country with the largest estimated reserves of these rare earths, for which a geostrategic and geopolitical battle has already begun. Credit: Icog

Better deposits

In addition to having large ionic clay deposits, which have advantages over the rocky ones in other countries, the scale of production and the scant or non-existent environmental requirements contributed to China’s advance towards a near monopoly, he noted.

Brazil has similar areas of ionic clay, a factor that, with the advancement of technologies, favors the country’s potential to emerge as an alternative producer with the possibility to compete, even if it is “difficult or even impossible” to surpass China, acknowledged the chemist Pimenta in a telephone interview with IPS from Belo Horizonte.

MagBras has a laboratory in facilities originally designed for a factory with the capacity to produce 100 tons of magnets per year, the only one existing in the southern hemisphere, which will serve for research and even production on that limited scale.

Nery, from Ibram, warns of the risk of focusing on a single resource to the detriment of the set of critical minerals, which in addition to rare earths includes lithium, cobalt, nickel, among others. These are scarce products.

There was already enthusiasm for lithium, due to the increased demand for cell phone and electric vehicle batteries; a few years earlier the same thing happened with niobium, he recalls.

“Technologies change and alter priorities,” he warned. That is why it is necessary to define a policy to promote the 22 critical and strategic minerals, with defined and flexible priorities.

The production of electric cars in Brazil has gained momentum in 2025, which will increase the demand for magnets, intended to be manufactured in Brazil with the rare earths abundant in some regions of the country. Credit: Mario Osava / IPS

Set of factors

Furthermore, value-added projects require a broad view of the different factors that affect the entire chain. Adequate infrastructure, with good roads, availability of energy, and sufficient demand for the chosen products are indispensable for success, he exemplified.

“Do we have firm demand for permanent magnets? The products that incorporate them, such as batteries, electric car motors, and wind turbines, are currently imported,” Nery pointed out.

In his opinion, “the government must promote conditions to generate internal demand, in a general effort, since industrial participation in the Brazilian economy has greatly reduced in recent decades.”

Research centers have already developed solutions for refining rare earths, the most costly process, but doing it on an industrial scale will require a lot of investment and time, according to Nery, a mining engineer.

In mining, any project takes at least five years in geological research, environmental licensing procedures, and operational preparation, he noted.

Brazil, which in the past sought rare earths in monazite, which is unfavorable because it contains radioactive material, now concentrates its extraction on ionic clay, which is better. “Its deposits are superficial, which facilitates research and limits environmental impacts,” he pointed out.

A concrete experience with this type of soil is that of Serra Verde, a company owned by two US investment funds and one British fund, with a plant in Minaçu, in the state of Goiás, in central-western Brazil.

It began operations in 2024 and has already exported US$7.5 million to China this year, according to Nery. It produces the oxide concentrate, a first step in processing, which enriches and increases the rare earth content index in the clay, which in the soil is only 0.12%, according to Serra Verde.

A positive note is that its concentrate contains the most in-demand elements because they are used to make permanent magnets: the light ones neodymium and praseodymium, in addition to the heavy ones dysprosium and terbium. The heavy ones are rarer and less present in rocky or monazite deposits.

But Serra Verde’s goal of producing 5,000 tons of concentrate per year and doubling that amount by 2030 seems distant. In the first half of 2025, it only exported 480 tons, it was revealed, as the company does not disclose its data.

Also in the state of Goiás, the current Brazilian epicenter of rare earths, another project, the Carina Module, by the Canadian company Aclara Resources, expects to extract mainly dysprosium and terbium starting in 2026, with investments of US$600 million.

“The critical phase of processing and the one that adds the most value is the separation of the rare earth elements, with high costs due to numerous and successive treatments, not so much because of the technology,” said Fernando Landgraf, an engineer and professor at the Polytechnic School of the University of São Paulo.

One kilogram of neodymium oxide, present in these heavy rare earths, is worth at least 10 times more than the five dollars for a kilogram of concentrate, he said by telephone from São Paulo.

Mining company Serra Verde, in Minaçu, state of Goiás, where the extraction of rare earths began, which, in an initial processing, were concentrated and exported to China. They contain four of the 17 rare earth elements used to produce permanent magnets, key components of electric motors, wind turbines, and military and space equipment. Credit: Serra Verde

The threat of uncertainty

In his assessment, “the biggest risk of the business is the uncertainty about the future,” especially now that rare earths have become a target and a weapon of geopolitics.

The demand for rare earths will grow significantly, but a large increase in production in the United States could lead to an oversupply. It is a limited market, far from the volumes of other minerals, such as iron ore.

“Uncertainty does not justify sitting idly by. Demand will grow, and the movement to reduce dependence began earlier, during the pandemic, which left many without essential respirators and medical equipment because there was nowhere to import from. It is a one-way street,” stated Pimenta.

Geologist Nilson Botelho, a professor at the University of Brasilia, considers the estimate of Brazil’s reserves to be reliable. Mining in Goiás is successful because it contains heavy rare earths, the “most critical” ones, which are among the “four or five most valuable elements.”

But there are many deposits in other parts of Brazil. In addition to the geological formation of its very extensive territory of over 8.5 million square kilometers, the temperate tropical climate, rainfall that infiltrates the soil, and the high plateau favor the presence of rare earths, he explained to IPS from Brasilia.

Another geologist, Silas Gonçalves, opposes the idea that mining in ionic clay has fewer environmental impacts.

Mining there alters the landscape and the soil, causes deforestation and diffuse damage, such as changes and contamination of the water table. These are different impacts, not lesser ones, he argued to IPS from Goiânia, the capital of Goiás, where he runs his geological and environmental studies company, called Gemma.

A heavy storm caused flooding in areas of San Salvador, the capital of El Salvador, on August 16. These phenomena mostly occur during the rainy season, partly due to the environmental degradation of a water recharge area known as El Espino. Credit: Cruz Roja de El Salvador

By Edgardo Ayala
SAN SALVADOR, Aug 25 2025 (IPS)

Two construction projects pushed by the government of El Salvador, in a water recharge area adjacent to the country’s capital, on the slopes of the San Salvador volcano, threaten to make the area more vulnerable and increase the risk of flooding in the city’s poor neighborhoods downstream.

That is what environmentalists, and especially residents of communities who have lived for decades in this green area and witnessed the impact of urban expansion, told IPS.  Like a cancer, it is slowly eating away at the 800 hectares of what was, in the 19th century, one of the main coffee farms, El Espino, in what is now the western periphery of San Salvador.“I was born here, I am a native of this farm, and I have seen how everything has been deteriorating” –Héctor López.

“I was born here, I am a native of this farm, and I have seen how everything has been deteriorating,” 63-year-old Héctor López, a member of the El Espino Agricultural Production Cooperative, told IPS. The cooperative has 100 members who are mostly dedicated to coffee cultivation.

“It was all pure coffee plantations, owned by the Dueñas family, and over time El Espino has been affected by the constructions”, said López.

The two new government projects continue the pattern of deforestation that the property has been subjected to since the 1990s, a product of the unstoppable advance of the real estate sector.

These are the El Salvador National Stadium, which will hold 50,000 seats and whose construction began in September 2022 on an area of 55,000 square meters, and is expected to be ready in 2027.

Meanwhile, the new Center for Fairs and Conventions (Cifco) will begin construction in the coming months on an area of similar size. Both would cover about 10 hectares.

The cost of the stadium is around 100 million dollars, but the authorities have not revealed the figure for the Cifco.

Runoff coming down from the San Salvador volcano overflows a river, downstream, and floods areas populated by low-income families in the southern part of the city. The capacity to absorb rainwater will be affected by two large construction projects promoted by the Salvadoran government. Credit: Edgardo Ayala / IPS

The forest turned to cement

With each new construction, the soil absorbs less rainwater, and each storm turns the runoff into a river that reaches the poor neighborhoods of San Salvador, a city of 2.4 million inhabitants, including its metropolitan area, within a total country population of six million.

“When everything is paved, the water flows downward and causes flooding in neighborhoods like Santa Lucía,” Ricardo Navarro of the Center for Appropriate Technology (Cesta) told IPS, referring to a residential area of low-income families located in eastern San Salvador.

“When rainwater soaks into the forests, there isn’t much runoff, but without the forest, flooding increases,” adds Navarro, who founded Cesta 45 years ago, the local branch of Friends of the Earth.

The coffee plantation that still survives in El Espino is a forest populated with a rich diversity of tree species and wildlife.

Both the stadium and the convention center are funded by non-reimbursable funds from China, which also donated a US$54 million library, inaugurated in November 2023, as a sort of reward because El Salvador ended the relations it had maintained for decades with Taiwan in 2018.

China considers Taiwan part of its territory and rewards nations that break ties with Taiwan, which is currently recognized as an independent nation by only 12 countries.

Additionally, as part of this package of donations, China built a US$24 million tourist pier in the port city of La Libertad, south of San Salvador on the Pacific coast, and is constructing a water purification plant at Lake Ilopango, east of the capital, among other projects.

Elsa Méndez, together with Ever Martínez, from the El Espino Agricultural Production Cooperative, laments that urban development in the area affects them every rainy season, to the west of San Salvador. Credit: Edgardo Ayala / IPS

Navarro lamented the lack of environmental awareness among the authorities, and more specifically, of the country’s president, Nayib Bukele, who has governed with a markedly authoritarian style since taking office in June 2019. In 2024, he won a second consecutive term, something previously prohibited by the Republic’s Constitution.

Lawmakers from his party, New Ideas, who control the unicameral Legislative Assembly, amended the constitution on July 31 to allow Bukele the option to run for the presidency as many times as he wishes.

Because of this authoritarian style, it is known that in El Salvador, nothing is done without the consent of the ruler.

“President Bukele: Not long ago there was a storm, which caused serious flooding in the lower parts of the city. President, the climate is changing, I can guarantee you, with absolute certainty, that the climate situation is going to get much worse due to climate change,” Navarro urged.

The environmentalist suggested that, in any case, if the construction is not stopped, the convention center should be built adjacent to the stadium, so that common spaces, such as the parking area, could be shared.

The El Espino farm belonged to the Dueñas family, one of the wealthiest in the country, in the 19th century, then linked to coffee production. Land reform seized the property in 1980 and handed it over to dozens of families who worked there as colonists, peasants who labored on the farm in semi-slavery conditions and received a portion of land to build their house.

However, a court ruling decided in 1986 that a part of the farm, around 250 hectares, was urbanizable land and should be returned to the Dueñas family.

Since then, that segment of the farm has been turning into an area of permanent construction of shopping malls and luxury residences, developed by Urbánica, the real estate arm of the Dueñas family.

“If we analyze the companies that are building there and if we pull the thread, we end up at Urbanística,” economist José Luis Magaña explained to IPS.

“There should be clarity about what the infrastructure needs are,” said the expert on the two government projects. “Instead of financing a school repair project with a loan from the Central American Bank for Economic Integration, the government could have asked the Asian power to rebuild those educational centers”, he adds.

In 2022, several families from the El Espino cooperative participated in the “San Salvador sponge city” project, to increase rainwater filtration levels through the construction of trenches and absorption wells, to prevent runoff from causing floods downstream. Credit: Edgardo Ayala / IPS

The usual floods

On the night of August 15, a heavy storm caused flooding in several sectors of the Salvadoran capital, whose avenues seemed to turn into rivers and lagoons, with hundreds of cars stuck.

In some areas, trash clogged the city’s storm drains and the water rose and flooded into residential areas. Around 25 families were evacuated and sheltered in safe locations.

San Salvador was founded in 1545 at the foot of the San Salvador volcano, a massif rising 1893 meters above sea level, and this location has placed the city at risk of floods and landslides.

In September 1982, a mudflow came down from the volcano’s summit and buried part of a residential area called Montebello, killing about 500 people.

The southern zone of the capital is the most affected by flooding during the rainy season, from May to November. The rain and runoff coming down from the volcano feed small streams along the way, which in turn flow into the El Arenal stream and the populous Málaga neighborhood.

In July 2008, heavy rains caused that stream to overflow, and 32 people drowned when a bus was swept away by the current.

As a way to reduce the vulnerability of this southern zone, in 2020 the city was part of the “Sponge City” project, promoted by the United Nations Environment Programme.

Some 1,150 hectares of forests and coffee plantations were restored in the upper part of the San Salvador volcano, seeking to reactivate the capacity to absorb rainwater through the construction of catchment tanks and trenches amidst the coffee fields.

Urbánica is the real estate arm of the Dueñas family, which builds luxury residences in the capital of El Salvador, in the area of the former El Espino farm, like the one in the image, called Alcalá. Credit: Urbánica

Environmental hope remains

Members of the El Espino cooperative actively participated in that project, as the communities of former colonists of the Dueñas family continue to live on the segment of the farm the land reform granted them, which currently totals 314 hectares and are also hit by the constructions in the upper part, called El Boquerón, near the volcano’s crater.

Deforestation continues there to make way for more restaurants and luxury residences.

“We are worried that more and more construction keeps happening, and there are fewer trees, and more water runoff flowing downstream,” said cooperative member López, who took part in a meeting of the organization’s board members on August 19 when IPS visited the area.

Elsa Méndez, also a cooperative member, stated: “We try to infiltrate water with the trenches, but when the ground is already too saturated with water, we can’t do everything as a cooperative either. Everyone must raise awareness among all people, because the runoff from the volcano carries trash, bottles, plastic, etc.”

On Saturday, 16 families from the community went to reforest the upper area, and the task also served “to teach our children how to reforest,” said Méndez.

Social movement Todos Somos El Espino (We Are All El Espino) has called for a second rally to protest against the construction of the convention center on Saturday, August 23, as part of their plan to defend the increasingly threatened forest.

“At this march, we will be doing the first preliminary count of the signatures collected in physical form… so that Salvadorans can say, ‘I defend El Espino,'” Gabriela Capacho, who is part of that movement, told IPS.

By Sudiksha Battineni
WASHINGTON DC, Aug 25 2025 (IPS)

Chad is one of the most extreme examples of energy poverty, with just 10% of the population connected to electricity, a rural electrification rate below 2%, and a global per capita electricity consumption rate that’s just 18% of the global average. This hinders its economic development.

So does its rapid population growth. Chad has one of the world’s fastest-growing populations; its 21 million people are expected to more than triple by the end of the century. Chad’s low educational attainment, with 38% of girls completed primary school, coupled with high rates of child marriage and fertility also pose problems for its development.

The World Bank is working on some of these fronts, including announcing a new agreement that will strengthen Chad’s education system, and launching Mission 300 in partnership with the African Development Bank to connect 300 million more people in Africa to electricity by 2030.

But these issues are all linked and can only be solved when they aren’t siloed. Affordable, clean energy for all is Sustainable Development Goal 7, which also relates to SDG 5, gender equity and women’s empowerment, which is preerequisite for lowering fertility and slowing population growth. Energy access is also interwoven with education (SDG 4), ending poverty (SDG 1), promoting health (SDG 3), fighting climate change (SDG 13), and the entire SDG agenda.

For example, energy poverty keeps hospitals from storing vaccines, people from starting businesses, and children from studying after sunset. It exacerbates the very inequalities that education seeks to combat, particularly gender inequality.

As a holistic way to redress it, women activists in energy-poor countries are promoting “feminist electrification” — explicitly designing energy investments to empower women as economic actors and consumers. This could include integrating family planning into energy rollouts, investing in women’s education, training, and leadership development, and including them in energy planning.

This perspective is currently lacking in Mission 300’s “energy compacts” — voluntary commitments outlining how countries, companies, and organizations affordable and clean energy for all. Chad’s National Energy Compact calls for adding connections for over 14 million more people, raising electricity access from 11% to 90% by 2030, achieving 46% access to clean cooking solutions by 2030, boosting renewables to 30% of total electricity generation, adding 866 MW of new capacity, and mobilizing $650.3 million in total investments, about one-third from the private sector.

The Compact addresses infrastructure, private sector engagement, and regulatory reform, but overlooks critical human dimensions of energy, including its intersection with gender equality and population growth.

For example, Chad’s high fertility rates result in large household sizes and increased energy demand for cooking, lighting, and other activities. Women manage most of the domestic energy needs, yet they generally aren’t part of energy decision-making.

Nearly all Chad’s rural households rely on wood for cooking, which devastates forests and exposes families to indoor air pollution that contributes to respiratory diseases. Clean cooking solutions, like LPG stoves or electric induction cookers, could transform these risks. But only if women can access, afford, and trust them.

Unmet family planning needs are accelerating Chad’s rapid population growth, which threatens to swamp any gains in energy access. With little education and few economic options, 61% of girls get married by age 18, part of the reason for Chad’s sky-high total fertility rate of 5.14 births per woman.

Fast population growth accelerates urban sprawl, drives deforestation for charcoal production, and makes it harder to extend grid infrastructure to meet energy demands.

For all these reasons, family planning and energy planning are connected. Chad can’t meet its Energy Compact targets without also setting and meeting goals for family planning and empowering women.

Feminist electrification would provide women with vocational training in solar installation, electric stove sales and maintenance, ensuring that clean energy solutions reach households while creating jobs for women and opportunity for self-determination, which universally tends to lower fertility rates. It would further the Compact’s goals of expanding decentralized renewable energy and fostering private investment by extending them to women.

Chad should revise its National Energy Compact to include a specific gender and demographics integration plan. It should require gender impact assessments for all new energy projects, track energy access outcomes by gender and income, and link electrification operations directly with family planning, health, and women’s economic empowerment initiatives.

Energy access is not just about how many kilowatts get generated; it’s about the human realities behind the numbers, and who shares the benefits of electricity. True access means that a woman in rural Chad can flip a switch, cook cleanly, breathe safely, and choose the size of her family.

That’s the kind of power Africa needs.

Sudiksha Battineni is a rising sophomore at Duke University and a Stanback Fellow at the Population Institute

IPS UN Bureau

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Fishermen in the LNG rich Afungi Peninsula in the Palma District of Cabo Delgado Province, northern Mozambique. The area is the site of major LNG projects, including the Mozambique LNG project. Credit: Justica Ambential

By Maina Waruru
NAIROBI, Aug 19 2025 (IPS)

Environmental campaign groups are confident that a suit filed in the United States, seeking to stop the country’s Export-Import Bank (EXIM) from the ‘unlawful’ lending of nearly USD 5 billion to the controversial Mozambique Liquefied Natural Gas (LNG) project, will succeed.

The groups, including Friends of the Earth U.S. and Justiça Ambiental/Friends of the Earth Mozambique, with representation from EarthRights International, filed a lawsuit and believe the financial transaction in March in a deal with the project owners, TotalEnergies, was rushed through to avoid going through requisite requirements.

It alleges that EXIM rushed through approval without conducting required “environmental reviews, economic assessments, and the required input by the public and US Congress.

“EXIM failed to follow its own Charter and federal law, setting a dangerous precedent for future decisions,” they said in papers filed on 14 July.

They allege that in February, President Donald Trump ‘illegally’ constituted EXIM’s acting Board of Directors without the US Senate’s consent, and weeks later, in March, EXIM’s improperly constituted “acting” board of directors announced final approval of the massive USD 4.7 billion loan.

The bank, they charged, entered the transaction despite the ongoing conflict and humanitarian crisis in Mozambique and the fact that the project operator, TotalEnergies, declared force majeure more than four years ago after a violent uprising.

The French oil giant has been unable to resume operations since.

“EXIM’s Board charged ahead with subsidizing the project, without considering the conflict and the harms the project will inflict on the environment and local communities, and despite multiple nations’ open investigations into allegations of serious human rights violations at the project site,” they added.

An EXIM spokesperson would not comment on the ongoing legal proceedings.

“The Export-Import Bank of the United States (EXIM) is aware of recent reports, letters, and inquiries regarding ongoing legal proceedings. As a matter of longstanding policy, EXIM does not comment on pending litigation,” the spokesperson said in an email. “EXIM remains committed to its mission of supporting American jobs by facilitating the export of U.S. goods and services. The Bank continues to operate in accordance with all applicable laws and regulations.”

According to Hallie Templeton, Legal Director of Friends of the Earth, EXIM is bound by a number of different federal laws that govern its actions and financing, including the Export-Import Bank Act, which is its charter.

“The US Congress placed a number of important limitations and procedural protections on EXIM’s activities, given the sensitive foreign policy, economic, and human rights issues that lending to foreign corporations for foreign projects can entail,” he explained.

“Among other things, this includes numerous notice and comment procedures, particular economic considerations to ensure EXIM isn’t harming the US economy, limitations on over-subsidization, the requirement that a quorum of Senate-confirmed members of the Board approve major transactions, and consideration of environmental and social impacts,” he told IPS News.

At the direction of Congress, EXIM also has put in place a number of important policies and procedures that govern the projects it finances and the conditions on which it does so. These include compliance with a number of important environmental and social standards and other safeguards.

“The acting board lacked legal authority to approve this loan. EXIM also failed to conduct mandated procedures and analysis under the National Environmental Policy Act and overall acted contrary to multiple provisions of the Administrative Procedure Act’s requirements on process and sound decision-making in the federal government,” Templeton explained.

Exim’s Act is clear as to how members of the Board are to be appointed. Those procedures weren’t followed in appointing the acting board, he said, adding that it was not clear whether President Trump’s intention for the appointments was so as to approve the loan.

“We cannot speak to the intent behind the way the President proceeded or the individuals he selected, but it was unlawful to bypass the Senate and appoint ‘acting’ members to the Board,” he noted.

He observed, “Likewise, rushing through the loan without federally mandated notice and comment or complying with the other legal requirements for final approval of a loan of this size was unlawful. EXIM should have taken these steps in any scenario.”

The financier’s “disregard of the law,” he said, is worsened by the ongoing conflict, allegations of grave human rights violations, and the numerous pending investigations, some of which specifically concern forces providing security to the project and the role of the project operator itself.

Friends of the Earth-US has the utmost confidence in the case’s success, especially given that EXIM has “violated multiple federal laws, with the board acting contrary to the ‘plain text’ of its Charter and other federal laws, ‘acting as if they are above the law.’”

“We are confident that they will be held accountable,” he added.

Through the US’s Freedom of Information Acts, it has been revealed that EXIM ignored the risks of Mozambique LNG when they approved the project in 2019/2020, and in 2025, they have not only ignored the risks but have also failed to follow the proper process, Kate DeAngelis, Economic Policy Deputy Director for Friends of the Earth US told IPS News.

Exim bank, she complained, did not want to provide the Congress or the public the time to comment because they know that this is a bad deal for American taxpayers.

“There are legal procedures and processes in place to ensure the U.S. Export-Import Bank does not waste taxpayer dollars on risky projects plagued by violent insurgencies.”

“Yet Exim—like the rest of the Trump administration—believes that it can operate outside the law. We will not stand by while it cuts health care and disaster aid so that it can give handouts to fossil fuel companies,” the official added.

“Exim’s Board’s illegal decision to subsidize this project, without even considering the risks to local people, let alone the serious allegations that project security committed a massacre at the project site, is beyond reckless. EXIM needs to do its job and actually consider the harms this project will inflict on local people,” said Richard Herz of EarthRights International

An Islamist insurgency in the Cabo Delgado province in northern Mozambique since 2017 has led to thousands of deaths and displacement of the civilian population in one of the bloodiest conflicts in Africa in the recent past.

While the Jihadist violence has diminished after intervention by regional forces, an attack was reported in the Meluco district of the gas region last March, indicating a province that is far from safe.

TotalEnergies suspended operations in the Mozambique LNG project in April 2021 due to the insecurity, leading to the withdrawal of personnel and a halt to construction, a decision directly linked to the escalating attacks by the militants in the province.

Last December, climate and environmental activists from Japan criticized the Japan Bank for International Cooperation (JBIC) for financing the LNG project to the tune of USD 3 billion in a loan signed in July 2024.

The groups, in a report, revealed that the bank supports the Mozambique LNG project directly with a USD 3 billion loan and through a loan of USD 536 million to Mitsui, a Japanese corporate group that is involved in the development.

“The Mozambique LNG Project is linked to violent conflict, has resulted in social injustices among Mozambican citizens, and is a potential source of massive carbon emissions,” the report noted.

It concluded that if it proceeded, despite becoming the biggest gas project in Africa, it would deliver low revenues to its host country and place the country at risk of liability if it failed.

IPS UN Bureau Report

Follow @IPSNewsUNBureau
  

The first harvest of Amazonian fish from one of the ponds contributing to the food security of indigenous families, using solar energy. The initiative is expected to be replicated in a second phase, reaching more indigenous communities in two provinces of the Peruvian Amazon. Credit: Corpi-SL

By Mariela Jara
LIMA, Aug 8 2025 (IPS)

“Our organization is showing that it is indeed possible to move toward energy transition and not depend on oil,” said Elaina Shajian, president of the Regional Coordinator of Indigenous Peoples of San Lorenzo (Corpi-SL), in the Peruvian Amazon.

Shajian is an Awajún leader, one of the 51 indigenous peoples of the Amazon in Peru, a South American country known for its multicultural and multiethnic diversity. With an estimated population of 34 million, nearly 17% speak a native language as their mother tongue."Due to oil spills, our people have nothing to eat because fish in the rivers are dwindling, and those that remain are contaminated. Now we have two ponds with over two thousand fish, which we manage using solar energy," -Elaina Shajian.

Despite stable macroeconomic indicators, poverty affects nearly a third of Peru’s inhabitants, with indigenous populations bearing the brunt. This includes the eight indigenous groups represented by Corpi-SL in the provinces of Datem del Marañón and Alto Amazonas.

These provinces are part of the eight that make up the Amazonian department of Loreto, the country’s largest region, covering 28% of its territory. Of its population of just over one million, 43% live in poverty, according to official data. In the two provinces where Corpi-SL operates, the poverty rates reach 52% and 56%.

Food insecurity in the area is worsened by water source contamination from spills in the Norperuano oil pipeline, which has crossed their territory for 50 years. This reality inspired an initiative to provide food for the population, generate income for the organization, and utilize solar energy.

“The idea of the fish farm arose from a need, in dialogue with the organization Mocicc. Because of the oil spills, our people have nothing to eat—fish in the rivers are disappearing, and those left are polluted. Now we have two ponds with over two thousand fish, managed through solar energy,” Shajian told IPS from San Lorenzo, the capital of Datem del Marañón.

Elaina Shajian, an Awajún indigenous leader and president of the Regional Coordinator of Indigenous Peoples of San Lorenzo in Peru’s Loreto region. Her organization leads a sustainable fish production initiative supported by solar energy. Credit: Corpi-SL

The effects of climate change and extractive industries are harming the well-being of indigenous communities in the area. Finding food is a challenge—fish, a staple of their diet, is increasingly scarce and expensive. It is harder to catch in rivers, and its market price is unaffordable, sometimes exceeding US$12 per kilogram, explained the president of Corpi-SL.

The impact on children’s health and well-being is direct. Official figures report that in 2024, anemia among children aged six to 35 months living in rural areas of the country, such as the two provinces mentioned, reached around 52%, exceeding the national average of 43%.

Beyond being an alternative to improve their nutrition through autonomous decisions tailored to their communities’ needs, the fish farming initiative is local proof that other energy sources beyond fossil fuels—which cause environmental damage and harm human health, as evidenced in the area—can be utilized.

“Corpi-SL is like the father of indigenous peoples, encompassing 579 communities that can now see that energy transition is possible. It’s not just talk—they can see real solutions to ensure our food security today and in the future, without depending on oil for the energy needed to develop and replicate our initiatives,” emphasized Shajian.

Solar panels installed by the technical team of the Regional Coordinator of Indigenous Peoples of San Lorenzo, in Peru’s Amazonian Loreto region, in partnership with the Citizens’ Movement Against Climate Change, to promote sustainable fish farming in their communities. Credit: Corpi-SL

Solar Energy as an Ally 

At the Yachaykuna farm (meaning “school of knowledge” in Kichwa, one of the Amazonian languages), a 51-hectare property owned by Corpi-SL near San Lorenzo, two fish farming ponds operate with solar energy as a key ally.

The initiative is supported by the Citizens’ Movement Against Climate Change (Mocicc), a Peruvian civil society platform with 16 years of experience promoting responses to the climate crisis and community development.

Augusto Durán, coordinator of its energy transition area, told IPS at the institution’s headquarters in Lima that it is crucial to link public policy proposals with on-the-ground work in areas affected by extractive industries like oil.

This is how the proposal with Corpi-SL came together to implement a pilot project that would make use of a space where fish farming had been attempted before but failed, partly because the farm lacked electricity.

“We agreed to install a small solar panel system to provide electricity to the fish farming center in its first phase. And to complete the energy transition experience, this renewable energy would serve as an alternative to oil,” Durán explained.

He explained that with the center energized and the first pond operational, they purchased 3,000 fingerlings of two Amazonian species: paco (Piaractus brachypomus) and gamitana (Colossoma macropomum). With the second pond, the fish were distributed in a larger space and fed balanced feed, allowing them to grow up to 600 grams.

After six months of stocking the fish in their two ponds, members of the eight indigenous peoples that make up a corporation in the Peruvian Amazon shared a lunch on June 14 at a collective farm, featuring the two harvested species: paco and gamitana. Credit: Corpi-SL

Their delicious flavor was enjoyed during the first harvest on June 14, at a communal lunch following the assembly of the expanded council of the 31 federations that form Corpi-SL. Six months had passed since the first fish were stocked.

Durán highlighted the system’s performance: six solar panels with 900 kilowatts were installed on a four-legged structure, while the farm’s security hut housed the batteries that store solar energy during the day and redistribute it at night.

“The system is automatic—as soon as the sun rises, it generates electricity, which is gradually stored in three large batteries that can power appliances, a freezer, TV, radio, lighting for the area, and maintain the two oxygenation units and other pond equipment,” he added.

He also explained that the lithium batteries have a lifespan of 10 years, extendable to 20 with proper care, while the panels can last over a decade.

“The kit of panels, batteries, converter, and cables cost around 6,000 soles (about US$1,675). It’s a significant investment because it provides low-cost energy to develop productive initiatives and replicate them,” Durán noted.

The farm previously had no electricity, and if they had to pay for the service, the cost would average US$28 per month—meaning they would recoup their investment in six years.

Augusto Durán, energy transition coordinator of the Citizens’ Movement Against Climate Change, believes it is a priority to advance toward an energy transition that considers the unique conditions of Peru’s territories, particularly its Amazonian indigenous communities. Credit: Mariela Jara / IPS

Round-the-clock Energy 

To make the initiative sustainable, Corpi-SL developed a plan that includes selling paco and gamitana in local restaurants and markets. The income will be used to purchase another 3,000 fingerlings to replenish and expand the harvest while strengthening the organization.

“A second phase of the project includes a fingerling breeding center that will also operate on solar panels,” Durán revealed.

The proposal also involves training the federations under the Coordinator so they can eventually establish their own fish farming centers, multiplying the initiative’s impact.

Alan Ruiz, a Corpi-SL technician, oversees fish production, pond preparation, stocking, monitoring, and harvesting, as well as training communities for technology transfer.

From San Lorenzo, he explained to IPS that the key is having 24-hour photovoltaic energy through the solar panels.

Regarding the organization’s plans, he stated that the goal is to establish an Amazonian fish reproduction center—not just for fattening—which will require upgrading the panels and batteries to meet new demands.

“Solar energy is an ally in aquaculture. The indigenous movement manages Amazonian fish, and it helps us improve processes at different stages of cultivation and production,” he emphasized.

One of the water sources where fingerlings of two Amazonian fish species were stocked for fattening and later harvest, in an initiative led by an indigenous peoples’ coordinator with solar energy support, in Datem del Marañón province, Loreto region, Peru. Credit: Corpi-SL

A Fair and Popular Energy Transition 

Moving away from fossil fuels and embracing renewable energy is part of Mocicc’s agenda, aligned with two priorities: reducing greenhouse gas emissions and halting ecosystem loss in the Amazon, which is harming residents’ quality of life.

Micaela Guillén, the institution’s national coordinator, explained this in an interview with IPS.

“A fair energy transition, driven by the people, is urgent. That’s why we call it a fair and popular energy transition. It’s a process to ensure communities have energy while also addressing remediation, reparation, and improving living conditions in impacted areas,” she said.

She explained that this is how the idea emerged, developed together with Corpi-SL, that the political demand for energy transition cannot be separated from economic issues.

“We’re talking about communities that have historically depended on oil extraction due to the economies built around it, and the state’s position that the only way to continue supporting them is by maintaining the current extractive model,” she stated.

Guillén emphasized that, like the fish farming center, other alternative economic initiatives exist in the Amazon to counter the precarious conditions faced by communities due to extractivism.

Given this reality, “it is shocking that the state denies the potential of these local economies and the revitalization of alternatives—even for something as basic as food security,” she said.

She criticized the government’s lack of political will, reiterated in the latest presidential address by Peru’s widely unpopular leader, Dina Boluarte.

“She spoke of further expanding extractive activities, even linking them to the Global North’s energy transition—where they’re changing their energy mix but not their consumption patterns,” Guillén noted.

She condemned how “they’re pursuing renewables, but to meet the energy demands of big corporations and cities, they need massive quantities of solar panels and wind turbines.”

The mega-ship BYD Shenzhen arrived on May 28 at the port of Itajaí in southern Brazil, carrying 7,292 electric vehicles from the Chinese company BYD. It set a record for this type of transport, with unloading taking four days. Credit: Porto de Itajaí

By Mario Osava
RIO DE JANEIRO, Aug 7 2025 (IPS)

Residents near the port of Itajaí in southern Brazil celebrated the arrival of 7,292 electric and hybrid vehicles from China aboard the ship BYD Shenzhen on May 28 as a “historic event,” with unloading taking four days. 

It was a record in maritime vehicle transport, but similar operations had already occurred in Brazil and other Latin American countries. A year earlier, the port of Suape in northeastern Brazil received 5,459 units also from BYD, the world’s largest electric vehicle manufacturer."China has been pivotal... Beyond providing more affordable vehicles, its technological leadership and mass production capacity have shaped global trends." —Cristóbal Sarmiento.

China’s automotive industry, led by BYD, is the decisive factor driving electric mobility in Latin America and the Caribbean.

Over the past four years, the number of light electric vehicles in the region has nearly doubled annually, with a 187% jump in 2024, reaching 444,071 by the end of December, according to the Latin American Energy Organization (Olade), whose data excludes non-plug-in hybrids.

This is relatively small, representing only 0.7% of the world’s electric vehicle fleet and 0.3% of the region’s total light vehicles, as noted in Olade’s technical report in May. But it signals great expansion potential, now being fueled by Chinese vehicles.

Lower prices and improving quality make Chinese units competitive amid growing demand for transport electrification in the region, according to Fitzgerald Cantero, Director of Studies, Projects, and Information at Olade.

With their exports to the U.S. and the European Union (EU) practically blocked by 100% and 45.3% tariffs, respectively, Chinese electric vehicles see Latin America as “an attractive market” that remains open, along with Asia, he reasoned.

Industrial Hub of Camaçari in Bahia, northeastern Brazil, where BYD built its plant for producing electric and plug-in hybrid vehicles, batteries, and auto parts. Spanning 460 hectares, it allows for expansions to double production to 300,000 vehicles per year. Part of the facilities were purchased from U.S. automaker Ford, which left the country. Credit: BYD

Renewable Energy and Lithium as Attractions 

An additional Latin American attraction is its abundance of renewable energy, Cantero told IPS by phone from Quito, Olade’s headquarters. Using sustainable electricity is essential to meet the goal of decarbonizing transport and reducing planet-warming emissions.

Moreover, some countries in the region are rich in minerals needed for vehicle electrification, such as lithium for batteries, copper for electrical components, and rare earths containing 17 chemical elements used in magnets for electric car motors, wind turbines, and other strategic technologies.

Thus, the region has become a priority for China, the automotive superpower where 12.87 million electric passenger vehicles were sold in 2024, plus 2.2 million exported—figures close to half of all new cars sold domestically and abroad, according to data compiled by Olade.

China’s leadership is more than absolute, as the next powers—the EU and the U.S.—produced only 2.4 million and 1.1 million electric vehicles, respectively, in 2024, according to the International Energy Agency.

Olade estimates that China accounted for over 75% of global electric vehicle sales. This share is likely to grow, as the European market has stagnated and the U.S. has rolled back its environmental policies.

“The (U.S.) electric vehicle industry has been discouraged by new legislation, which will have a dramatic impact on consumer preferences,” said Margaret Myers, director of the Asia and Latin America Program at the Inter-American Dialogue.

Meanwhile, China is boosting exports of its production surplus, particularly to Global South markets with fewer import restrictions, she noted.

For China, “electric vehicle production is part of a broader effort to improve its economy and secure dominance in key industries, including EVs and their batteries, renewable energy, artificial intelligence, bioscience, and other priorities,” Myers concluded to IPS from Washington.

Electric trucks made in China at the second edition of the International Chinese Auto Expo, held from July 24 to 27 at an events center in Santiago, Chile. These cargo vehicles began operating in large mining facilities and urban areas in Chile and are now becoming more widespread nationwide. Credit: Orlando Milesi / IPS

Large Markets Concentrate Sales 

For now, Latin America remains a net importer. Brazil and Mexico are the largest markets, accounting for 73.6% of electrified vehicle sales (including fully electric, plug-in hybrid, and non-plug-in hybrid models) in the region, according to data from the Latin American Association of Automotive Distributors (Aladda), headquartered in Buenos Aires.

Their share of the population is much smaller. Brazil, with 212 million people, and Mexico, with 130 million, make up just 51.2% of Latin America and the Caribbean’s 668 million inhabitants.

Argentina, in fourth place with 47 million people, does not rank among the top eight in motor transport electrification. Colombia, the third most populous with 53 million, is also third in Aladda’s ranking.

Colombia and Chile lead in electric buses, with 1,590 and 2,600 operating in their cities as of December 2024, respectively, according to Olade. Brazil, despite its much larger population, has only 900—far fewer than Chile, a country of just 18.5 million people.

A Chinese electric vehicle charges its battery at a dealership in south-central Mexico City. Sales of Chinese-made electric vehicles have grown in this Latin American country due to their lower prices compared to Western brands and financing options. Credit: Emilio Godoy / IPS

Three Waves

“The evolution of electromobility in Chile had its first wave between 2017 and 2020, focused on public transportation—specifically electric bus systems,” recalled Cristóbal Sarmiento Laurel, Director of Energy and Sustainable Development at the private Diego Portales University.

The goal was to introduce the new technology in a “more feasible way, since buses operate on controlled routes and schedules, making charging planning easier,” he explained. BYD was the key player in this phase.

The second wave, starting in 2021, saw a “steady rise in sales of light hybrid and fully electric vehicles, with growing market presence from Chinese manufacturers like BYD, Maxus, JA, DFSK, and Changan, which quickly gained ground in the domestic market,” he added.

“China has been pivotal in this journey. Beyond providing more affordable vehicles, its technological leadership and mass production capacity have shaped global trends. For Chile, this relationship isn’t just a commercial opportunity but also a concrete way to accelerate the energy transition,” Sarmiento emphasized.

“Transport accounts for 33.3% of Chile’s energy consumption, according to the National Energy Balance, and relies almost entirely on fossil fuels”, therefore, electrification helps mitigate climate change, Sarmiento told IPS in Santiago.

“Not using fossil fuels is a solution,” but electrified cars “promote individual mobility rather than transforming transportation systems or boosting public transit,” noted Antonio del Río, a researcher at the Renewable Energy Institute of Mexico’s National Autonomous University.

More electric buses—whether Chinese or from other origins—are the way forward, he argued. “The cost per kilometer for an electric vehicle is 60% lower than a conventional car,” he said to IPS in Mexico City.

By the end of 2024, Mexico had only 780 electric buses, according to Olade data—half as many as Colombia, or a quarter per capita.

Assembly line of electric and hybrid vehicles at BYD’s Camaçari plant in northeastern Brazil, which will initially produce 150,000 vehicles annually with potential to double output. The electric vehicle market has grown rapidly in Brazil and Latin America over the past four years. With mass domestic production, Brazil could become an export hub for these advanced-technology vehicles. Credit: BYD

Mexico mirrored the region’s surge in electrified vehicle sales, which reached 412,493 units in 2024, up 174.9% from 2022, according to Aladda. Brazil led growth among major countries with a 256.2% increase, while Mexico saw 142.2%.

Despite the sharp rise, electrified vehicles still represent a small share of total sales: 8.1% regionally on average, 6.8% in Brazil, and 6.1% in Chile in 2024. Colombia stands out at 25.8%.

The most dramatic two-year growth—665.3% regionally—was in plug-in hybrids (PHEVs), followed by pure electric vehicles (EVs) at 403%. Non-plug-in hybrids (HEVs) lost momentum in Brazil but grew in Mexico, Chile, Colombia, and Peru, especially in 2024.

Another notable trend is the diversity of Chinese brands—23 in both Mexico and Chile. Chile has 52 brands total, including Chinese and others, according to Rodrigo Salcedo, president of Chile’s  Electric Vehicle Trade Association (Avec).

The influx of new brands has heightened competition, bringing more options, models, and prices that are gradually approaching those of conventional cars. However, “there’s a gap,” lamented Salcedo, pointing to the lack of information, workshops, and trained technicians for maintenance—except for buses, which benefit from Chinese technicians in Chile.

BYD cars for sale and test drives at an Itavema dealership, a BYD sales network, in Botafogo, a traditional middle-class neighborhood in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. Credit: Mario Osava / IPS

Third Wave 

Meanwhile, a third wave of electric mobility is emerging in the region, following the initial phases of electric buses and the mass availability of light vehicles at falling prices. This new phase involves the establishment of assembly plants, including Chinese ones.

In Brazil, two Chinese automakers have begun local production of electrified vehicles. BYD (short for Build Your Dreams) started production in July at its assembly plant in Camaçari, Bahia, rolling out three models—one fully electric and two plug-in hybrids. And GWM (Great Wall Motors) is set to begin production this semester in Iracemápolis, São Paulo.

Symbolically, both manufacturers took over former plants of traditional automakers—Ford (U.S.) and Mercedes-Benz (Germany), respectively.

While Chinese-branded cars have been produced in Brazil since 2017 (such as those from the Caoa-Chery joint venture in Anápolis, Goiás), their electrified models, introduced in 2019, were limited in volume.

BYD’s plant marks a new era, designed to assemble 150,000 units annually initially, with plans to double that capacity. The project also includes battery and auto parts production, along with a logistics system, explained Mauro Pereira, general superintendent of Camaçari’s Industrial Development Committee (Cofic).

Cofic manages the Camaçari Industrial Park to create the best operating conditions for 88 local companies, including BYD.

“BYD is putting Brazil at the forefront of vehicle technology,” Pereira stated, anticipating 20,000 direct jobs and triple that in indirect employment. The plant could also turn Brazil into an export hub for vehicles and components, including batteries, to Latin America and possibly Europe.

The Camaçari plant benefited from land incentives and tax breaks, but the real driver was Brazil’s import tariffs on electric vehicles, introduced in January 2024. Starting at 10% (slightly higher for hybrids), they will gradually rise to 35% by 2027.

Chinese new-energy vehicles are cutting costs with advanced, efficient, and intelligent technologies—”they’re smartphones on wheels,” said Thiago Sugahara, VP of the Brazilian Electric Vehicle Association and GWM’s institutional relations manager. Users can control and monitor their cars remotely and safely via smartphone, he explained.

“An electric car is a battery with four wheels,” quipped Ana Lia Rojas, head of Chile’s Renewable Energy and Storage Association (Acera), highlighting both the vehicle’s key component —still  costly—,  and their potential to support power grids.

Colbert Marques, a sales consultant at Itavema (a BYD dealership network), noted that Chinese manufacturers halved EV prices. Today, models start at just over US$20,000, forcing Western brands to slash prices to stay competitive.

Buyers of EVs and hybrids “are more informed and tech-savvy, even older ones,” he observed, confident in his decision to switch to BYD in 2023, having driven traditional vehicles for 18 years.

With contributions from Orlando Milesi (Chile) and Emilio Godoy (Mexico)

Bernhard Waase, director of Renig, a subsidiary of the Salvadoran company El Granjero, where chicken manure from eight farms is converted into biogas. Credit: Edgardo Ayala / IPS

By Edgardo Ayala
SAN SALVADOR, Aug 5 2025 (IPS)

El Granjero, the second-largest egg producer in El Salvador, invested US$2.5 million in 2017 to build a biogas plant, proving that there is a solution to the thorny issue of environmental pollution caused by most poultry companies in the country.

It also showed that the investment can yield financial benefits, as the biogas generates electricity that is fed into the national power grid.

The biogas plant, located in Jayaque, a district in southwestern El Salvador, is managed by Renig, the subsidiary created by El Granjero to handle its biological waste.

In 2018, Renig began processing the 200,000 tons of chicken manure and other organic waste produced annually from the eight farms that El Granjero operates in the southwestern part of the country, housing around one million birds.

The plant’s biodigester, with a capacity of 5,300 cubic meters, is 92 meters long, 17 meters wide, and five meters deep.

“I thought biodigesters were the most suitable because they solved the environmental problem immediately, but there was also at least a possibility of being profitable,” Bernhard Waase, director of Renig, told IPS during his visit to the plant.

The environmental pollution caused by the poultry sector has been a source of tension for rural communities living near the farms established in their territories.

According to data from the Salvadoran Poultry Association, the country’s poultry sector produces approximately 1.2 billion eggs and 155 million kilograms of chicken meat annually.

The production of biogas is complex. Bacteria are living organisms that, depending on the conditions inside the biodigester, can behave differently and affect gas production, Melissa Ruiz, in charge of the digester and secondary processes, explained to IPS.

“The digester works like our stomach, and the bacteria are very sensitive to the elements we provide them, just like us. If we suddenly eat a lot of meat or an unbalanced diet, our stomach reacts, and we feel sluggish or get sick. The same happens with the digester,” Ruiz elaborated.

The biodigester at the Renig plant began producing biogas in 2018 but only started generating electricity in 2021. That year, after winning a government tender for biogas production, it began generating and injecting 0.85 megawatts into the national grid through the power distributor Del Sur.

Waase said that, in environmental terms, the plant has achieved its primary goal—preventing pollution—which is already a reason for celebration and pride, as few large companies in the poultry sector have taken this step. Specifically, in the egg industry, El Granjero is the only one that decided to make this investment.

However, financially, expectations have not been fully met.

“From an environmental standpoint, it has been a total success, but financially speaking, it’s much more complicated. We haven’t lost money in any year, but we’re nowhere near the return we had envisioned,” he stated.

The biodigester at the Renig plant in Jayaque, southwestern El Salvador, processes 200,000 tons of chicken manure annually from the farms of the company El Granjero. This serves as the raw material for producing biogas, which is used to generate electricity injected into the national grid. Credit: Edgardo Ayala / IPS

By Edgardo Ayala
JAYAQUE, El Salvador, Jul 25 2025 (IPS)

Still in its early stages and with few players, the poultry sector in El Salvador is taking small steps toward environmentally sustainable production by using its biological waste to generate biogas and, in turn, electricity –an equation that benefits the natural environment, communities, and the farms themselves.

El Granjero is the second-largest egg-producing company in the country, with over one million chickens distributed across its eight farms. After an investment of US$2.5 million, it created the subsidiary Renig to build a biogas plant in 2017.“I thought biodigesters were the most suitable because you solved the environmental problem right away, and the possibility of being profitable” –Bernhard Waase.

A year later, it began processing 200 000 tons of chicken manure and other organic waste annually.

This waste serves as the raw material for producing biogas, the fuel used to generate electricity, which the company then injects into the national power grid.

“Back around 2010 or 2012, we discussed what to do with all the chicken manure because the way it was being handled—by poultry farmers in the country and, I’d say, around the world—was that it was dumped in the open air,” Bernhard Waase, director of Renig, told IPS. The facility is located in La Labor, within the district of Jayaque, in the southwestern department of La Libertad.

At least five of El Granjero’s eight farms, which are dedicated exclusively to egg production, are situated in this rural settlement.

Bernhard Waase, director of Renig, a subsidiary of the Salvadoran company El Granjero, where chicken manure from eight farms is converted into biogas. Credit: Edgardo Ayala / IPS

An Environmentally Friendly Solution 

The environmental pollution caused by the poultry sector has been a source of tension for rural communities living near the farms that were established in their territories or expanded around them over time, as was the case with El Granjero, founded in 1968.

“When the company was established, there wasn’t a single house nearby; it was completely uninhabited,” Waase noted before showing IPS around the plant facilities. But the issue of environmental pollution remained.

“I thought biodigesters were the most suitable because they solved the environmental problem immediately, but there was also at least a possibility of being profitable,” said Waase, referring to the potential for generating electricity.

The country’s poultry sector produces approximately 1.2 billion eggs and 342 million pounds of chicken meat annually, according to data from the Salvadoran Poultry Association.

However, despite being crucial in food production for the country, its contribution to the gross domestic product (GDP) is low, at just 0.79%, though within the agricultural GDP, it accounts for 16%.

Few companies in the poultry sector have chosen to invest in environmentally friendly solutions for biological waste.

One of them is Grupo Campestre, one of the largest chicken producers, which invested seven million dollars to set up its biogas plant and process the 40,000 tons of biological waste generated annually by its farms, processing plant, and fried chicken restaurants owned by the consortium nationwide.

Laying hens at the San Jorge farm, one of eight owned by the egg producer El Granjero. The manure from these farms in southwestern El Salvador is used for biogas production. Credit: Edgardo Ayala / IPS

Biogas production in El Salvador is minimal compared to other renewable energy segments. In fact, its share is so small that it does not appear in the national energy matrix, which is dominated by hydropower (33.7%), geothermal (23%), and natural gas (16%).

Meanwhile, photovoltaics account for 8.5%, and wind power barely represents 2.1%.

In recent years, there has been notable interest in El Salvador, a country of six million people, in promoting clean, renewable energy production, which represents 70% of the country’s energy matrix, according to official figures.

The Renig executive stated that producing electricity from biogas is expensive and complex, as it not only requires investment in facilities and personnel but the process itself is extremely complicated.

“It’s costly because of the equipment and the operation of production. It’s not like solar—that’s child’s play: you have the land, you install the panels, you make the connections that any university student can do, and that’s it,” said Waase.

The complexity of biogas production also lies in dealing with bacteria, living organisms that can behave unpredictably and affect gas production, explained Melissa Ruiz, in charge of the digester and secondary processes.

Sometimes the bacteria get “sick,” she noted, and they must be carefully tended to.

“The digester works like our stomach, and the bacteria are very sensitive to the elements we provide them—just like us: if we suddenly eat too much meat or an unbalanced diet, our stomach reacts, and we feel sluggish or get sick. The same thing happens with the digester,” Ruiz told IPS.

The biogas produced by the Renig plant’s biodigester, using waste from a Salvadoran poultry company, powers two engines with a generation capacity of 425 kilowatts each. Credit: Edgardo Ayala / IPS

An Eco-Friendly Plant 

Once El Granjero decided to bet on biogas production through its subsidiary, it began working on the technical, operational, and financial details of what would become the Renig plant, where a biodigester measuring 92 meters long, 17 meters wide, and 5 meters deep—with a capacity of 5,300 cubic meters—would be built.

The biodigester is the centerpiece of any biogas plant. Inside, bacteria break down the biological waste from the farms—in El Granjero’s case, chicken manure.

This decomposition process generates gases, including methane, which become the fuel to power the plant’s two engines, each with a generation capacity of 425 kilowatts.

If not used for electricity production, these gases would rise into the atmosphere and contribute to global warming.

According to the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP), methane is a potent greenhouse gas with a warming potential 80 times greater than carbon dioxide.

This gas is also the main contributor to ground-level ozone formation, a dangerous air pollutant whose exposure causes 1 million premature deaths worldwide each year.

The Renig plant’s biodigester began producing biogas in 2018, but it only started generating electricity in 2021, as that was the year it participated in a government tender for renewable energy production.

During the period when no electricity was generated, the biogas had to be “flared” to prevent the gases from escaping into the atmosphere, using a combustion torch the company had to purchase for US$40,000.

“This torch basically burned all the biogas, and I thought: I’m literally burning money. Since February 2021, this torch hasn’t been lit because I’ve been generating energy,” said Waase.

As part of its production processes, the Renig biogas plant also produces high-quality fertilizer, which it markets to the agricultural sector. Credit: Edgardo Ayala / IPS

The Business Moves Slowly but Surely 

Two years earlier, in 2019, Renig won the contract to inject 0.85 megawatts into the national grid—a modest amount but significant as a starting point.

For reference, the Nejapa biogas plant, built in 2011 and operated by AES El Salvador at a cost of US$58 million, has an installed capacity of six megawatts.

Waase stated that, environmentally, the plant has achieved its primary goal of preventing pollution, which is already a cause for celebration and pride, as few large companies in the poultry sector have taken this step. Specifically, in the egg industry, El Granjero is the only one that made this investment.

However, financially, expectations have not been fully met.

“From an environmental standpoint, it’s been a total success, but financially speaking, it’s much more complicated. We haven’t lost money in any year, but we’re nowhere near the return we had projected,” he said.

The World Bank-funded Msimbazi Basin Development Project aims to turn Dar es Salaam’s flood-prone areas into a climate-resilient green park. Credit: Kizito Makoye/IPS

By Kizito Makoye
DAR ES SALAAM, Tanzania, Jul 24 2025 (IPS)

When the rains pounded through the night, 44-year-old Teresia Katimba clutched her rosary and prayed silently, her fingers trembling with each whispered Hail Mary. A devout Catholic and mother of four, she stayed awake, huddling her children, hoping the floodwaters wouldn’t engulf them.

In Jangwani, a flood-prone neighborhood in Dar es Salaam, where the Msimbazi River slithers through crowded shacks and a tangle of mangroves, heavy rains routinely trigger flooding and displacement.

“There were nights we didn’t sleep,” says Katimba. “You just sat awake, waiting for the water to come.”

Katimba had learned to read the signs. And on that night, they spelled danger. Her house, nestled precariously beside the riverbank, became a target for misery. Murky floodwater—infested with sewage, discarded plastic bottles and garbage—perpetually surged through the door, soaking mattresses and spoiling maize flour, charcoal and dried sardines.

“My children were terrified; we somehow managed to survive anyway,” she says.

Katimba, an entrepreneur, saw the danger. But like many residents in the impoverished neighborhood, she stayed put—until the floods almost swept away everything.

Today, her life is different. She received compensation in 2024 and relocated to Madale, a dry, forested neighborhood 39 kilometers away, where she built a modest house. “We’re very happy to be here,” she says. “There’s no floodwater to worry about.”

The plight of Katimba’s family highlights wider challenges for many city dwellers.

Teresia Katimba has moved from the dangerous floodplains to safer ground. Credit: Kizito Makoye/IPS

Miraculous Escape

Matilda Msemwa, a resident of Kigogo, recalls how the floods engulfed her living room and destroyed her valued furniture.

Shortly after midnight she sensed a foul smell and an abrupt change in air pressure. Minutes later, the floodwater had risen to waist level.

“I had to scream for help. My daughter nearly drowned as the floods violently filled the house,” she says

Rapid Urbanization

Home to 5.8 million people, Dar es Salaam, one of Africa’s fastest-growing cities, is highly vulnerable to flooding. Around 70 percent of its inhabitants live in informal settlements that are prone to flooding. In 2018, one flooding event at the Msimbazi basin inflicted property damage worth USD 100 million, or 2 percent of the city’s GDP, according to World Bank data.

But for the first time, Dar es Salaam is tackling the flood menace head-on.

Backed by climate financing, the USD 200 million World Bank-funded Msimbazi Basin Development Project aims to turn Dar es Salaam’s flood-prone areas into a climate-resilient green park.

Running through 2028, the project targets the city’s lower Msimbazi River basin, home to 330,000 people living in squalid settlements.

Plans include modern flood control infrastructure—river dredging, terracing, and a complete overhaul of the Jangwani bridge and bus depot.

“This project was conceived after the floods in February 2018, which were very devastating,” says John Morton, a project manager at the World Bank. “The then vice president, who is now the president, convened all the agencies to say, ‘Please come up with a solution for Msimbazi’.”

It was precisely this reality that gave birth to the Msimbazi Opportunity Plan—a comprehensive roadmap to restore the degraded basin and manage future floods. That blueprint is now being realized through a concessional loan from the International Development Association (IDA), part of the World Bank Group.

“IDA credits are concessional,” Morton explains. “They are basically low- or no-interest, with a long grace period and a long repayment period.”

A graphic representation of the Msimbazi Basin Development Project.

More Than Money

But it’s not just the World Bank putting its money where the floodwaters are. The Netherlands and the Spanish Agency for International Development Cooperation (AECID) are also on board.

“The Netherlands’ contribution is a grant,” says Morton. “They’re financing 30 million euros, matching our co-financing for a particular subcomponent of the project… It’s a big earthworks contract. They’ll finance 50 percent up to their 30 million euro cap, and then we finance the rest.”

The Spanish funds, he adds, are structured similarly to IDA’s and will be blended into the project once finalized.

Evacuating to Safety

One of the most controversial parts of the initiative is the resettlement of low-income residents currently living in the floodplain. For Morton, the logic is simple—rescue starts with relocation.

“It was very evident that people did not want to live there,” he says. “Their property was being damaged. Their kids were out of school… the flooding was too devastating.”

According to the World Bank, USD 30 million has been disbursed for resettlement of around 3,500 households trapped in high-risk areas.

Reclaiming the Green

At the center of the project’s vision is not just dry homes but a green, living park. The Msimbazi floodplain, currently a chaotic sprawl of settlements and garbage, will be restored to a natural detention area—a place where floodwaters can spread without destroying lives and property.

“Eventually, what we’ll have is basically a flood detention area that’ll be a park and have natural ecosystems, as well as some more park facility-like things that can naturally flood as it should,” Morton says.

Mangrove forests—critical to both river and marine ecosystems—will be protected and expanded.

“The mangroves provide an important function, both on the coastal side and for the river itself,” says Morton. “Right now, they’re under stress from sedimentation and garbage. The idea is to expand them and maintain their function in purifying the water.”

Waste Not, Want Not

Another key concern for Dar’s residents is waste—both solid and liquid—that chokes the river and pollutes the Indian Ocean. Unplanned dumping of rubbish, household sewage, and industrial effluents has turned the river into a toxic soup in places.

The project, says Morton, addresses this head-on.

“There’s a component on watershed management… including reforestation in the middle and upper basin, protection of riverbanks, and investments in solid waste management,” he says.

Many of these interventions target informal settlements that currently dump waste directly into the river.

“There are investments to help organize them and organize services to make sure that collection improves,” he adds.

On the sewage front, the project will initiate a comprehensive monitoring programme to better understand wastewater flows and engage responsible agencies like DAWASA to develop sewerage plans.

Cautious Optimism

‘It’s a turning point—but only if we get it right,’ says Sylvia Macchi, an urban expert on Msimbazi Valley Project

For Macchi, a respected urban development specialist and long-time observer of Dar es Salaam’s planning chaos, the Msimbazi Valley Development Project is “perhaps the most ambitious climate-resilience intervention this city has ever attempted.”

But she’s not clapping just yet.

“We’ve seen grand plans come and go in Dar,” she says. “What matters now is execution—not promises.”

The professor, who has spent decades researching informal settlements and urban flooding in Tanzania, believes the project has the potential to redraw the city’s future—if handled properly.

“Clearing the valley, relocating at-risk communities, and restoring green spaces along the Msimbazi River—that’s urban transformation at scale,” she tells IPS.

Will it Last?

All eyes are now on the future. The project is scheduled to run until 2028—but what happens then?

“There’s an idea to create an institution to manage the park, real estate, and broader watershed,” Morton says. “That’s being studied now—on the legal aspects and how it would be financed.”

Revenue could come from land sales, developer fees, and even regulated sand mining.

“There’ll be proper sand mining, which will help manage the watershed and generate funds,” he explains.

This institution will oversee not just park maintenance but also ensure that gains in environmental protection and climate resilience are not lost after the project closes.

An Oasis in the Making

In a city gasping for green space, the transformation of the Msimbazi floodplain into an urban oasis is as symbolic as it is strategic. Dar es Salaam doesn’t just need protection from floods—it needs hope. And for Morton, the basin’s rebirth is about more than drainage ditches and concrete.

“This is going to be an asset for the city,” he says. “Not only to reduce flooding but to be a park—a green space that doesn’t exist in Dar es Salaam now. Everybody will have access to it, including low-, medium-, and high-income people. That’s the broader benefit.”

If successful, the Msimbazi Basin Development Project won’t just protect Dar’s poorest—it will provide a blueprint for climate-resilient urban planning across Africa.

“This is about turning adversity into opportunity,” Morton says with measured optimism.

From the banks of the Msimbazi River to the halls of the World Bank, the vision is clear. Dar es Salaam will no longer surrender to the floodwaters. With strong oversight, community input, and green innovation, the city’s greatest vulnerability may just become its most precious asset.

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The Cauchari Solar Plant in Jujuy, Argentina, located 4,000 meters above sea level with over one million panels, was built with Chinese capital, engineering, and materials. Credit: Casa Rosada

By Humberto Márquez
CARACAS, Jul 18 2025 (IPS)

China, with its investments, products, technology, and innovation focused on solar and wind farms in Latin America and the Caribbean, as well as on electricity networks and services, stands out as a driving force for the region’s shift toward energy less reliant on fossil fuels and increasingly cleaner and greener. 

Between 2010 and 2024, China invested US$33.69 billion in renewables in the region, with 70 transactions for as many projects, 54 of which were in non-hydroelectric energy, totaling US$13.138 billion.

These figures alone “highlight China’s importance in supporting the region’s energy transition, both through investments and infrastructure projects,” Enrique Dussel Peters, coordinator of the Latin America and the Caribbean Academic Network on China (RedALC-China), told IPS from Mexico City.“For China, Latin America as a whole is a market that geographically presents many opportunities; first, due to the availability of natural resources, which include critical minerals, and features such as access to water and natural and renewable energy sources”: Ana Lía Rojas.

Beyond money, China “has the capacity to develop technology, implement it, and scale it at the required speed,” said Ana Lia Rojas, executive director of the Chilean Association of Renewable Energies and Storage (Acera).

In a dialogue with IPS in Santiago, Chile, Rojas cited American economist Jeffrey Sachs, director of the Center for Sustainable Development at Columbia University and a United Nations advisor, who has argued that, in short, “the energy transition is Chinese.”

Sachs views China as a “leader in key technologies that will be essential over the next 25 years: photovoltaics, wind, modular nuclear, long-distance energy transmission, 5G (now 5.5G), batteries, electric vehicles, and others.”

The movement toward Latin America has been relentless. While there were no Chinese investments in renewable energy in the region between 2000 and 2009, eight emerged from 2010 to 2014, totaling US$3.298 billion and generating 6,000 jobs, according to RedALC’s Investment Monitor.

Between 2015 and 2019, 25 projects with Chinese financing materialized, totaling US$19.568 billion and creating 9,300 jobs. In the 2020-2024 period, 37 transactions were completed, amounting to US$10.824 billion and generating 15,000 jobs.

Investment volumes dipped in 2020 amid the COVID-19 pandemic. However, a revealing contrast emerged: 35 of the 37 renewable energy transactions during this five-year period went to non-hydroelectric projects.

The Lagoinha Solar Complex, inaugurated in July this year and owned by the Brazilian subsidiary of Chinese group CGN. Spanning 304 hectares in Ceará state, northeastern Brazil, it features 337,000 panels that will provide electricity to 240,000 households. Credit: Government of Ceará

Interests and challenges converge

The International Energy Agency (IEA, representing major industrialized consumers) reports a “soaring increase in Chinese clean energy investments globally, particularly in renewables,” surpassing US$625 billion in 2024—nearly double 2015 levels and accounting for 30% of the world’s total, cementing China’s leadership.

Traditionally dominated by state-owned enterprises backed by public funding, China’s energy investment landscape is shifting, with the government increasingly encouraging private sector participation.

Meanwhile, Latin America and the Caribbean saw roughly US$70 billion invested in renewables from 2015 to 2024, of which over US$30.3 billion (43%) came from China, according to the IEA.

Yet the agency notes that despite steady growth in renewable investments, the region represents just 5% of global privately funded clean energy investment—a reflection of high interest rates, scarce long-term financing, and costly public debt.

This highlights the intersection between the region’s needs and challenges and what Dussel Peters describes as China’s strategic focus on technological development and disruptive innovations, from nanomanufacturing to aerospace, including new energy sources.

Chinese investment in renewables “delivers multiple benefits by advancing energy sustainability, supporting the transition to a low-carbon grid, providing critical technology, and creating skilled jobs,” Chilean academic Rodrigo Cáceres told IPS in Santiago.

A researcher at  Diego Portales University’s Center for Energy and Sustainable Development, Cáceres observes China’s “sustained commitment” in areas like energy storage, smart grids, and green hydrogen, framing the China-Latin America relationship as “strategic and long-term.”

A key factor enabling this enduring partnership is the vast territorial, demographic, and resource potential Latin America and the Caribbean offers China. “If we look at the per capita income we have in the region and compare it with China’s, we have more or less the same. But Latin America has half the population of China and twice the territory of China,” observed Rojas.

Twice the territory “means that projects can be deployed differently than in the rest of the world,” noted the director of Acera.

According to Rojas, “it is evident that, for China, Latin America as a whole is a market that geographically presents many opportunities; first, due to the availability of natural resources, which include critical minerals, and features such as access to water and natural and renewable energy sources.”

“Second, because it is clearly a less densely populated region, which provides a certain degree of flexibility or freedom to develop projects in the territory that will aid the energy transition, not only for local or national economies but for the world,”she said.

The Tanque Novo Wind Complex in Bahia, Brazil, developed by Chinese group CGN. It consists of seven parks with 40 wind turbines, an installed capacity of 180 MW, and can serve 430,000 residents. Credit: Tanque Novo

Brazil, a leading hub 

In Brazil, China’s presence in the electricity sector “is deep and strategic, the result of more than a decade of investments by large state-owned companies such as State Grid and China Three Gorges (CTG),” said Tulio Cariello, research director at the Brazil-China Business Council.

“In fact, it has become the main destination for these companies’ assets outside China. Both State Grid and CTG have the majority of their international investments in Brazil, reflecting the country’s structural importance in their global projection,” Cariello told IPS in Rio de Janeiro.

State Grid is now a major electricity transmission operator in Brazil, and its massive entry into that market was solidified with the acquisition in 2016-2018 of CPFL Energia (formerly Companhia Paulista de Força e Luz), one of the country’s leading power distribution companies.

Another flagship project led by State Grid was the construction of ultra-high-voltage transmission systems, connecting the Belo Monte hydroelectric plant in the Amazon (11,200 MW) with the Southeast region, which has the highest electricity demand.

Combined, solar and wind energy sources account for a quarter of Brazil’s electricity matrix, according to its National Energy Balance.

By the end of 2024, Brazil’s installed wind power capacity—over 16% of the national electricity matrix—reached 33.7 gigawatts, with 1,103 wind farms and 11,720 wind turbines. By 2032, cumulative new installed capacity is projected to reach 56 GW.

Chinese wind turbine manufacturer Goldwind established its first factory outside China last year in Bahia, in Brazil’s Northeast, with an investment of over US$20 million to produce 150 turbines annually, ranging from 5.3 MW to 7.5 MW. This decision demonstrates strong confidence in the Brazilian market.

The volume of Chinese investment in Brazil between 2007 and 2023 reached US$73.3 billion—US$33.2 billion in the electricity sector—with 264 confirmed projects, and is on track to reach US$123.2 billion with 342 projects.

Regarding the impact of investments in renewable energy, “it can be seen on several fronts: increased generation and transmission capacity, modernization of critical infrastructure, greater stability in power supply, and job creation and technology transfer,” said Cariello.

The Los Cururos Wind Farm in Ovalle, Chile, is one of dozens of installations generating electricity in Chile thanks to the constant winds in this Pacific-facing region. Credit: Orlando Milesi / IPS

Advancing Across the Regional Map 

In Argentina, with initial financing of US$390 million from the China Export-Import Bank (Chexim), construction began in 2018 on the Cauchari solar park—one of the largest in Latin America—in the northwestern province of Jujuy.

Some 4,000 meters above sea level and equipped with 1.2 million panels, Cauchari has an installed capacity of 315 MW (with an expansion planned to add another 200 MWh) and reduces carbon emissions by 325,000 tons.

There are other solar developments with Chinese involvement, while Goldwind has acquired wind farms in the central province of Buenos Aires and the southern province of Chubut.

Researcher Juliana González Jáuregui from the Latin American Faculty of Social Sciences (Flacso) has highlighted Beijing’s participation in Argentina’s renewable energy projects, focusing on its provinces—even before the country joined China’s Belt and Road Initiative in 2022.

In contrast, “Europe and the United States have yet to grasp the importance of engaging at the subnational level in Argentina, something China achieved quickly and significantly. The provinces hold natural resources, so the subnational component is essential,” González told Dialogue Earth.

Meanwhile, in Chile, “what has happened in the last two years is that Chinese companies have bet on the country as a gateway to Latin America and have set up several companies that create jobs,” said Rojas.

“They are interested in showcasing the quality and technological advancements they’ve achieved in these sectors, focusing on storage, inverter systems, and everything that helps stabilize power grid flows,” she stated.

In this way, China “has increasingly strengthened its presence in the electricity sector, where we have decarbonization efforts and which represents 22% of the country’s energy consumption,” particularly in the distribution segment through the acquisition of key companies to supply the population, explained Rojas.

A notable example is the Chinese group State Grid, which in 2020 acquired Chile’s Compañía General de Electricidad (CGE) from Spain’s Naturgy for US$3 billion and purchased Chilquinta, another electricity distributor in Chile, from the American company Sempra Energy for US$2.23 billion.

Additionally, it holds a stake in Transelec, the largest distributor, giving it a dominant majority position in Chile’s electricity distribution market.

Areas of Lima illuminated by the growing integration of renewable energy into electricity generation. The former Enel Perú, now Pluz Perú, was acquired by China’s CSG and serves over 1.5 million subscribers in the metropolitan area. Credit: Perú Inkas Tours

In Peru, China Southern Power Grid (CSG) acquired Enel Peru from Italy’s Enel Group in 2024 for US$3.1 billion. The company, now called Pluz Peru, operates in the market with 1,590 MW of generation from various sources and also participates in distribution.

The Peruvian firm includes a solar complex in the southern municipality of Moquegua, with 560,000 panels spread over 400 hectares, capable of generating 440 GWh annually, and a wind farm in the southwestern province of Nazca, with 42 turbines producing up to 600 GWh per year.

In Colombia, another Chinese giant, CTG, promoted the construction of the Baranoa solar plant in the northern department of Atlantico. With an investment of US$20 million and 36,000 modules, it can add 20 MW to the grid.

Though a small project far from major economic and urban centers, it reflects shared interests with Colombia, where President Gustavo Petro champions renewable energy and the decarbonization of the economy and society.

In Nicaragua, it was announced that China Communications Construction Company will build a 70 MW solar plant in the municipality of Nindirí, south of Managua, with 112,700 panels at a cost of US$80 million.

The Managua government—which recently restored relations with China in 2021 after cutting ties with Taiwan—hopes the project will not only feed into the power grid but also support drinking water supply and sanitation in the country.

In a leap across the Caribbean, China’s International Development Cooperation Agency delivered a batch of donated supplies to Cuba last March to support a photovoltaic park project with Chinese assistance in Guanajay, about 50 kilometers west of Havana.

According to data gathered by IPS in Havana, the project includes seven solar parks and will contribute 35 MW to the island’s electricity system. The remaining parks, to be developed by China’s Shanghái Electric and Cuba’s Unión Eléctrica, will add another 85 MW. Cuba’s power demand stands at 3,500 MW, with a deficit sometimes exceeding 1,500 MW.

“We hope to leverage this project as an opportunity to contribute China’s strength in ensuring energy security and promoting sustainable social development in Cuba,” said Hua Xin, China’s ambassador in Havana.

A production gondola at the new wind turbine factory in Camaçari, northeastern Brazil, installed by Chinese firm Goldwind. Wind energy is the second-largest renewable source in Brazil’s electricity supply, after hydropower. Credit: Goldwind

The Ball on the Roof 

Chilean expert Rojas noted that Chinese companies obviously aim to promote their own brands but also establish research centers or technology transfer hubs to help countries accelerate their energy transition.

“They have cutting-edge technologies that we currently see in PowerPoint presentations—but they’re already implementing them in their own cities,” she pointed out.

Experts agree that, alongside territorial potential, population, and resources, the regulatory framework of the electricity business—which varies across borders—is a key investment attraction.

This becomes even more relevant as major investors like China shift from merely selling products and technology to acquiring more assets, immersing themselves in the complexities of service networks, costs, and pricing.

For many countries in the region, the observation Jorge Arbache, an economics professor at the University of Brasilia, makes about Brazil may resonate. He analyzes how the advantages and resources enabling the energy transition are being mobilized.

He argues that “while China has used the energy transition as a pillar of its national development policy,” Brazil still treats its advantages “mainly as primary, short-term, and predatory assets—with low added value, institutional fragmentation, and a lack of coordinated strategy.”

“What China shows us is that the energy transition and natural capital, when well-coordinated, are more than just a shift in the energy matrix: they are a development strategy, a tool for sovereignty, and a source of geopolitical power,” concluded Arbache.

With reporting by Mario Osava (Brazil), Orlando Milesi (Chile) and Dariel Pradas (Cuba).

A farmer pours cow dung into the biodigester to be converted into energy. Credit: Robert Kibet/IPS

By Robert Kibet
ZOUNGOU, Burkina Faso, Jul 18 2025 (IPS)

In the heart of Burkina Faso’s drylands, in the village of Zoungou, a quiet transformation is underway. Alhaji Birba Issa, a smallholder onion farmer, bends over neat rows of lush green crops, the hum of solar-powered pumps audible in the background.

“This land used to sleep during the dry season,” he says, dusting soil from his hands. “Our diesel pump would break down. Crops died. But now, we farm all year.”

Issa leads one of 89 farmer cooperatives participating in the Renewable Energy for Agriculture and Livelihoods (REAL BF) programme, which is equipping smallholder farmers, especially women and youth, with clean energy technologies that are reshaping agricultural productivity and dignity across Burkina Faso’s drought-prone regions.

When Energy Meets Agriculture

Burkina Faso faces some of the highest levels of climate vulnerability in the world. Over 80 percent of its population depends on rain-fed agriculture, which has become increasingly unreliable due to erratic rainfall and rising temperatures.

In response, the REAL BF program—implemented by Practical Action with support from multiple development partners—has taken a holistic approach. It connects off-grid solar systems, biodigesters, and energy-efficient processing technologies to smallholder farming, helping communities extend their farming seasons, preserve harvests, and reduce reliance on polluting fuels.

By July 2024, the programme had reached 15,937 smallholder farmers, more than 80 percent of them women, and achieved 82 percent activity completion and 90 percent budget execution.

“These are not drop-and-go technologies,” says Issouf Ouédraogo, Practical Action’s West Africa Regional Director. “We co-designed the solutions with farmers, supported them to organize in cooperatives, and trained them to manage the systems. The results are community-owned, and that’s why it’s working.”

Fields that Grow Beyond Rain

In places like Komki Ipala, solar-powered irrigation now reaches 115 hectares of farmland. Farmers grow vegetables, rice, legumes, and onions throughout the year—no longer limited to the short rainy season.

“Before, we farmed three months,” says Aminata Zangre, a cooperative leader in Zoungou. “Now we plan for eight. My children eat better. We sell the surplus. And we use cow dung to generate energy. It’s like turning waste into hope.”

Zangre’s cooperative uses biodigesters to turn livestock waste into biogas and compost, reducing deforestation and creating a sustainable cycle of cooking fuel and organic fertilizer.

In Gon-Boussougou, Molle Nossira supervises a fish processing cooperative that once struggled with spoilage and smoke. “The fish used to go bad before midday. Now we use energy-efficient ovens and solar cold rooms,” she says. “Our fish stays fresh. We sell at better prices. We even sell cold drinks, which attract more customers.”

Quantifying the Impact

The numbers tell a compelling story:

• 180 MWh of clean energy is generated annually by the systems installed.
• 148 tonnes of compost and 1,268 kg of butane-equivalent biogas are produced yearly.
• 722 tonnes of firewood saved per year, helping preserve 135 hectares of forest.
• An estimated 1,437 tonnes of CO₂ emissions are avoided annually.
• Each smallholder farmer has seen a minimum income increase of 50,000 CFA francs (around USD 80) annually—often more.

“Food security has improved. Post-harvest losses are down. Women no longer spend hours collecting firewood,” says Farid Sawadogo, a field coordinator with Practical Action. “We see resilience growing in very real ways.”

Women in the Lead

While energy infrastructure is often seen as a male domain, this programme has turned that perception on its head.

In Koulpelé, Awa Convolbo leads a women’s cooperative focused on shea butter processing. “We used to work entirely with firewood, which was exhausting and harmful,” she recalls. “Now we use improved cookstoves and solar-powered water pumps. Our income has grown, and I’ve been able to support my children’s education.”

Convolbo participated in a knowledge exchange visit to Rwanda and returned home inspired to restructure her cooperative’s finances. “Clean energy didn’t just change how we cook—it changed how we lead,” she says.

Youth Shaping the Future

Young people, too, have found new roles in their communities—maintaining solar systems, managing cooperative finances, and digitizing agricultural planning tools.

“Young people now see farming and energy as a future,” says Sawadogo. “They are staying in their villages, building careers, and bringing new ideas.”

To further support access to knowledge and resources, Practical Action launched the Yiriwali Platform, a multilingual digital tool where farmers can choose clean energy technologies, find technology providers, and connect with microfinance institutions. Available in French, Moore, Dioula, and Fulfulde, the platform strengthens ties between smallholder farmers, tech suppliers, and financiers.

Scaling Lessons Beyond Borders

The REAL BF programme aligns with the UN’s Local Climate Adaptive Living Facility (LoCAL) and supports the Sustainable Development Goals—particularly SDG 2 (Zero Hunger), SDG 7 (Affordable and Clean Energy), and SDG 13 (Climate Action).

With demonstrated success in rural Burkina Faso, the model is attracting interest from agencies like UNDP, FAO, and ECOWAS as a blueprint for scaling across the Sahel.

Practical Action hopes to expand the programme and deepen its impact through additional investment, particularly for the remaining cooperatives that could not yet be funded due to budget limitations.

“We’re showing that smallholder farmers aren’t victims of climate change,” says Ouédraogo. “They’re agents of climate resilience—when they have the right tools and power.”

Farming with Dignity

Back in Zoungou, Birba Issa reflects on the change he has seen in his community: children returning to school, women leading cooperatives, and farmers planning not just for the season but for the future.

“We’ve turned drylands into green fields,” he says. “And we farm with dignity.”

As the sun sets over the Sahel, these solar-powered communities are not just surviving—they are showing the rest of the region how to thrive.

A coal plant in Lamma Island, Hong Kong. Credit: Unsplash/Ben Tatlow

By Maximilian Malawista
UNITED NATIONS, Jul 11 2025 (IPS)

Global investments in energy exceeded USD 3 trillion in 2024, with at least USD 2 trillion being invested in clean energy technology and infrastructure. Infrastructure. Despite that progress, fossil fuel consumption continues to rise with little sign of slowing.

China led in energy transitions investments, accounting for 48 percent, followed by the United States (17 percent), Germany (5 percent), the United Kingdom (4 percent), and France (3 percent). These investments have opened the doors to green technologies like solar panels, electric vehicles, and battery storage, at an affordable rate. However, these advancements have been confined to high-income countries. Emerging markets and least developed countries (LDCs), excluding China, remain dependent on coal and fossil fuels to meet their energy needs.

The crossroads of the Asia-Pacific

The Asia and Pacific region has faced the greatest challenge in its transition away from fossil fuels towards renewable energy. In 2023, the Asia-Pacific region accounted for 47 percent of global energy demand, with China, India, Korea, Japan, and Indonesia making up most of this share.

Consider that China occupies a unique position in that it contributes to energy transition as the largest investor in clean energy, while also being the most coal-reliant nation as a major producer and consumer. In perspective, investment in clean energy per capita globally it is at 131 dollars, while Asia and the Pacific is at 115 dollars. However, when excluding China and other high-income countries, that number drops to just 18 dollars a person.

The gaps in investment come heavily from the ten LDCs in the region. Together, these nations account for 1.4 percent of global energy transition investments from 2020 to 2023. However, at COP29, these countries announced plans aimed at increasing their renewable energy capacity from 20 gigawatts (GW) in 2023 to 58 GW by 2030, a 290 percent jump. Meanwhile in South-east Asia, the energy demand is expected to grow to 25 percent between 2024 and 2035, and it is estimated that by 2050 their energy demand may overtake the European Union.

The coal paradox

In 2023, the United Nations Economic and Social Commission for Asia and the Pacific (ESCAP) reported that 81 percent of new renewable energy sources were offering cheaper alternatives to fossil fuels. Even with this margin of difference, coal continues to dominate the Asia-Pacific region without slowing down. In 2023, the Asia-Pacific region generated 45 percent of its energy from coal, which was more than any other region, using the most carbon intensive resource available. The region holds 79 percent of the world’s operating coal plants, generating 1.69 terawatts (TW) of the global 2.13 TW of coal powered energy.

To add to the coal fire, 96 percent of all planned coal capacity, or 553 GW out of 578 GW are solely in the Asia-Pacific. Of that percentage, China accounts for 53 percent of the current capacity, and 71 percent of the future capacity. India, Indonesia and Bangladesh make up the rest of the energy demand for coal. Coal is not just energy, it is money.

Three of the world’s top exporters of coal — Indonesia, Australia, and Mongolia — are in the Asia-Pacific. Indonesia is the largest exporter of coal globally, with China and India as its largest clients. Australia follows closely behind, exporting over USD 91 billion worth of coal during 2023 through 2024, and its coal mining industry employing 50,000 workers. In Mongolia, coal briquettes were their top export, amassing USD 8.43 billion in wealth.

Coal for these countries represents a vital economic tool, one which will make the transition ever more difficult.

Existing solutions

To turn around this deficit and make the world greener, we already have this technology. We have battery storage, nuclear power, low-carbon hydrogen, and even limited carbon capture technologies. The challenge is implementing these technologies and scaling them at a level which produces tangible results.

Without these shifts in investment and policy, the Asia-Pacific region risks global progress towards energy security, economic stability, and SDG compliance. Leaving many left behind, and in the stifling warm air.

To align with global net-zero carbon emission targets and SDG7, which calls for access to affordable and sustainable energy for all, the annual investment in energy must increase to between USD 2.2 and 2.4 trillion by 2030. At least 90 percent of this investment needs to be focused on clean energy.

A dangerous future

Varanasi, Uttar Pradesh, India. Credit: Unsplash/Sarvesh Phansalkar

Despite the urgency of this matter, coal demand among ASEAN economies is projected to rise 5% annually, moving from 491 million metric tons in 2024 to 567 million metric tons by 2027.

This continued reliance on coal as a primary energy will only make energy diversification harder and more expensive. The time to change these outlooks is now, before diversification becomes too difficult. In consequence of these actions, some of the most polluted cities in the world, such as Delhi (India), Dhaka (Bangladesh), Lahore (Pakistan), and Hotan (China), have reported air pollution levels 10 to 20 times higher than what the World Health Organization (WHO) identifies as safe limits. Simply breathing air in these cities can pose a significant health risk, and yet millions do it.

The International Energy Agency Director Faith Birol warns: “Today’s energy world is moving fast, but there is a major risk of many countries around the world being left behind.”

An eye on the Asia-Pacific region

The Asia-Pacific region hosts two-thirds of the global population and account for 46 percent of the world’s GDP exists in the Asia-Pacific. This means that this region is crucial to achieving progress towards SDGs, and without their help, completion is near to impossible.

“Nowhere is this challenge – and opportunity – more urgent than in Asia and the Pacific,” said Armida Salsiah Alisjahbana, United Nations Under-Secretary-General and Executive Secretary of ESCAP. She added, “This is our chance to build a more resilient, equitable and sustainable economy for all. We aim to foster solutions that are regionally grounded, technically sound and financially viable. Unless Asia and the Pacific can lead boldly, the global transition will fall short of expectations.”

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Gereltuya Bayanmukh speaks about her motivations to become involved in climate activism. Credit:  Leo Galuh/IPS

By Aatreyee Dhar
ULAANBAATAR, Jul 9 2025 (IPS)

Youth activist Gereltuya Bayanmukh still reflects on the events in her formative years that inspired her to become a climate activist. When she was a child, she would visit her grandparents in a village 20 km to the south of the border between Russia and Mongolia.

She was happy to see each of the nomadic people in their traditional gers power up their settlements using solar power.

“I remember seeing my neighbors own a solar panel and a battery to accumulate power. They were turning on lights and watching TV using solar power. Nowadays, they even have fridges,” she says.

She thought the herders made a conscious choice about their lifestyles and understood the need of the hour in the face of the looming climate crisis. That is to say, switch to renewable energy and power a safer future.

“This was the reason I became a climate activist,” she says.

No matter how unwitting her notion about her community achieving self-sufficiency with renewable energy was, the findings about what entailed this system revealed something else.

“I later learned that the solar panels were partially subsidized by the government as a part of the nationwide government to equip 100,000 nomadic households with solar energy,” she says.

What she perceived turned out to be a nationwide renewable energy scheme by the Mongolian government for the nomadic herders.

The scheme, called the National 100,000 Solar Ger [Yurt] Electricity Program, introduced in 2000, provided herders with portable photovoltaic solar home systems that complement their traditional nomadic lifestyle.

At least 30 percent of Mongolia’s population comprises nomadic herders. Before 2000, when the scheme came into effect, herders had limited or no access to modern electricity. By 2005, the government managed to equip over 30,000 herder families through funds from several donor nations.

However, the full-scale electrification effort for herders was beginning to stagnate. The 2006 midterm custom audit performance report by the Standing Committee on Environment, Food and Agriculture of the Parliament carried sobering revelations.

The scheme in its initial phase was poorly managed: there was no control over the distribution process, with some units delivered to local areas landing in the hands of non-residents violating the contract, failure to deliver the targeted number of generators, misappropriation of the program funds, and inability to repay the loans within the contractual period.

However, in the third phase–2006-2012–the program was able to expand its implementation with the support of several international donors, including the World Bank.

“At first, I thought how great that we started out with the renewable energy transition, giving access to renewable energy at a lower price. And it was even in 1999. That was when I was just four years old. I believe we were on our way to building a future like this. Like we visualized here. The future of green nomadism. However, my optimism faded when I read the midterm audit report and discovered that the program had been (just as) poorly managed as the first part. It was only with the assistance of the international partners that the program finished well,” says Gereltuya.

Gereltuya is the co-founder and board director of her NGO, Green Dot Climate, which focuses on empowering youth as climate activists and raising awareness and practical skills for climate action.

One of the mottoes of her NGO is to change the youth’s and Mongolian people’s attitudes and practices around climate change issues as well as solutions.

In the past year, the NGO has been successful in reaching over half a million Mongolians, including nomads, helping them become more environmentally conscious and empowering the youth to be climate activists—makers and doers themselves.

“In the past year, we have reached over half a million Mongolians. Our Green Dot youth community has logged more than 100,000 individual climate actions, saving over 700,000 kg of CO₂, 25 liters of water, and 80,000 kilowatt-hours of energy. Next, we will aim for a million collective actions, a stronger community and a minimum of 50 collaborative climate projects in Mongolia,” Gereltuya said during her delegate speech at the One Young World Summit, a global event that brings in young leaders from around the world to discuss global issues, in 2023.

The state of Mongolia’s nomads in the current energy system

Mongolia as a country heavily relies on coal for energy production, which contributes to 90 percent of its energy production. Coming to just transition, the government aims for a 30 percent renewable energy share by 2030 of its installed capacity, as enshrined in the State Policy on Energy 2015-2030. Mongolia is also committed to reducing its greenhouse gas emissions by 22.7 percent by 2030 while the energy sector accounts for 44.78 percent of the total emissions as of 2020 according to Mongolia’s Second Biennial Update Report.

Gereltuya’s NGO, Green Dot Climate, has been mapping Mongolia’s energy systems for the past few years now. As of 2024, Mongolia’s electricity sector relies on CHP [combined heat and power] plants and imports from Russia and China to meet its electricity demands.

Only 7 percent of its total installed energy comes from renewable sources, with the Central Energy System accounting for over 80 percent of the total electricity demand. “We found that about 200,000 households remain unaccounted for in the centralized energy grid calculations. These are likely the same nomadic families or their later generations who likely adopted their first solar systems at least two decades ago,” she explains.

Gereltuya says that her organisation meticulously compared the recent household data cited by the Energy Regulatory Commission of Mongolia to that of the total  number of households as per the Mongolian Statistical Information Service to find the numbers that went missing

Mongolia’s backslide into fossil-fuel economy

Although Mongolia has promised to increase its renewable energy share to 30 percent by 2030, it is still far behind in the race to achieve its target.

In the 2020 Nationally Determined Contribution [NDC] submission to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change [UNFCCC], Mongolia set its mitigation target to “a 22.7% reduction in total national greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions by 2030,” which can increase to a 27.2 percent reduction if conditional mitigation measures such as carbon capture and storage and waste-to-energy technology are implemented. Further, if “actions and measures to remove GHG emissions by forest are determined”, the total mitigation target would rise to 49.9 percent by 2030.

“Instead of focusing on decarbonizing its coal-based economy, Mongolia shifted to focus on carbon-sink and sequestration processes to reduce its emissions. This suggests that despite our many promises, policies and past efforts to mainstream renewables, we may still end up with business as usual. A case of bad governance, stagnation and vicious cycles,” she says.

Recommendations for Mongolia’s energy sector

Gereltuya’s NGO has been actively engaged in the survey ‘Earth Month 2025’ that is aimed at collecting specific recommendations from the youth voices in the country for the NDC 3.0 that the government is expected to submit in COP30. She shares a few recommendations that she believes can help improve the country’s energy systems.

On the demand side, households not connected to the grid should update and improve their solar home systems, especially now that the solutions are much cheaper and more efficient.

According to the 2024 World Bank ‘Mongolia Country Climate and Development Report,’ the average residential tariff for electricity in Mongolia was estimated to be 40 percent below cost recovery, and subsidies were worth 3.5 percent of GDP in 2022. The lack of cost recovery created hurdles in efforts to enhance energy efficiency and investment in renewable energy. In the context, those connected to the grid should pay more for their energy use to reflect the real cost of energy production and support renewable energy feed-in tariffs. There should be responsible voting of citizens demanding better policies and implementations and not trading in policies for short-term gains.

On the supply side, there is a need to stop new fossil fuel projects immediately: there are at least six such projects, including one international project under Mongolia’s current Energy Revival Policy, underway.

Secondly, Mongolia’s electricity infrastructure needs significant improvement. As the UNDP recently highlighted, Mongolia’s infrastructure is aging, inefficient and heavily subsidized.

Thirdly, fully utilize installed energy capacity, which is at only 30 percent, largely owing to the infrastructure inefficiency.

Fourth is to increase the overall renewable energy capacity five times to meet demand, which means 15 times the energy made in full demand. And phase out coal-based power, replacing it with fully renewable energy.

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The Kruonis pumped-storage hydropower plant complements the one in the Lithuanian city of Kaunas. There are more than 500 of these "water batteries" in the world, and the mountainous geography favors their development in Latin America. Credit: Andrius Aleksandravicius / Ignitis

By Humberto Márquez
CARACAS, Jul 2 2025 (IPS)

Having hydroelectric power without damming rivers, dismantling the environment or displacing populations is possible in Latin America and the Caribbean, with reversible power plants that take advantage of their mountainous geography, and pave the way for only renewable sources to generate electricity.

“The development of these plants requires areas with a difference in altitude, for two reservoirs, one upper and one lower. And the region has hundreds of possible sites for pumped storage,” said Arturo Alarcón, a senior specialist at the Energy Division of the Inter-American Development Bank (IDB)."These plants requires areas with a difference in height, for two reservoirs, one upper and one lower. And the region has hundreds of possible sites for pumped storage. A recent IDB study identified 179 sites in 11 countries": Arturo Alarcón.

In countries crisscrossed by mountain ranges, in Brazil and even in the insular Caribbean, there are plenty of areas that could host these hydroelectric dams, says the Bolivian expert. “A recent IDB study identified 179 sites in 11 countries,” he told IPS from Washington.

Traditional hydropower plants dam the waters of a river, creating an artificial lake that provides water to drive turbines in an engine room that generates electricity. This is taken by transformers and transmission lines to consumption centres, and then the water is dumped and the river flows on to the sea.

In contrast, pumped-storage plants are fed with water from a reservoir at a certain height, which supplies the water, usually through a tunnel or canal, does the work in the engine room and deposits the water in a reservoir located at a lower altitude.

When the process is finished – after the hours of electricity generation due to increased demand, required from other sources – the water is pumped back from the lower to the upper reservoir, where it is available to start a new cycle.

These are power plants that can complement solar or wind energy parks, which are fed by solar radiation or wind power, thus subject to hourly and seasonal variations that require energy to be stored in batteries.

Diagram of the operation of a pumped hydro power plant. When the demand for electricity grows, the flow of water from the upper reservoir activates the turbines and, when its contribution to the system is no longer needed, the flow is reversed by pumping from the lower reservoir, leaving the whole as a water battery. Credit: Iberdrola

Supplementary batteries

For this reason, pumped-storage power plants are also called “water batteries”.

By reducing the need for fossil-fuelled thermal power plants, they become tools for decarbonising the entire electricity system.

“Although these plants do not generate more energy than they consume in the pumping process (for every megawatt hour generated, approximately 1.2 MWh is consumed), they do play a critical role in the integration of variable renewable energies such as solar and wind,” says Alarcón.

For example, in Brazil, where about 90% electricity is generated from renewable sources, wind and solar installations are growing, “which depend on weather conditions and there is no constant production throughout the day,” expert Caio Leocádio told IPS from Rio de Janeiro.

“This condition creates a favourable scenario for technologies that meet these requirements, with flexibility and storage capacity, allowing energy to be stored in times of surplus and used in times of greater demand,” says Leocádio, a consultant with the Brazilian Energy Research Company (EPE).

It is not a new technology. Around the world, some 200 gigawatts (one Gw equals 1000 Mw) have been installed in 510 pumped-storage power plants, equivalent to the entire hydroelectric capacity of Latin America.

In the region, the Rio Grande Hydroelectric Complex in the central Argentine province of Cordoba, with its Cerro Pelado and Arroyo Corte reservoirs, 12 kilometres apart, has been in operation since 1986 and has an installed capacity of 750 MWh, which is currently reduced due to equipment obsolescence.

The engine room of the Río Grande Complex, a reversible power plant in the province of Córdoba in north-central Argentina. Credit: Epec

 Favorable cost

So far, the level of development of pumped hydroelectricity shows that costs are competitive, although the economic performance of each facility and in each country depends on the type of electricity market.

For example, if it is an electricity market that has hourly energy prices, or that values the ancillary services that reversible plants can provide, such as maintaining a constant voltage despite fluctuations, a good economic performance can be achieved.

In terms of prices, the region has very disparate tariffs. Residential rates in some Caribbean islands exceed 40 US cents per kWh, in Guatemala 29, in Honduras and Uruguay 25, in Colombia 20, in Brazil and Costa Rica 16, in Mexico 10 and in Venezuela six cents, according to the  Global Petrol Prices website.

“The installation cost of reversible power plants can be high due to infrastructure and technical needs, but operating and maintenance costs are relatively low once they are up and running,” Alarcón noted.

Nightlife on the famous Copacabana beach in the Brazilian city of Rio de Janeiro. The growing demand for energy and the need to maintain a stable supply with electricity generated from renewable sources opens up opportunities for pumped-storage power plants. Credit: Inoutviajes

In Brazil, “projects of this type really require high initial investments, mainly in civil works and equipment,” Leocádio said. “Values are estimates between US$1,200 and 1,600 per kilowatt (kWh) installed, within the range of medium to large projects in the sector,” he added.

In the Dominican Republic, which is considering installing pumped-storage plants in the areas of Sabaneta (northwest) and Guaigui (centre), of 200 and 300 MWh respectively, installation costs are estimated at between US$1900 and 2400 per kilowatt.

But, on the other hand, experts agree that the projects have a useful life of 50 years or more, and although the return on investment requires a long term, these plants offer a stable and predictable performance.

This is the advantage Leocádio sees in Brazil, with its highly interconnected electricity system and wealth of sites for potential installation. A recent study found that in the state of Rio de Janeiro alone (43 750 square kilometres) there are 15 locations with ideal conditions for such plants.

Brazil’s gigantic Belo Monte dam on the Xingu River has altered watercourses, displaced populations, disrupted indigenous communities, agriculture and other livelihoods, increased deforestation and loss of biodiversity. Pumped-storage power plants can avoid many of these impacts. Credit: Bruno Batista / Vice-Presidency Brazil

Regulation and environment

For Alarcón, “the biggest challenge for this technology in Latin America and the Caribbean is regulatory. Not all electricity markets have adequate remuneration mechanisms for storage technologies or those that provide flexibility to electricity systems,” he said.

Therefore, among the tasks to be addressed in the region, along with investigating the specific areas that have the greatest potential for water batteries, Alarcón identified dialogue between governments and private actors, plus conferences and regional forums “to create a regulatory framework that facilitates these projects”.

That possibility – and also the contrasts – are shown by recent cases in Chile.  The Espejo de Tarapacá project, for a 300 MWh reversible power plant that plans to work with seawater, has advanced, but another, Paposo, in the north, was rejected by the Environmental Evaluation Service.

Advocates of pumped-storage power plants point out that their construction and operation require minimal alteration of the environment, as they do not require the diversion or damming of rivers, flooding of towns or farmland, or affecting the areas of indigenous peoples and peasant communities.

Since they do not alter large areas, they do not affect biodiversity, and in some cases can be sources of water for irrigation and sites that beautify or refresh landscapes.

But the central issue is their contribution to the stability of electricity systems and to the decarbonisation required by the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), which propose to increase the use of renewable energies along with access to electricity for all peoples.

By February 2025, according to the most recent report by the Latin American Energy Organisation (OLADE), total electricity generation in the region will reach 152 terawatts (Twh, one million megawatts), with 68.1% from renewable sources and 31.9% using oil, gas, coal or nuclear energy.

The largest source of renewable energy is hydroelectric (53.1% of the total), followed by wind (8.5%), solar (4.5%), bioenergy (1.5%) and geothermal energy (0.5%).

Celebrating the opening of this brightly coloured charging station made using recycled plastic tiles. Stanley Anigbogu projects bring vibrant solutions to underserved communities. Credit: LightEd

By Promise Eze
ABUJA, Jun 30 2025 (IPS)

When Stanley Anigbogu heard his name announced as the 2025 Commonwealth Young Person of the Year in London earlier in March, he could hardly believe it. He had not expected to win, especially among a pool of brilliant nominees from across the globe.

The 25-year-old Nigerian energy innovator was recognised for transforming waste into solar-powered innovations that deliver clean energy to over 10,000 refugees in Africa. Anigbogu is the co-founder of LightEd, a company that turns plastic waste into solar-powered charging stations. These stations supply electricity to communities with little or no access to power. LightEd works in hard-to-reach areas and serves people in different parts of Nigeria, including thousands of displaced persons.

“I really was not expecting to win the award,” he said. “When my name was called, I was shocked. It took me a moment to believe it. I was really grateful because it was an amazing accomplishment. Just representing Africa, being the best from Africa out of 56 countries. I knew the work we were doing was important, but the other finalists were doing amazing things as well. I was grateful that my work was spotlighted because it gives the work that I do a different level of recognition. It is a very big accomplishment.”

For Anigbogu, the award is not just a personal achievement. He sees it as a moment of pride for Nigeria and for young people across the continent.

“This award gives me hope,” he said. “It shows that people see our work and that it matters.”

Stanley Anigbogu, 2025 Commonwealth Young Person of the Year. Credit: LightEd

The Youth Awards for Excellence in Development Work, known as the Commonwealth Youth Awards, is a flagship project of the Commonwealth Secretariat, which has supported youth development for over 50 years. The Secretariat’s Head of Social Policy Development, Layne Robinson, underscored the importance of highlighting the work of young leaders like Anigbogu and empowering them to do more.

He said, “These awards enable us to learn more about the work being done by young people across the Commonwealth and offer us an opportunity to support them tangibly.  By amplifying their work, the awards help them become beacons to others and contribute to building the next generation of leaders.”

In pursuit of the waste-to-energy approach, Stanley Anigbogu’s project has repurposed more than 5 tonnes of plastic waste. Reducing harm to the environment is central to his innovations. Credit: LightEd

Lighting Up Communities

Anigbogu grew up in Onitsha, a bustling town in southeastern Nigeria. Like many homes in the country, his family did not have reliable electricity. Power cuts were frequent. Sometimes, they had electricity for only a few hours in an entire week. He often had to study using candles or kerosene lamps.

These struggles sparked his curiosity about how electricity worked. He became interested in finding solutions to the challenges around him. At the age of 15, he began building small inventions. He created robots and rockets using scraps and second-hand electronic components. He built simple tools to help with tasks at home and even started a science club in school.

Stanley Anigbogu stands inside a work in progress. Credit: LightEd

After secondary school, Anigbogu moved to Morocco for university. While there, he founded a start-up which aimed to turn orange peels into energy. The project failed, but it taught him valuable lessons.

“I made a lot of mistakes because I did not understand business well,” he said. “But I learnt a lot from it.”

During the COVID-19 lockdown in 2020, Anigbogu returned to Nigeria. He wanted to create something useful that could help poor communities. That’s how LightEd started. His innovation is helping to address Nigeria’s electricity problem. According to the World Bank, 85 million Nigerians do not have access to electricity from the national grid. This means about 43 percent of the population lives without regular power, making Nigeria the country with the highest number of people without electricity.

Stanley Anigbogu’s projects work towards providing electricity to underserved people; the community is at the heart of the decisions on where to place the solar-powered charging stations. Credit: LightEd

One of LightEd’s flagship projects is the construction of charging stations made from plastic and recycled waste, fitted with solar panels. People use them to charge phones, lamps, and small devices. In many of these areas, it is the only source of electricity available.

LightEd has trained over 6,000 students and recycled more than 20,000 kilograms of plastic. The company has also raised over 500,000 dollars from donors and partners to expand its work.

“Our goal is to make clean energy available to everyone,” said Anigbogu, who added that the company works closely with communities to create solutions tailored to their needs.

Stanley Anigbogu finds light in waste. Credit: LightEd

“The solutions we provide are community-led. Each community has different needs. We begin by asking questions like: where should the station be built? What is their energy need? What does the community require? We also add artwork to the stations, designed to reflect what the community feels the station represents. When we work with an artist, we hold a workshop and collect input from the people. We also work with them to decide how the station will be managed. Once it is built, we hand it over to the community.”

Helping Displaced People

Anigbogu’s interest in helping displaced people began while he was in Morocco. He joined a volunteer group that visited families living in the Atlas Mountains. Many had been displaced and lacked access to electricity and clean water.

LightEd has set up solar charging stations in two big camps for displaced people in Nigeria. They also provided solar lights and lamps, making it easier and safer for people to move around at night, especially women and children.

“I want kids in refugee camps to be able to study at night. Before, everywhere used to be dark, and when you put in streetlights, it lights up the surroundings and creates a sense of safety and also supports their mental health. I think when you’re living in a dark environment and you’re already in an inhospitable situation, having proper lighting helps give you a sense of security. That contributes to an overall stronger feeling of safety. Aside from that, it also helps reduce costs, such as the money spent on things like kerosene or candles, because all you need to do is go and charge your lamp or other device. It also reduces the negative health effects from the smoke and fumes people inhale when using traditional lighting solutions,” Anigbogu said.

Looking Ahead

Anigbogu’s journey has not been without challenges. In the early days, one of the biggest obstacles was the lack of clear guidance on how to start an organisation in Nigeria, including navigating registration, documentation, and taxes. Today, his main challenge is scaling. While funding is important, Anigbogu says the harder task is finding the right strategies and structures to expand into new regions and countries.

Stanley Anigbogu hopes to use access to energy to bring people of different faiths together, helping them resolve the many conflicts in the region. Credit: LightEd

But for Anigbogu, none of this is a reason to give up. He is now working on building charging stations that also double as spaces for peace dialogue.

“I am working with the Commonwealth Peace Prize winners, who are also Nigerians. We are discussing building a charging station that can serve as a space for intergenerational and interreligious dialogue. In Nigeria, where there are many religious conflicts, I believe it is a good idea to use access to energy as a way to bring people of different faiths together to talk and understand each other,” he said.

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Community orchard in Ribeirão, a neighbourhood in Florianopolis, the capital of the southern Brazilian state of Santa Catarina. There are more than 150 such orchards in the city, which serve as a final destination for the compost produced from their organic waste. Credit: Mario Osava / IPS

By Mario Osava
FLORIANOPOLIS, Brazil, Jun 26 2025 (IPS)

Living with her neighbours, getting to know them and chatting with them is what Lucila Neves enjoys most in the community orchard of Portal de Ribeirão, a neighbourhood in the south of Florianopolis, considered the most sustainable of Brazil’s 27 state capitals.

The biodegradable packaging entrepreneur chose to live in the capital of the southern state of Santa Catarina, where she came from Ribeirão Preto, 950 kilometres to the north.

She is one of the people who voluntarily take care of the huge variety of vegetables, medicinal plants and fruit trees planted on about 1000 square metres.

The neighbourhood’s residents accepted the planting started 15 months ago, because it cleaned up the area where a private company used to compost organic waste for the municipality, without the necessary care.

Gone are the mice, mosquitoes, cockroaches and the bad smell that had infested the place, said biologist Bruna do Nascimento Koti, a primary school teacher and permanent volunteer in the garden, where she was together with Neves on the day IPS visited the space.

Now the state-owned Capital Improvement Company (Comcap) also makes clean compost there, with organic waste collected by the population in closed plastic buckets distributed by the Florianopolis city government.

In addition to providing inexpensive and healthy vegetables without agrochemicals, the orchard promotes conviviality, with a Thursday tea gathering and sometimes collective cultivation on Saturdays, Koti said.

Bruna do Nascimento Koti is one of the volunteers who tends the garden at Portal de Ribeirão, in the south of the Brazilian city of Florianopolis, where community life is promoted and healthy food is provided to neighbours and volunteer gardeners. Credit: Mario Osava / IPS

The Florianopolis municipality has chosen composting and recycling as the main alternatives for managing the solid waste generated by the city’s 537 000 people, to which many tourists and seasonal residents are added during the southern summer.

It is estimated that of the 700 tonnes of daily waste, 43% is dry recyclable waste and 35% organic waste, the use of which is to be increased in order to reduce the proportion of waste destined for landfill. There is 22% of non-recyclable waste left over.

Currently only 13% of the total is recycled, while the remaining 87% goes to the landfill in the neighbouring municipality of Biguaçu, 45 kilometres from Florianopolis, which receives waste from 23 cities, Karina de Souza, director of solid waste at the Florianopolis Secretariat of Environment and Sustainable Development, told IPS.

But official statistics point to significant progress. Food waste used in composting increased more than four times, from 1175 tonnes in 2020 to 5126 tonnes in 2024, according to Souza’s records.

Green organics, as waste from tree pruning and other vegetation is called, more than doubled during that period. Glass also increased by a factor of 2.5 and materials that arrive mixed and go through separation before recycling almost quadrupled.

The ‘Zero Waste’ programme adopted by the mayor’s office in 2018 sets a target of recycling 60% of dry waste and 90% of organic waste by 2030, a goal that seems far off.

Waste already separated for recycling, in this case glass. Tyres, plastics and cardboard are other materials collected for recycling at the Waste Recovery Centre near the city centre of Florianopolis in southern Brazil. Credit: Mario Osava / IPS

Waste has value

The Comcap Waste Recovery Centre, located in the Itacorubi neighbourhood, near the city centre and next to the Botanical Garden, is at the heart of the municipal policy to solve the waste challenge.

It concentrates the city’s large composting yard, a central facility for separating recyclable waste and another for transferring disposable waste and compacting it into larger trucks for transport to the landfill.

It also includes a Waste Museum, especially for environmental education, and an ecopoint where residents deposit their recyclable waste, such as wood, electronics, paper, plastics and glass.

There are nine ecopoints distributed throughout the city, which receive around 11 000 tonnes of recyclable waste per year for sorting and handling.

This waste, also collected from other sources, is transferred to warehouses where glass, packaging cartons, corrugated paper, plastics and tyres are collected separately for recycling. But they arrive mixed with rubbish and have to go through human separation and sorting, called triage.

This is the area of the Association of Collectors of Recyclable Material, which, hired by Comcap, separates the waste for the buyers, generally the recycling industry.

Of the 75 members, about 40% are immigrants, mostly Venezuelans, but also Peruvians, Haitians and Colombians, according to Volmir dos Santos, the association’s president, during IPS’ visit to the facility.

Founded in 1999, the group was initially made up of street waste collectors. With the advance of municipal management, selective collection in residences, industries and commerce, in addition to the ecopoints, they became ‘triadores’, those who separate, classify and sell the waste ready for recycling.

“We suffered prejudice, discrimination and shame, now we gain respect,” Dos Santos celebrated.

Two young Venezuelans who immigrated to Brazil and found employment at the Waste Valorisation Centre in Florianopolis. Haitian and Peruvian migrants also work at the facility. Credit: Mario Osava / IPS

No incineration of waste

But the broad movement of recycling workers, from various associations and cooperatives, seeks to influence municipal plans. It opposes, for example, the burning of non-recyclable waste for energy generation, an alternative that is growing among industrial countries.

There are at least 3035 solid waste combustion plants in the world, known as Waste-to-Energy, said Yuri Schmitke, president of the Brazilian Association of Energy from Waste (Abren), which brings together 28 companies in the sector.

It is the way to achieve the goal of ‘zero waste’ or the elimination of landfills, since recycling has limits –there is always a percentage that cannot be reused and incineration replaces fossil fuels, he argued.

Countries such as Germany, Switzerland, Austria and the Nordic European nations have managed to use 100% of their waste, he said, by eliminating these landfills or final solid waste deposits.

Restrictions and allegations of environmental and even sanitary damage have been dispelled in several European countries, Japan and Korea, with the implementation of these plants even in central parts of large cities, without such negative effects, he pointed out.

Paris already has three of them in its so-called extended city centre, where the population density reaches 15 000 people per square kilometre, he said.

“Incineration puts an end to the cycle, it excludes recycling definitively, and Brazil is very different from Europe, it has already had failed experiences,” countered Dorival Rodrigues dos Santos, president of the Federation of Associations and Cooperatives of Waste Pickers of Santa Catarina, which claims to represent 28,000 workers.

It calls for a broad debate between technicians and collectors on the subject, given that this alternative is beginning to gain followers in Brazil. The municipality of Joinville, with 616 000 inhabitants and 170 kilometres from Florianopolis, has plans to install a plant to generate electricity by burning waste.

Florianopolis is looking to send non-recyclable waste to the cement industry, which is interested in using it as fuel instead of fossil fuels, said De Souza, Florianopolis’ director of solid waste.

Aparecida Napoleão leads a waste collection movement in her building, an example of the benefits of separating and recycling different materials in the southern Brazilian city of Florianopolis. Credit: Mario Osava / IPS

Recycling first

“We defend the primacy of recycling over incineration. The goal is to improve recycling, we have not exhausted the advances,” according to Karolina Zimmermann, the engineer who works with the collectors.

Progress in recycling depends not only on new technologies, such as those that separate mixed or even melted materials, dyes and chemical elements in plastics or paperboard. The environmental education of consumers in order to separate waste is key to increase reuse.

Aparecida Napoleão is an example of how recycling monitoring has taken hold. In her building of 126 luxury flats, she spearheads a movement to separate all waste, from the small glass containers she sends to artisanal jelly producers to special papers that can be turned into notebooks, plastics and even bottle caps.

A retired social worker from the Florianopolis municipality, she has organised a chain of shelves and bins on the ground floor of the building for dozens of different types of materials. She tries to guide her neighbours, but recognises that even so, there are always those who put rubbish in the wrong place.

“It’s a lot of work, you have to be patient, explain, ask repeatedly until they understand the importance of separation,” she says.

A new solar power plant at Africa University in eastern Zimbabwe. Credit: Farai Shawn Matiashe/IPS

By Farai Shawn Matiashe
MUTARE, Zimbabwe, Jun 25 2025 (IPS)

When load shedding was introduced over the past two years, Jose Tenete Domingos Lumboa had to deal with learning disruptions worsened by the backup generators in the eastern part of Zimbabwe.

Apart from the noise and air pollution from the diesel-powered generators, the backup system did not run the whole night.

“It was disruptive,” says the 26-year-old from Angola, who is studying Education at Africa University, a United Methodist Church-related institution.

“You have an assignment due and you are still researching online and if the electricity goes off, you cannot meet the deadline.”

Lumboa is lucky not to have missed the deadline for any of his assignments, but most of his fellow students have been missing deadlines due to rolling power cuts.

Students Jose Tenete Domingos Lumboa and Maria Kwikiriza at Africa University in eastern Zimbabwe. Credit: Farai Shawn Matiashe/IPS

A new solar mini-grid at AU, just outside Zimbabwe’s third-largest city of Mutare, is changing the lives of students like Lumboa.

The 250 kilowatt solar power plant, officially commissioned on 6 June, has 590 solar panels, a 250 kilovolt inverter system and a 600 kilowatt-hour battery bank.

The lithium batteries have a lifespan of 25 years.

The system is providing uninterrupted power to the AU’s main campus, including student hostels and laboratories.

“Annually, we had to spend a minimum of USD 216,000. That was our energy bill. Our maximum will be around USD 240,000. So, we will save around USD 240,000 per year,” says Professor Talon Garikayi, a deputy Vice Chancellor at AU, an engineer overseeing the solar power project.

In 2024, the southern African nation was hit by a punishing drought fueled by El Niño, a climate phenomenon that can worsen dry spells or storms, extreme weather events increasingly linked to climate change.

This led to a sharp drop in water levels in Lake Kariba, home to the country’s main hydropower plant, which is shared with Zambia.

The authorities were forced to roll out load shedding schedules lasting for more than 18 hours.

Lake Kariba was generating less than 20 percent of its installed capacity of 1050 megawatts (MW) at the time.

Jose Tenete Domingos Lumboa, a student at Africa University working on his laptop. Credit: Farai Shawn Matiashe/IPS

In April 2024, the government declared the drought a national disaster—the worst in 40 years—which left more than half the population food insecure.

Institutions like AU had to turn to diesel-powered generators, which are expensive to run.

And students like Lumboa had to bear the brunt of load shedding at AU.

Reverend Alfiado Zunguza, AU Board of Directors chairperson, says this makes education expensive.

“We felt like it was critical to invest in this solar power plant to ensure the university continues to be reliable in its operations and its systems that are critical in advancing the knowledge of the continent,” he says.

“The university was spending USD 240,000 a year for electricity, making education expensive. So we want to reduce the cost of education at AU, making it more affordable to as many people as possible.”

He says in the long run, AU is saving more, and the funds can be channeled towards infrastructure development, research labs, and capacity building.

The Zimbabwe government, through its National Energy Policy, is planning to generate 2,100 MW by 2030 from renewable energy and biofuels like ethanol.

Maria Kwikiriza, who is from Uganda and is studying law, says that by investing in renewable energy, the institution is contributing to a clean environment.

Lithium batteries at the new solar power plant at Africa University in eastern Zimbabwe. Credit: Farai Shawn Matiashe/IPS

“The campus is now quiet. The oil from the generator was affecting my breathing. We now have access to WiFi all night, which is essential for our studying,” says the 25-year-old who has asthma.

Zimbabwe, a country of 15.1 million people, has 62 percent electricity access and relies heavily on coal and hydropower for its energy needs.

The AU is improving electricity access to the community through its new solar power plant.

Reverend Peter Mageto, AU vice chancellor, says his institution is releasing electricity, which will benefit surrounding communities.

“So, we are glad that we are venturing into this so that the electricity supply authorities can provide electricity to the underserved communities,” he says, adding that this project is part of the AU’s strategic plan running from 2023 to 2027.

Mageto, who is from Kenya, says he brought with him lessons learned from Kenya, which is one of the nations doing well in renewable energy in Africa.

Dr. James Salley, chief executive officer of Africa University, Tennessee, says the solar mini-grid was funded by AU Tennessee Corporation, which founded AU Zimbabwe more than 30 years ago.

“No donor provided funding for this project and that is the uniqueness of it. That is what I am talking about—sustainability,” says Salley, who is also the associate vice chancellor for institutional advancement at AU.

Garikayi says AU is working to generate 1.4 MW by October, enough to cover the university’s farm and its residential areas.

This solar power plant will become the biggest in Manicaland Province after a 200 kW solar mini-grid in Hakwata in Chipinge, a 140 kW solar power plant at Victoria Chitepo Provincial Hospital and a 150 kW solar power plant at Mutambara Mission Hospital, funded by the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP).

He says if he has excess electricity, it will be extended to nearby Old Mutare, which has a school, an orphanage, and a hospital.

“We will be able to say there are 1,200 business units within Manicaland. Everyone within the region can now use the energy we would have been allocated,” Garikayi says, adding that the AU will reduce the load from the national grid.

Lumbo is planning to replicate this solar power plant in his country, Angola.

“I was talking to my fellow countrymen about taking this technology back home. It improves students’ welfare and boosts our confidence,” he says.

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A recycling, biodigestion and composting complex is being installed next to the landfill of the Intermunicipal Consortium of the Middle Valley of the Itajaí River (Cimvi), to take advantage of all the solid waste from 19 municipalities in the southern Brazilian state of Santa Catarina. Credit: Mario Osava / IPS

By Mario Osava
TIMBO / FLORIANOPOLIS, Brazil , Jun 13 2025 (IPS)

In 2014, Santa Catarina became the first and only state free of open-air garbage dumps in Brazil. Now, 14 of its municipalities are seeking to also free themselves from landfills and make use of nearly all urban solid waste.

The Intermunicipal Consortium of the Middle Itajaí Valley (Cimvi) expects to process in recycling, biodigestion and composting more than 90% of the garbage, surpassing the 65% benchmark reached by the Nordic countries of Europe, emphasized its executive director, Fernando Tomaselli.“We have 36 landfills in the state, only three public, the rest are private and there is little interest in changing the system, because whoever dominates the landfill also dominates the garbage collection service”: Fernando Tomaselli.

“It is a utopia,” said the executive president of the Brazilian Association of Energy from Waste (Abren), Yuri Schmitke.

“The unrealistic goal compromises the project,” he warned. Several European countries, Japan and South Korea have already eliminated sanitary landfills – the areas for the final disposal of solid waste – but resort to incineration to generate energy with non-recyclable garbage, he added.

Cimvi rules out that alternative. Its goal is to expand recycling and the circular economy of waste to an unprecedented proportion. “Our obsession is to take advantage of everything, to prove that garbage does not exist,” said Tomaselli.

But recycling has limits. Europe, after many attempts and advances, covers 25 % of waste on average and 32 % in the exceptional case of Germany. In addition, 19% of the waste still goes to landfills, according to data from Abren, which had its sixth annual congress in Florianopolis, capital of Santa Catarina, on June 5 and 6.

Cimvi was created in 1998, with only five participating municipalities, to jointly manage several issues, but not yet garbage. It reached its current composition of 14 municipalities in 2017 after taking over the management of the sanitary landfill in 2016, previously in charge of the water and sewage authorities.

Its headquarters was installed in Timbo, a town of 46 099 people, according to the 2022 national census. The 14 municipalities had 283 594 residents that year, the most populous being Indaial, with 71 549.

Fernando Tomaselli, director of Cimvi, an intermunicipal initiative that promotes circular waste management in the southern Brazilian state of Santa Catarina. Credit: Mario Osava / IPS

Landfill and recycling

The landfill receives garbage from five other “partner” cities, in addition to the 14 in the consortium, with a total of between 5,000 and 7,000 tons per month. Environmental education campaigns in schools, businesses and the streets have gradually expanded selective waste collection.

Yellow sacks were popularized and disseminated where the population put recyclable waste which, collected by the municipalities, are taken to the Waste Assessment Center (CVR I) at the Cimvi headquarters, on the outskirts of Timbo.

“Today we recover 20 to 22% of recyclable waste, against a Brazilian average of 2%. We want to reach 27%,” Tomaselli told IPS.

“We receive an average of 60 tons a day, 24 hours a day, in three shifts, Monday to Monday,” said Rosane Valério, president of the Medio Vale Cooperative, hired to separate and send the waste to purchasing companies, at CVR I, where 87 recyclers are employed.

The cooperative has another unit to process waste from two other nearby cities, Ituporanga and Aurora, with a total of 33 300 people.

“Of the material received, we still discard 30% that comes mixed or dirty with food remains, sometimes blood that attracts mosquitoes, glass and other dangerous objects such as syringes and medicines, which generate major difficulties for recycling,” explained Valério.

A bench at the entrance of Cimvi’s headquarters, made of thermoplastic produced from waste that was previously considered non-recyclable and destined for landfills. Credit: Mario Osava / IPS

Thermoplastic

She regretted that “we do not know the origin, there is a lack of awareness of the population in the correct disposal”. In any case, half of that 30% of discarded waste can be used for the production of thermoplastic, a hard material like concrete, which is used to make benches for squares, sidewalks, pavements and walls.

The cooperative already operates a pilot plant, with experimental production that has not yet been sold externally. “The municipalities are the initial market for the thermoplastic plates, as well as for the compost from the composting,” says Tomaselli.

Abren’s president, Schmitke, is skeptical. The consortium municipalities have a limited, insufficient demand, and the population does not trust products made from garbage, he argued.

Jaqueline Wagenknetht and Maria Eduarda Pegoretti, Cimvi’s environmental education and communication advisors, promote environmental education in the so-called European Valley to improve selective garbage collection and promote tourism and sustainable living. Credit: Mario Osava / IPS

But thermoplastic has been around for four decades and now there is equipment that facilitates its production at a high temperature, 160 degrees Celsius, and as an input, half of the plastic that is added to other waste, such as textiles, is enough, countered the director of Cimvi.

The use of local waste will take a leap forward with the inauguration of CVR II, which is expected in early 2026 and will use a large part of the organic waste for the production of biogas and biofertilizers. Another part will go to composting.

“The goal is to take advantage of 100% or 98%,” for which alternatives must be sought for waste, the “common garbage” for which there are still no ways to recycle, he said.

Cimvi headquarters, in the Sunflower Park, which combines ecotourism, sanitary landfill and urban waste utilization plants for biogas generation, recycling and composting. Credit: Mario Osava / IPS

Bottlenecks

One stumbling block is selective collection, which needs to be perfected. “In Milan, Italy, five types of garbage are separated at the source, be it food, plastics, paper, metals or glass. Here, it’s harder because everything is mixed together,” said Tomaselli.

That is why Cimvi gives priority to environmental education, through several campaigns such as “Vale reciclar”, and sustainable tourism, which highlights the beauties of the so-called European Valley, which includes other municipalities in addition to the 14 consortium members.

The Girasol Park was also created for this purpose, a tourist complex that includes the landfill, the Cimvi facilities and the surrounding forest, with trails for walks, said Jaqueline Wagenknetht, environmental education advisor.

Design and poetry contests among local students seek to promote the valley, which is called European because its population includes many immigrants, especially Germans, Italians and Poles.

The name Sunflower was chosen for the park because, in addition to its beauty, the flower symbolizes sustainability, as a source of oil and biofuel, the advisor explained.

Design of the future Sunflower Park, in which the green buildings, in the center, are intended for recycling and energy biodigestion. In the background on the left is the landfill already covered, able to receive solar energy panels. Credit: Courtesy of Cimvi

Cimvi benefits from the experiences of São Bento do Sul, a municipality of 83 277 people, 120 kilometers north of Timbo, which has a similar program that seeks to use up to 100% of the waste.

A process of dehydration of the organic part allows a better use of the waste, explained Jacó Phoren, consultant of the company 100lixo, which is involved in the project, during his speech at the Abren congress on June 6.

Fostering new companies that generate solutions for the waste industry is another focus of Cimvi, said Tomaselli.

In Curitibanos, a city 185 kilometers southwest of Timbo, with 40 045 people, the company Inventus Ambiental claims to have invented equipment that will facilitate the separation of garbage for better energy recovery or recycling, reducing the waste that makes landfills bigger.

Its pilot project will be inaugurated in a few months and is based on the use of 90-degree heat to treat organic material, informed Dirnei Ferri, director of the company.

Santa Catarina has already eliminated open dumps, although it is ignored if all of them have been cleaned up. Now it is a matter of “breaking the landfill trench”, said Tomaselli.

“We have 36 landfills in the state, only three public, the rest are private and there is little interest in changing the system, because whoever dominates the landfill also dominates the garbage collection service,” he concluded.

More than 30 solar panels power the pumping plant in the village of El Mozote, in eastern El Salvador, providing water to around 360 families. Credit: Edgardo Ayala / IPS

By Edgardo Ayala
EL MOZOTE, El Salvador , Jun 6 2025 (IPS)

The worst massacre of civilians in Latin America occurred in the Salvadoran village of El Mozote, where environmental projects are beginning to emerge, slowly fostering awareness about protecting the natural resources of this deeply symbolic site, embedded in the country’s historical memory.

Since early 2024, a small photovoltaic plant has been operating in El Mozote, in the district of Meanguera, eastern El Salvador, powering a municipal water system designed to supply around 360 families in the village and nearby areas.“We used to wash clothes in those communal wells, which were built after the war, in ’94.” — Otilia Chicas

“The project’s goal was to minimize environmental impacts in the area by seeking cleaner energy sources, and with that in mind, the solar panel system was implemented,” Rosendo Ramos, the Morazán representative of the Salvadoran Health Promotion Association (ASPS), the NGO behind the project, explained to IPS.

The Spanish organization Solidaridad Internacional Andalucía also participated in launching the initiative.

El Mozote is located in the department of Morazán, a mountainous region in eastern El Salvador. During the civil war (1980-1992), the area was the scene of brutal clashes between leftist guerrillas and the army.

In December 1981, over several days, military units massacred around 1,000 peasants in the village and neighboring communities—including pregnant women and children—accusing them of being a support base for the rebels.

The conflict is estimated to have left more than 75,000 dead and 8,000 disappeared.

The photovoltaic system installed in El Mozote, eastern El Salvador, operates alongside the national distribution grid, so on cloudy days with low solar generation, the conventional power grid is activated. Credit: Courtesy of ASPS

Sunlight to Distribute Water

The solar project consists of 32 panels capable of generating a total of 15 kilowatts—enough to power the equipment, primarily the 60-horsepower pump that pushes water up to the tank installed atop La Cruz mountain. From there, water flows down to households by gravity.

The photovoltaic system operates alongside the national power grid, so on cloudy days with low solar output, the conventional grid kicks in—though the goal is obviously to reduce reliance on it.

The project, costing US$28,000, was funded by the European Union as part of a larger environmental initiative that also included two nearby municipalities, Arambala and Jocoaitique, focusing on protecting the La Joya Pueblo micro-watershed.

Key aspects of the broader program include reducing the use of agrochemicals, plastic, and other disposable materials; and promoting rainwater harvesting.

The overall program reached 1,317 people (706 women and 611 men) across three municipalities and six communities, involving NGOs, schools, and local governments.

“The aim is to consume less energy from the national grid, thereby lowering pumping costs,” explained Ramos.

However, this cost reduction doesn’t necessarily translate into lower water bills for families in El Mozote and surrounding areas. That’s because the water system is municipally managed, and tariffs are set by local ordinances, making adjustments difficult—unlike community-run projects where residents and leaders can more easily agree on changes.

One benefit of the new system is that lower energy costs for the municipality free up funds to expand and improve other basic services—not just in Meanguera but also in places like El Mozote, Dennis Morel, the district director, told IPS.

The plaza of El Mozote, the iconic village in eastern El Salvador, was renovated, but local residents complain that the government-led construction work was not agreed upon with the community. Credit: Edgardo Ayala / IPS

Water in the postwar era

Otilia Chicas, a native of El Mozote, recalled what life was like in the village when there was no piped water service—back in the days following the end of the civil war in 1992, when people began returning to the area.

“We used to wash clothes in those communal wells. They were built after the war, in ’94,” said Chicas, pointing toward one of those now-empty wells, about 20 meters away from where she stood, inside a kiosk selling handicrafts, books, and T-shirts in El Mozote’s central plaza.

Next to the plaza is the mural bearing the names of the hundreds of people killed by the army—specifically, by units of the Atlacatl Battalion, trained in counterinsurgency by the United States.

“We used to fetch water from there and bathe there, but since these wells weren’t enough, we’d go to a spring, to ‘El Zanjo,’ as we called it,” she recounted.

She added that the drinking water project arrived between 2005 and 2006, finally bringing the resource directly into people’s homes.

“The community had to pitch in, and the hours people worked were counted as payment, as their contribution,” she noted while weaving colorful thread bracelets.

There is uncertainty over whether the kiosk in the village plaza will be removed. Several women from the El Mozote Historical Committee sell handicrafts and work as tour guides there. Credit: Edgardo Ayala / IPS

 Almost No One Was Spared 

Chicas, 45, was born in 1980, a year before the massacre. Now, she helps run the kiosk and works as a tour guide alongside other local women from the El Mozote Historical Committee, explaining to visitors the horrific events that took place in December 1981.

The artisan shared that her family lost several relatives in the 1981 massacre, as did nearly everyone here. The victims’ mural is filled with dozens of people bearing the last names Chicas, Márquez, Claros, and Argueta, among many others.

“My grandmother lost four of her children and 17 grandchildren,” she recalled.

Chicas’ father, in an attempt to save their lives, moved his family out of El Mozote before the massacre and resettled in Lourdes Colón, in the western part of the country. But the military ended up killing him in 1983 after discovering he was originally from Morazán and linking him to rebel groups.

“The National Guard came for him and two uncles—they saw they were from Morazán, a guerrilla zone,” she emphasized. “Before killing them, they forced them to dig their own graves. They were left by the roadside, in a place called El Tigre,” she explained.

The military operation that culminated in the massacre was planned and executed by the Salvadoran Army’s High Command, with support from Honduran soldiers and covered up by United States government officials, revealed Stanford University scholar Terry Karl in April 2021.

Karl testified as an expert witness during a hearing on the case held that April in San Francisco Gotera, the capital of Morazán.

Dormant in El Salvador’s judicial system since 1993, the case was reopened in September 2016. Among the accused are 15 soldiers—seven of them high-ranking Salvadoran officers—,the only surviving defendants from the original list of 33 military personnel.

The trial is currently in the investigative phase, where evidence is being gathered and examined before the judge decides whether to proceed to a full public trial.

A mural on the side of El Mozote’s plaza displays the names of the hundreds of people killed by the Salvadoran army in December 1981, marking the largest massacre of civilians in Latin America. Credit: Edgardo Ayala / IPS

Times of Uncertainty 

El Mozote’s central plaza has been renovated over the past three years as part of the government’s effort to give it a more orderly and modern appearance—a promise made by President Nayib Bukele when he visited the site in February 2021.

The town is also nearing completion of a Urban Center for Well-being and Opportunities (CUBO)—a government-sponsored community center designed to provide youth with access to reading materials, art, culture, and information and communication technologies.

However, some residents told IPS that these projects are being carried out without prior consultation or agreement with the community, in violation of the 2012 ruling by the Inter-American Court of Human Rights, which called for justice, truth, and reparations for the victims.

The reconstruction work demolished the bandstand, a space highly valued by the community as a gathering place for meetings and collective organizing.

Despite this, Chicas said she supports the plaza’s renovations, as they have made it more inviting for young people to spend time there. Still, she noted that the remodeling affected her personally.

The construction forced her to dismantle her small food stall, made of corrugated metal sheets, where she used to make and sell pupusas—El Salvador’s most iconic dish, made of corn and stuffed with beans, cheese, or pork.

Chicas also mentioned the ongoing uncertainty about whether the kiosk where she and other women craft and sell their handicrafts will be removed.

“We’re left in limbo—we don’t know what’s going to happen,” she said.