The Altos de Florida neighbourhood in southwest Bogotá shows the shift from rural to urban landscapes. Credit: UNDP

By Humberto Márquez
CARACAS, Dec 9 2024 (IPS)

Poverty, while declining in Latin America and the Caribbean so far this century, shows a new face, that of the looming vulnerability of the poor as they become less rural and more urban, the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) says in a new analysis.

“Not only is there more urban poverty, but also a greater percentage of the population is highly vulnerable, that is, they are very close to falling – and any small shock will make them fall – below the poverty line,” Almudena Fernández, chief economist for the region at the UNDP, told IPS.“It is no longer enough to lift people out of poverty; we have to think about the next step, to continue on this path, so that the population can consolidate”: Almudena Fernández.

Thus, “there is a segment of the population that remains above the poverty line, but which is pushed below it by an illness or the loss of household income,” Fernández told IPS from New York.

Rosa Meleán, 47, who was a teacher for 20 years in Maracaibo, the capital of Zulia, in Venezuela’s oil-rich northwest, told IPS that “falling back into poverty is like the slides where children play in the schoolyard: they keep going up, but with the slightest push they slide down again”.

Meleán has experienced this in person several times, supporting her parents, siblings and nephews with her salary, falling into poverty when her working-class father died, improving with a new job, her salary liquefied by hyperinflation (2017-2020), leaving teaching to search for other sources of income.

“You have to see what it’s like to be poor in Maracaibo, walking in 40 degrees (Celsius) to look for transport, without electricity, rationed water and earning US$25”, the last monthly salary she had as a teacher before retiring five years ago.

And then came the covid-19 pandemic, limiting her new occupations as an office worker or home tutor. She has barely recovered from that blow.

“We live in a time when shocks are more common – from extreme weather events, for example – and we see a lot of economic and financial volatility. We are a much more interconnected world. Any shock anywhere in the world produces a very direct contagion, they are the new normal,” says Fernández.

Shoppers jostle for the best prices at the Lo Valledor street market in Santiago, Chile. Urban households that ride the poverty line are particularly sensitive to food inflation. Credit: Max Valencia / FAO

Poverty falling in numbers

Starting in the 1950s, Latin America and the Caribbean experienced a rapid process of urbanisation, becoming one of the most urbanised regions in the world.

Today, 82% of the population lives in urban areas, compared to the world average of 58%, according to the UNDP.

Over the last two decades, the region has made progress in reducing extreme poverty and poverty in general. Even with setbacks since 2014, it recorded its lowest poverty rate in 2022 (26%), with slight decreases estimated for 2023 (25.2%) and 2024 (25%).

The Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean (ECLAC) indicates in its most recent report that poverty in 2023 will affect 27.3% of the region’s population, which it puts at 663 million people this year. This means that “172 million people in the region still do not have sufficient income to cover their basic needs (general poverty)”.

Among them, 66 million cannot afford a basic food basket (extreme poverty). But these figures are up to five percentage points better than in 2020, the worst year of the pandemic, and 80% of the progress is attributed to advances in Brazil, where transfers of resources to the poor were decisive.

ECLAC points out that poverty is higher in rural areas (39.1%) than in urban areas (24.6%), and that it affects more women than men of working age.

Despite the progress, “the speed of poverty reduction is starting to slow down, it is decreasing at a much slower rate. This is a first concern, because the region is growing less,” said Fernández.

She recalled that the International Monetary Fund (IMF) forecasts point to an average economic growth in the region of two per cent per year, “well below the world average. Thus, it will be more difficult to continue reducing poverty”.

A hill overcrowded with informal dwellings in the populous Petare neighbourhood in eastern Caracas. Credit: Humberto Márquez / IPS

Changing face

The proportion of poor people living in the region’s urban areas increased from 66% in 2000 to 73% in 2022, and the change is more dramatic among those living in extreme poverty, with the proportion of the urban extreme poor rising from 48% to 68% over the same period.

Tracing this change annually, a UNDP analysis found that urban poverty increased markedly during the commodity crisis of 2014 – and also during the pandemic – “revealing that urban poverty is more likely to increase in times of economic downturn than rural poverty”.

It argues that the post-pandemic rise in the cost of living affected urban households more, pushing households into poverty and worsening the living conditions of those who were already poor.

Urban households are more tied to the market economy than rural households, making them more vulnerable to economic fluctuations and related changes in employment.

In contrast, rural livelihoods allow households to use strategies such as subsistence farming, reallocation of labour, community support or selling assets such as livestock to cope with shocks. These are options that urban residents generally do not possess.

Another salient feature of the new face of urban poverty is that it is often concentrated in informal settlements on the peripheries of cities, where overcrowding and limited access to basic services create additional challenges.

Thus, in the Venezuelan case, “the features of poverty and vulnerability that stand out in urban poverty have to do with the precariousness of public services and the lack of opportunities,” Roberto Patiño, founder of Convive, a community development organisation, and Alimenta la Solidaridad, a welfare organisation, told IPS.

Patiño believes that “the burden of the cost of living and inflation is difficult to bear for people living in poverty in both urban and rural areas, even though in rural areas the food issue may be less serious”.

This is because in rural areas “people have access to smallholdings, to their own crops, and also, being farming areas, food costs tend to be lower than in the city, but health issues and other services such as transport, health and education are very precarious”, the activist pointed out.

Patiño mentioned another mark on the new face of poverty, that of the millions of Venezuelans who migrated to other South American countries in the last decade and who “have not recovered from the pandemic, from an economic point of view, with many of the migrants living in a precarious situation”.

A teenager doing homework in the Delmas 32 slum in Port-au-Prince. Credit: Dominic Chávez / WB

Seeking solutions

The UNDP argues that addressing poverty in urban and rural areas requires differentiated strategies, as policies that work in rural areas, such as promoting agricultural productivity and improving access to assets and markets, do not sit well with the plight of the urban poor.

For them, the cost of housing and food inflation are relevant concerns.

Fernández said that “much of the social policy that was implemented in the region decades ago, which is ongoing, was designed with a very rural poverty in mind, how to help the agricultural sector, how to achieve greater productivity in agriculture, how to meet basic unsatisfied needs in rural areas”.

“Now we must move toward a social policy that focuses a little more on the unsatisfied needs of urban poverty,” she said.

She believes that “urbanisation allows for another series of opportunities. For example, the greater agglomeration of people allows for easier access to services”, although there may also be negative effects such as a more difficult insertion in the labour market or health problems associated with overcrowding.

Among the solutions, Fernández ranked the need for greater economic growth first, “because we are not going to be able to reduce poverty if we do not grow”.

The economist then ranked education, good in quantity (coverage), but which must now focus on quality, in second place, in order to address the digital transition that is underway and the need for more training for workers.

Finally, the need for social protection – and despite slower growth and a tighter fiscal balance across the region, Fernández acknowledges –and investment in protecting people more, with policies and measures that include, for example, care, employability, productivity and insurance.

“It is no longer enough to lift people out of poverty; we have to think about the next step, to continue on this path, so that the population can consolidate, with a stable middle class that has mechanisms so that in times of stress or shock its consumption does not fall sharply,” said Fernández.

In other words, so that those who have their basic needs covered do not have to slide back down the poverty chute with every economic or health shock.

Women's demonstrations to demand respect for their rights are held in Latin American cities on Mar. 8, International Women's Day, calling on governments in the region to invest in promoting gender equality. The photo shows a march in Lima on Mar. 8, 2023. CREDIT: Walter Hupiú / IPS

By Mariela Jara
LIMA, Mar 7 2024 (IPS)

Time is running out to achieve gender equality in Latin America and the Caribbean by 2030. The autonomy of women and girls in the region is threatened by hunger, poverty and violence, and countries must urgently step on the gas.

For Mar. 8, International Women’s Day, United Nations agencies have focused on progress made towards the gender targets of the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) of the 2030 Agenda approved in 2015."In the context of low and volatile economic growth in the region, it is necessary to invest in women, because there is a historical debt to their rights and because this kind of spending has the potential to accelerate sustainable development." -- Ana Güezmes

“In our region, only 25 percent of the targets for which information is available in the SDG monitoring indicators allow us to foresee their fulfillment by 2030,” said Ana Güezmes, chief of the Division for Gender Affairs of the Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean (ECLAC).

From ECLAC headquarters in Santiago, Chile she told IPS that 48 percent of the goals have seen progress, albeit insufficient, in the right direction, while there has been backsliding on 27 percent.

The slogan set by the United Nations for this Mar. 8 is “Invest in Women: Accelerate Progress”, calling for greater spending by governments to achieve SDG 5, which has a global deficit of 360 billion dollars per year.

In the region, there are both progress and concerns regarding SDG 5, which refers to achieving gender equality and empowering women and girls.

Güezmes said the region is moving ahead in terms of strengthening policies and laws, but that the challenge is to accelerate the implementation and enforcement of government measures in order to increase the rate of progress towards substantive equality.

Ana Güezmes, chief of the Gender Affairs Division of the Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean (ECLAC), stressed to IPS the need to ensure investment in women to achieve gender equality. CREDIT: ECLAC

She said improvement has been slow towards other SDG 5 targets, such as the elimination of violence against women and girls, the eradication of child marriage, and the recognition and valuation of unpaid domestic and care work. And she added that the region continues to lag behind in technology for the empowerment of women.

Güezmes, a physician by profession, and an advocate for women’s human rights, a care society and gender equality, has held senior positions in the region at UN Women, the UN Population Fund (UNFPA), the World Health Organization (WHO) and the Pan-American Health Organization (PAHO) over the past 30 years.

Greater inequality among poor, indigenous and rural populations

Latin America and the Caribbean, which in 2022 was home to 334.627 million girls and women, 50.8 percent of the regional population according to the World Bank, are facing several crises.

The region was one of the hardest hit by the Covid-19 pandemic and for the last 10 years has averaged a meager 0.8 percent annual economic growth rate, affecting its population, which is suffering from poverty, food insecurity and lack of employment, all of which hit girls and women harder.

In Latin America, only 27 percent of the targets of Goal 5 of the Sustainable Development Goals, which promotes gender equality and the empowerment of women and girls, have been met. In this context, rural women – like this Quechua mother from the Peruvian Andes – are part of the most unequal female population in the region, affected by poverty, food insecurity and violence. CREDIT: Mariela Jara / IPS

On Feb. 28, ECLAC, in partnership with UN Women, presented a study on the state of progress towards gender equality in the region, which highlighted the gaps that hinder the rights of women, girls and adolescents.

Three out of 10 girls and women live in poverty and one out of 10 in extreme poverty, with higher rates among indigenous, black and rural women. Likewise, four out of 10 women suffer some level of food insecurity and hunger.

Of those over 15 years of age, 25 percent have no income of their own, a proportion that rises to 40 percent among those in the lowest socioeconomic quintile.

Nayda Quispe, from the Peruvian department of Cuzco, is one of the 3.4 million rural women in the Andean country. She has dedicated her life to agriculture and, at 62 years of age, is well aware of the harsh reality of rural life for women.

“We constantly experience inequality here. Women work all day, but are not paid or recognized for their efforts, continue to be pushed to the back burner, and because of economic dependence stay in violent relationships,” she told IPS during a meeting ahead of Mar. 8 in Cuzco, the capital of the southern Andean department.

Nayda Quispe, a Peruvian farmer from the department of Cuzco, pointed out the state of the soil as a result of the 2023 drought. She regretted that the authorities do not invest in the development of rural women who need access to education and technical training to be able to work and generate their own income. CREDIT: Mariela Jara / IPS

Quispe is one of the few women in her rural environment who managed to continue her studies, graduating as a biologist and working for a few years in her profession without losing her link with agroecology, to which she is now fully dedicated.

She criticized governments for building cement works instead of investing in education and training for women that would allow them to have decent jobs and earn their own money. “As long as this does not change, we will continue to be the forgotten ones as always,” she complained.

The ECLAC study shows that in Guatemala and Honduras, more than 50 percent and 43 percent of women, respectively, have no income of their own – among the highest levels in the region.

Güezmes stressed the impact this has on women’s economic independence, a necessary condition for physical autonomy and a life free of violence.

“Gender-based violence against women and girls occurs systematically and persistently in the region, in both the domestic and public spheres,” she said.

She highlighted the problem of early and forced child marriages and unions, which affect one out of every five girls in the region. Suriname, Nicaragua, Honduras, Belize, the Dominican Republic and Guyana lead with percentages above 30 percent. Only four countries have percentages below 20 percent: Costa Rica, Argentina, Peru and Jamaica.

In addition, the ECLAC study reports that in this region, considered to have the highest levels of gender-based violence, an average of 338 women per month and 11 per day are victims of gender-based homicide, or femicide. In 2022 at least 4050 women fell victim to this crime, 70 percent of whom were of reproductive age between 15 and 44 years.

María Eugenia Sarrias, head of Lxs Safinas, a lesbian feminist organization in Argentina, complained about the setbacks in the rights of women and minorities under the administration of far-right President Javier Milei. CREDIT: Lxs Safinas

Achievements at risk

The weakening of democracies in the region has had a direct impact on women’s rights. Achievements in gender institutionality in Argentina, for example, are in marked decline, including the right to abortion, under the government of far-right President Javier Milei, thus affecting progress towards the SDGs.

“Under Milei, women and minorities are heavily harassed. The era of rights is over; the right wing has arrived to cut back on the advances we had made in sexual and reproductive rights, gender equality and LGTBIQ+ rights,” María Eugenia Sarrias, president of Lxs Safinas, a lesbian feminist organization based in the Argentine city of Rosario, told IPS.

She added from that city that the setbacks in social policies have caused shortages in soup kitchens and school lunches. “They’re trying to pay the debt with the hunger of the people. The freedom they talk about is only for those who hold power and have money. We, women and minorities, are facing a very big risk,” she warned.

In El Salvador, President Nayib Bukele announced this month, as his first measure after his landslide reelection, the elimination of all vestiges of the gender perspective in public education, shortly after participating in a gathering of far-right leaders with former U.S. president and candidate Donald Trump.

There is also great concern in Ecuador, where emergency measures are in place to deal with organized crime.

“There are many more women who are impoverished, migrants and victims of violence not only from their partners but also from groups linked to crime,” Clara Merino, coordinator of the Luna Creciente National Movement of Women from Popular Sectors, told IPS.

She argued from Quito that if things continue the way they are going, it will not be possible to achieve gender equality by 2030. “The budget for education, health, human rights and women has been cut. It is impossible for government action to reach the territories where indigenous and black women live, where hunger, child malnutrition and migration of young people are on the rise,” she stressed.

The decriminalization of abortion is one of the demands of Latin American women. In the picture, a sign warns about the danger of clandestine abortions, at a demonstration during a meeting of the Organization of American States in the Dominican Republic, which criminalizes abortion in all circumstances, despite having the highest teenage pregnancy rate in the region. CREDIT: Mariela Jara / IPS

Investing in care

Güezmes said that “in the context of low and volatile economic growth in the region, it is necessary to invest in women, because there is a historical debt to their rights and because this kind of spending has the potential to accelerate sustainable development.”

She gave as an example investment in the care system to break the vicious circle of exclusion and transform it into a virtuous one with multiple positive social and economic effects such as generating employment, higher income and well-being.

“We are the only region in the last 45 years that has promoted an ambitious and comprehensive Regional Gender Agenda that, through the Buenos Aires Commitment, says care should be seen as a right, a need and a job. Addressing it in these three dimensions is essential to achieve the profound change that our societies need,” she underlined.

Excerpt:

A family from the Q'eqchi Mayan indigenous people of Guatemala gathers to share a meal cooked with firewood. Life in many rural areas of Latin America continues to be marked by scarce resources and inequality, in comparison with urban areas. CREDIT: IDB

By Humberto Márquez
CARACAS, Jan 31 2024 (IPS)

Rural life in Latin America and the Caribbean continues to be marked by poverty and inequality compared to the towns and cities where the vast majority of the population lives. A new focus on rural life in the region could help reveal and address the challenges and neglect faced by people in the countryside.

“Many people in our countryside simply no longer have a way to live, without services or incentives comparable to those in the cities, producing less and for less pay, under the threat of more disease and poverty,” Venezuelan coffee producer Vicente Pérez told IPS."Many people in our countryside simply no longer have a way to live, without services or incentives comparable to those in the cities, producing less and for less pay, under the threat of more disease and poverty." -- Vicente Pérez

In Mexico, whose countryside was home to 24 million of its 127 million inhabitants at the beginning of this decade, according to the World Bank, a study by the Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean (ECLAC) showed that eight out of every 10 rural inhabitants lived in poverty, and six in extreme poverty.

It was in the Mexican capital where experts from ECLAC and the International Fund for Agricultural Development (IFAD) proposed this January “a new approach” to the concept of rural life in the region, to help public action to reduce inequality and contribute to the achievement of the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs).

The project’s director, Ramón Padilla, told IPS from Mexico City that “we need a new narrative about rural Latin America that goes beyond the traditional static and dichotomous vision, and that sees rural areas not as backward places, but as territories with great potential for development and connections.”

Building a new narrative “is important for a better visualization, treatment and reduction of inequalities in income, infrastructure, education, health, gender, etc.,” added Padilla, head of ECLAC’s Economic Development Unit in Mexico.

“Those who have access to electricity, drinking water, communications and transport to work or school in a big city are at a great distance from life in many depressed rural areas,” said Pérez, executive director of the Venezuelan Confederation of Agricultural Producers (Fedeagro).

A woman feeds livestock next to her house in rural Nicaragua. Housing and food conditions are often very precarious in the most depressed rural areas of Central America. CREDIT: FAO

Entrenched rural poverty

Hilda, the head of her household in Los Rufinos, a village of 40 families in the middle of a sandy dry forest in the northwestern department of Piura, Peru, told visitors from the Argentina-based Latfem regional feminist communication network what it is like to live without electricity and drinking water, to cook with firewood and, among other hardships, to get her granddaughters the schooling she did not have.

In their dirt-floored houses with fences and walls made of logs, plastic and tin sheeting, the women in Los Rufinos cook in the early hours of the morning for the men of the village who go to work in the agro-exporting fruit plants in Piura, the departmental capital.

“When there is no moon, the night is really dark, you can’t see a thing. It’s not like in the city, where there is so much light,” Hilda commented to the Latfem representatives.

In Peru, a country of 33.5 million inhabitants (80 percent urban and 20 percent rural), 9.2 million people are poor, according to the government statistics institute. Poverty measured by income affects 24 percent of the urban population and 41 percent of the rural population, while extreme poverty affects 2.6 percent of the urban population and 16.6 percent of the rural population.

Farther north, in a rural area of the department of Cundinamarca in central Colombia, Edilsa Alarcón showed on the television program “En los zapatos de” (In the Shoes of), on the Caracol network, how she goes every day to two small fields near her home to milk four cows, her family’s livelihood.

Women farmers work in a field in Guatemala. In rural areas of Latin America, women have more precarious or lower paid jobs than men, and barely a third of them have access to forms of land ownership. CREDIT: Juan L. Sacayón / UNDP

She carries 18 liters of milk on the back of a donkey every morning, which she sells for 14 dollars, barely enough to live on. She owns no land and her biggest expense is renting pastureland for 860 dollars a year.

Colombia’s rural areas are home to 12.2 million people (51.8 percent men and 48.2 percent women), 46 percent of whom live in poverty, according to ECLAC.

“Gente de Guate”, produced by Guatemalan Youtubers , collects and delivers food, household goods and even cash for families in the countryside who barely scrape by in houses with four walls made of corrugated metal sheeting, boards and logs, wood stoves and a few chickens running around among corn and cooking banana plants.

Of Guatemala’s 17.2 million inhabitants, 60 percent live in poverty and between 15 and 20 percent in extreme poverty, according to figures from official entities and universities. Half of the population lives in rural areas, where poverty affects two thirds of the overall population – and 80 percent of indigenous people – and extreme poverty affects nearly one-third of the total population.

Schoolchildren walk through a suburban area in Mexico. The need to secure services such as education, health and communications, along with better incomes, continues to drive the displacement of rural dwellers. CREDIT: IDB

Regional data

Some 676 million people live in Latin America and the Caribbean, of whom 183 million are poor (29 percent), and 72 million are in extreme poverty (11.4 percent), according to ECLAC data for 2022 and 2023.

While 553 million people (81.8 percent) live in towns and cities, 123 million (18.2 percent) live in rural areas. And while in urban areas poverty stands at 26.2 percent and extreme poverty at 9.3 percent, in rural areas 41 percent of the inhabitants are poor and 19.5 percent are extremely poor.

Gender inequality also persists, stubbornly. One figure that reflects it is that only 30 percent of rural women (58 million) have access to some form of land ownership, their jobs are often more precarious and less well paid, and at the same time they spend more time on household and family care tasks.

The exodus from the countryside continues, first to the cities of each country, then abroad. In countries like Venezuela many rural dwellers alternate their life and work between their plots of land in the countryside and a slum in a nearby town every few days. CREDIT: Correo SurErbol

Time to migrate from the countryside

Latin America has experienced a massive exodus from rural to urban areas in the 20th century and so far in the 21st. “In 1960, less than half of the region’s population lived in cities. By 2016 that proportion had risen to over 80 percent,” wrote Matías Busso, a researcher at the Inter-American Development Bank (IDB).

This process, driven by the search for better employment opportunities and living conditions, first fueled the expansion of the region’s major cities – to form megalopolises such as São Paulo and Mexico City – and more recently migration to foreign destinations, such as the United States.

The largest migratory phenomenon abroad that the region has known, the exodus of more than seven million Venezuelans in the last decade, has involved numerous urban and suburban inhabitants, but also people from many rural areas.

Pérez said that, in addition, in countries like Venezuela there is now a tendency to move from the countryside to urban areas, “but not to the big cities, like Caracas or Maracaibo, but to nearby towns or small cities, maintaining their ties to the plot of land where the family has crops or a few animals.”

“New shantytowns form in small towns next to agricultural areas, such as coffee plantations in the Andes (southwest) or grain fields in the (central) Llanos, and people work for a few days in some urban job and then return to the countryside at the weekend. A sort of double life,” said Pérez.

View of a suburban area neighboring the city of Medellín, in northwestern Colombia, where urban and rural features are combined. ECLAC and IFAD are promoting a new narrative to consider the potential of many areas that should not be pigeonholed as exclusively urban or rural. CREDIT: Medellín city government

Seeking a new narrative

New realities such as these prompted the ECLAC-IFAD initiative to “overcome the traditional view that contrasts rural and urban areas, recognizing the existence of different degrees of rurality in the territories and greater interaction between them,” according to its advocates.

“The project seeks to replace the dominant narrative – which is reductionist and marginalizing – of rural areas as static and backwards, with one that recognizes the challenges and opportunities of today’s new rural societies,” said Peruvian economist Rossana Polastri, regional director of IFAD.

The basis of the initiative is that between what is defined as rural and urban – the limit in countries such as Mexico is to consider urban areas as those with more than 2,500 inhabitants and rural areas as those below that level – there is a variety, degree and wealth of possibilities and opportunities to address issues of equity and development.

Padilla from Mexico said that a first element of the work they propose is to collaborate with the public bodies in charge of designing and implementing policies for rural areas, since “technical work, well grounded in concepts and theories, has to go hand in hand with a dialogue with the public sector.”

“A second element is continuous dialogue with the communities. The new understanding has to be translated into participatory solutions, in which each community and each territory creates a new vision, a renewed plan for sustainable development,” said the head of the project to build a new approach to rural life in Latin America.

Aida Valdez stands outside her home in the Guaraní indigenous community of Yariguarenda, in northern Argentina, in front of the wood-burning oven she uses to cook - an example of energy poverty in vulnerable rural communities in Latin America. CREDIT: Daniel Gutman/IPS

By Emilio Godoy
MEXICO CITY, Dec 15 2021 (IPS)

The effects of the covid-19 pandemic and high energy prices have had an impact on the consumption of polluting fuels in Latin America and the Caribbean, exacerbating energy poverty in the region.

In some countries there is evidence of an increase in the use of charcoal and firewood. But there have been few studies to reflect this, because it is a recent development and there has been a tardy focus on the behavior of vulnerable sectors in response to the new realities they face.

Macarena San Martín, a researcher at the non-governmental Energy Poverty Network (RedPE) in Chile, said the phenomenon goes beyond the notion of access to electric power, and includes aspects such as the quality and affordability of energy.

“In all Latin American countries, the problem is considered one-dimensional, but multiple factors must be considered,” she told IPS from Santiago. “Access has been seen as a question of: can you plug something in? If you can, it’s solved. While today they have access, that does not necessarily guarantee that energy poverty has been eliminated. There are also problems of efficiency.”

In central Chile, many people use kerosene, a hydrocarbon derivative, and natural gas for household use and heating.

Due to the pandemic, a Basic Services Law has been in force since May, by means of which vulnerable electricity and gas users may defer payments, without the risk of being cut off. But this benefit expires on Dec. 31, so the beneficiaries will have to start paying off what they owe next February, up to a maximum of 48 monthly installments.

The Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean (ECLAC) establishes that a household suffers from energy poverty when it lacks equitable access to adequate, reliable, non-polluting and safe energy services to cover its basic needs and sustain the human and economic development of its members, and spends more than 10 percent of its income on energy costs.

Although access to electricity averages more than 90 percent in the region, in rural areas and urban peripheries more than 10 percent of households lack electric power in some cases, such as in Bolivia, Honduras, Haiti and Nicaragua, according to September data from ECLAC.

This charcoal factory in the state of Oaxaca in southern Mexico is an example of an ecological initiative that has not managed to curb the consumption of coal, despite rising prices, or the consumption of hydrocarbons. CREDIT: Emilio Godoy/IPS

Latin America and the Caribbean is the most unequal region in the world, according to international organizations, and this is reflected in the energy sector. While a minority can afford to install solar panels on their homes or drive an electric or hybrid gasoline-electric car, the majority depend on dirty energy or polluting transport.

When spending is highly unequal, as in this region, the resulting energy inequality tends to grow, concluded a 2020 report by three researchers from the School of Earth and Environment at the private University of Leeds in the UK.

Another report, entitled “Las luces son del pueblo (the lights belong to the people); Energy, access and energy poverty” and published in November by the non-governmental Observatorio Petrolero Sur, based in Argentina, puts the number of people lacking access to electricity in this region at almost 22 million, equivalent to 3.3 percent of the total population of 667 million people.

In addition, 12 percent of the region’s population use non-clean sources for energy services, as in Guatemala, Honduras, Jamaica, Nicaragua and Paraguay.

In the residential sector, the energy mix is based on kerosene, natural gas, firewood, electricity and liquefied gas.

The beauty of the snowy streets of Coyhaique, the capital of the southern Patagonian region of Aysén, belies the fact that it is the most polluted city in Chile, mainly due to the use of wet firewood to heat homes in an area where temperatures plunge in the wintertime. CREDIT: Marianela Jarroud/IPS

In Argentina, official figures indicate that more than one-fifth of the population lives in energy poverty, despite subsidized electric and gas rates.

In December 2019, shortly before the outbreak of the covid pandemic, the Social Solidarity and Productive Reactivation Law came into force in the Southern Cone country, which includes a revision of gas and electricity tariffs to avoid excessive increases, for the benefit of the economically vulnerable population.

Jonatan Núñez, a researcher at the Institute for Latin American and Caribbean Studies at the public University of Buenos Aires, links the lack of access to electric service in the region to income level.

There is a link “to formal employment, which not only guarantees access to a certain level of income, but also to renting housing in certain areas, and the possibility of gaining access to areas with better energy infrastructure. In poor neighborhoods, there is no access to electricity or gas networks. They are put in place manually and that generates blackouts or precarious conditions that can cause fires,” he told IPS from Buenos Aires.

In Mexico, poverty rose as a result of the pandemic, affecting up to 58.2 million people, or 43.5 percent of the total population, according to official data released in September. This meant a more than six percent increase in poverty compared to 2018, despite the millions of government social programs aimed at tackling chronic poverty in the country.

In urban areas, liquefied petroleum gas and gasoline experienced the largest price hikes, while in rural areas, coal and firewood reported the highest increases, perhaps as a substitute for fossil fuels.

Due to the rise in gas prices, driven by international prices, the Mexican government created the state-owned company Gas Bienestar, which sells natural gas at a subsidized price with a ceiling.

At most service stations in Brazil, consumers can choose between gasoline and ethanol at the pump. But consumers only use the biofuel when its price is favorable compared to gasoline. CREDIT: Mario Osava/IPS

Brazil, where poverty was already on the rise before the pandemic, is also facing higher domestic gas prices and the consequent increase in firewood consumption.

Brazil is a pioneer of the energy transition because of its promotion of clean energy and the low level of polluting fuels burnt in households. But in the region’s largest economy the burning of firewood has overtaken bottled gas since 2018, a trend that has been exacerbated since then, according to figures from the government’s Energy Research Company (EPE).

The existence of subsidies and frozen rates makes it more difficult to estimate energy inequality, as they do not reflect real costs, according to the experts consulted.

Energy poverty is a hurdle in the way of achieving the goals of the international Sustainable Energy for All Initiative, the program to be implemented during the United Nations Decade of Sustainable Energy for All, from 2014 to 2024.

This initiative seeks to ensure universal access to modern energy services and to double the global rate of energy efficiency improvements and the share of renewable energies in the global energy mix.

In addition, energy poverty stands in the way of reaching goal seven of the 17 Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), which aims to ” Ensure access to affordable, reliable, sustainable and modern energy for all” as part of the 2030 Agenda, adopted in 2015 by the members of the United Nations.

San Martín, the Chilean expert, said governments face a “complex problem” because there are many demands and difficulties.

“The planet is not infinite. The challenge must be adapted to the situation of each society and to territorial and cultural conditions. We have to work on how we use energy. The energy transition must consider access, quality and equality and it must be taken into account that we cannot continue spending beyond the planet’s capacity,” she said.

Núñez from Argentina said the solution is to consider energy as a right rather than a commodity.

“The response has been quite weak. Most of the energy consumed comes from gas-fired thermal power plants and hydroelectric plants, which are granted in concession to private companies. Services are still in the hands of private companies,” he stressed.

Remittances now account for an important portion of GDP in Latin America and the Caribbean and support millions of families, so the drop in this source of income is shaking the economies of many countries and deepening poverty in the region. CREDIT: World Bank

By Humberto Márquez
CARACAS, May 18 2020 (IPS)

Remittances that support millions of households in Latin America and the Caribbean have plunged as family members lose jobs and income in their host countries, with entire families sliding back into poverty, as a result of the COVID-19 health crisis and global economic recession.

The region will receive a projected 77.5 billion dollars in remittances this year, 19.3 percent less than the 96 billion dollars it received in 2019, according to provisional forecasts by the World Bank.

The damage “can be understood from the angle of consumption. Six million households, of the 30 million that receive remittances, will not have them this year, and another eight million will lose at least one month of that income,” expert Manuel Orozco told IPS from Washington, D.C.

Remittances in the region average 212 dollars per month, according to studies by the Inter-American Development Bank (IDB).

Remittances “represent 50 percent of the total income of the households that receive money from family members abroad, and increase their savings capacity to more than double that of the average population,” said Orozco, who heads the migration, remittances and development programme at the Inter-American Dialogue organisation.

“The projected fall, which would be the sharpest decline in recent history, is largely due to a fall in the wages and employment of migrant workers, who tend to be more vulnerable to loss of employment and wages during an economic crisis in a host country,” the World Bank stated in a report.

The cause of this was the shutdown of entire segments of economic activity in an attempt to curb the spread of the COVID-19 virus, which deprived migrants of their sources of employment and income, thus undermining their ability to send money back home to their families.

This is a global phenomenon, with remittances falling by at least 19.7 percent to 445 billion dollars in low- and middle-income countries as a whole: dropping by 23 percent in sub-Saharan Africa, 22 percent in South Asia, 19.6 percent in the Middle East and North Africa, and 13 percent in East Asia and the Pacific.

Remittances “are a vital source of income for developing countries,” World Bank Group President David Malpass said Apr. 22, noting their role in alleviating poverty, improving nutrition, increasing spending on education and reducing child labour in disadvantaged households.

Alicia Bárcena, executive secretary of the Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean (ECLAC), listed the drop in remittances among the factors that will depress the region’s economy to an unprecedented level, -5.3 percent, with the risk of poverty climbing from 186 million to 214 million inhabitants: 33 percent of the total population.

An empty money transfer office in Las Vegas, Nevada, which is usually packed with migrants sending remittances home from the U.S. to their families in Central America. The city, dedicated to leisure and tourism, has been paralysed by the COVID-19 pandemic, leaving thousands of migrant workers without employment or income. CREDIT: Western Union

Anxiety from the north

The countries that will be hardest hit are those of Central America and Haiti, according to Bárcena. Remittances make up between 30 and 39 percent of Haiti’s gross domestic product (GDP), and last year accounted for 21.8 percent of Honduras’ GDP, 21.2 percent of El Salvador’s and 13.8 percent of Guatemala’s.

“We’re talking about fragile states, with collapsed health systems, weak or corrupt governments, and budgets that were already insufficient to meet people’s needs and are worse off now,” Victoria Gass of the U.S. division of Oxfam’s anti-poverty coalition told IPS from New York.

Orozco stressed that it will affect the consumption capacity of 20 percent of Central Americans, who will be forced to use their savings, on average a quarter of all remittances, for immediate expenses such as buying food and medicine.

In El Salvador, for example, Gabriela Pleitez, 35, who lives in the capital, no longer receives the 200 dollars a month sent to her by her mother, a dental assistant, and her brother, a taxi driver, who live in Los Angeles, California and found themselves suddenly unemployed.

Gabriela completed the 400 dollars she needed to get by with unsteady work as a real estate agent or by selling clothes and beauty products. Now she takes in some money as an assistant at a stand that sells traditional foods.

“I don’t buy bread anymore, and I’m eating less. If you manage to get 10 dollars you have to think carefully what to spend it on. If I don’t pay the water bill, they will cut it off. My landlord won’t charge me rent for three months, in accordance with a government decree, but then he will want me to leave,” she told IPS.

Another Salvadoran, Rosa Ramírez, a 56-year-old mother and grandmother still in charge of an adult daughter and four children, said the pandemic dealt her small flower arrangement business a death blow. “The situation was difficult before, and now, with homes and businesses closed, I’m out of work,” the resident of Zacatecoluca, in the central department of La Paz, told IPS.

Young Latin Americans migrate in search of opportunities and older family members are dependent on their support through remittances to cover essential expenses such as food and medicine. CREDIT: IFAD

Her lifeline is her son Luis, 27, who found a job in 2018 as a carpenter in Stafford, Virginia, in the U.S. southeast, after fleeing from gangs who demanded he make payments to keep them from attacking his then three-year-old daughter.

Luis used to send her between 350 and 400 dollars a month “to pay bills, the rent, and medicine, because I’ve had high blood pressure for years and I can’t go without my medicine,” Rosa said. But now her son has only sent her half that because “he is working fewer hours, one day he gets a job and the next he doesn’t.”

Rosa’s daughter received a temporary 300 dollar aid package provided by the government for the most vulnerable, and was able to cover basic expenses. But Rosa is now anxious about how she will make ends meet. Her daughter, Gabriela, would like to emigrate to the United States, but she has been told that the legal process could take eight years.

Another hard-hit country is Mexico, where 42 percent of the population of 130 million lives in poverty. In 2019, 36 billion dollars in remittances came in, mostly from the 37 million people of Mexican origin living in the United States.

Seven million households received remittances in 2019, but this year 1.7 million of those households will not receive them, Orozco calculated, due to the wave of unemployment that is hitting the U.S.

Intra-regional migration in the South

South America has a more even spread of migration that provides it with remittances, between North America, Spain and other European countries, and the sub-region itself, greatly increased by the millions of Venezuelans who fled to neighbouring countries in the last six years due to the economic, political and humanitarian calamity in their country.

This is the case, for example, of 26-year-old Laura (who preferred not to give her last name), who works in a veterinary clinic in Lima, “which has practically been left without clients due to the lockdown ordered by the Peruvian government. My husband, who used to do various jobs, is not bringing in an income either,” she told IPS from the Peruvian capital.

Poverty in Latin America and the Caribbean will rise with the fall in economic activity, the largest seen in the region in almost a century, and this time there will be little relief from remittances because the COVID-19 pandemic has also sunk the economies of host countries. CREDIT: UNDP

Laura regularly sent 100 dollars a month to her mother, a widow raising two teenage children on the meager salary (equivalent to five dollars a month) of a school teacher in Barquisimeto, a city in central-western Venezuela.

With each remittance, her mother “could buy some medicine, some meat, milk and eggs to complete the CLAP (the acronym for the bag of basic foodstuffs that the government delivers monthly at subsidised prices to poor families), but now I can’t send her almost anything, we’re just trying to scrape by in Lima,” said Laura.

Of the Venezuelans working in Peru, 46 percent were street vendors, 15 percent were employed in shops and six percent worked in restaurants – activities that have all faced restrictions in the COVID-19 pandemic, according to research by Cécile Blouin of the Pontifical Catholic University in Lima.

In the last five years, 1.6 million Venezuelans have migrated to Colombia, 880,000 to Peru, 385,000 to Ecuador, 370,000 to Chile, 250,000 to Brazil and 145,000 to Argentina, according to a platform of United Nations agencies and NGOs monitoring the phenomenon.

The Venezuelan diaspora was added to more traditional migration flows, such as that of Paraguayans in Argentina: 550,000 migrants who sent home some 70 million dollars in 2019, a figure that was already declining due to exchange controls in Buenos Aires.

One third of the 1.3 billion dollars that Bolivia received in remittances in 2019 came from Bolivian migrants in Argentina, Brazil and Chile, but the figure has dropped since March with the measures put in place in the attempt to contain the spread of COVID-19.

In Peru, which has three million citizens living abroad, a quarter of the 3.3 billion dollars the country received in remittances in 2019 came from the 350,000 Peruvians living in Argentina and the 250,000 in Chile.

Until this global upheaval, remittances were counter-cyclical: workers sent more money to their families when their home countries were experiencing crisis and hardship, which this time they have not been able to do because the pandemic and recession have affected all countries.

But there is some hope for the future. According to the International Monetary Fund, after falling -3.0 percent in 2020, the world economy will grow 5.8 percent in 2021 (Latin America 3.4 percent) and remittances will also increase at a similar rate. In low- and middle-income countries they will total 470 billion dollars.

But for millions of Latin American families, like those of Gabriela and Rosa in El Salvador or Laura in Venezuela, that’s too long a wait.

With reporting from Edgardo Ayala in San Salvador.

Congestion in public hospitals is frequent in Latin America even without epidemics. Long waits and the need to resort to out-of-pocket spending to obtain medical assistance are common in the region. CREDIT: Courtesy of Integralatampost

By Humberto Márquez
CARACAS, Apr 4 2020 (IPS)

Health systems in Latin America, already falling short in their capacity to serve the population, especially the poor, are in a weak position and face serious risks when it comes to addressing the COVID-19 pandemic.

Low levels of health spending and a relative scarcity of hospital beds are indicators that most countries in the region do not guarantee universal access to healthcare and risk being overwhelmed by the wave of the new coronavirus.

“Even in well-organised and robust health systems the challenges posed by a pandemic are felt swiftly, and this is even more true in weak ones like those in much of Latin America. In epidemiology, if you trail behind an epidemic, you are going to suffer havoc,” former Venezuelan health minister José Félix Oletta (1997-1999) told IPS.

Of the 630 million people in Latin America and the Caribbean, 30 percent do not have regular access to health services, mainly due to geographic or income issues, according to the Pan American Health Organisation (PAHO), an affiliate of the World Health Organisation (WHO).

That figure is in line with the proportion of people living in poverty, according to the Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean (ECLAC), which counts 185 million poor people in the region, and reports that over 10 percent of the total regional population – 68 million people – live in extreme poverty.

The regional average for health spending is under four percent of gross domestic product (GDP) and only 2.2 percent is central government expenditure, according to ECLAC and PAHO figures.

In 2014, the region’s governments committed to raising health spending to at least six percent of GDP, but only Cuba (10.6 percent), Costa Rica (6.8 percent) and Uruguay (6.1 percent) have met that goal.

The most industrialised countries spend eight percent of GDP on health, between 3,000 and 4,000 dollars per inhabitant per year, compared to about 1,000 dollars per person in Latin America. Argentina, Chile, Cuba and Uruguay spend around 2,000 dollars per person, but Haiti, Honduras and Venezuela spend less than 400.

Out-of-pocket spending (the amount people spend directly on a service) is low in Cuba, Costa Rica or Uruguay (10 to 20 percent) and very high in others such as Venezuela (63 percent), Guatemala (54 percent) or the Dominican Republic (45 percent).

These out-of-pocket payments by individuals illustrate the inadequacy of public health provision, as well as of social security or private insurance, and the fact that the poor are the most vulnerable because they sometimes refrain from seeking care that they cannot afford.

Another indicator is the number of beds available in hospitals, which does not measure the quality of infrastructure, staffing or efficiency in these facilities: the regional average is 27 per 10,000 inhabitants. A portion, sometimes very small, are intensive care beds.

But “it is not enough to have hospitals and health centres. They must properly combine human resources, infrastructure and equipment, medicines and other health technologies, to provide quality care,” said PAHO Director Carissa Etienne.

If the COVID-19 pandemic continues to spread in the region, Bolivia, Guatemala, Haiti, Honduras, Nicaragua, Paraguay and Venezuela are “the Latin American countries most at risk,” according to PAHO.

A view of the University Hospital of Maracaibo, the “oil capital” of Venezuela, in the west of the country. Large hospitals do not guarantee good-quality service in and of themselves, because skilled staff and adequate equipment and technology are also needed, says PAHO. CREDIT: SAHUM

IPS took a closer look at the situation in four countries to show the different weaknesses and strengths of health systems in the region.

Brazil, persistent inequality

Over the last three decades, the largest country in the region, with a population of 211 million, has developed a unique public health system, with programmes such as Mais Médicos, Farmácia Brasil Poupa Lar and Estratégia Saúde da Família. The latter is a strategy enabling a team of doctors, nurses and assistants to care for up to 3,000 people at a local level.

Mais Médicos deployed up to 18,000 doctors, more than half of them Cuban, in remote villages and isolated rural communities in Brazil. But since December 2018 the programme shrank after Brasilia severed relations with Havana and thousands of Cuban doctors were forced to return home.

The social gap is widening, since public health, with 44 percent of the hospital beds, must serve 75 percent of the population, while private clinics have more than half of the beds for 25 percent of the inhabitants.

In 2009, Brazil had 18.7 beds per 10,000 inhabitants, which dropped to 17.2 in 2017, half of them in four of its 27 states, in the wealthier southeast. It has 47,000 intensive care beds, but for every one in the public health system – 90 percent of which are occupied – there are 4.6 in the private health sector.

Brazil “is not prepared to face the coronavirus epidemic, not so much because of a lack of resources, but due to their poor distribution, the high level of inequality in terms of access to services, poor management and lack of equity,” epidemiologist Eduardo Costa, an international cooperation advisor at the National School of Public Health, told IPS.

Cuba, medicine for export

The Cuban health system, touted by the socialist government as one of the achievements of the revolution, is public and free of charge for the country’s population of 11.2 million, with 90 doctors for every 10,000 inhabitants, according to official figures.

Although there are no precise figures on how many of its 47,000 beds are for intensive care – and there are complaints from the public about delays for non-urgent surgical procedures – Health Minister José Ángel Portal said the island nation has 274 beds to treat seriously ill coronavirus patients and plans to add another 200.

One of Cuba’s flagship programmes is the international medical cooperation missions, which began in 1963 and have sent 407,000 doctors, technicians and assistants to 164 countries, providing free medical assistance to poor countries, under the format of cost-sharing to other nations, or as a source of income in some cases.

The annual income from this programme – 29,000 doctors worked in 65 countries in 2019 – exceeds six billion dollars. For the COVID-19 pandemic, Cuba is setting up 14 medical brigades with 600 members, more than half of whom are women.

Chile is prepared, although it’s never enough

In Chile, a country of 18.7 million people, health coverage is public for 14 million and private for three million, and there is a separate system for the 400,000 members of the armed forces, put in place by the dictatorship of General Augusto Pinochet (1973-1990), which has not been modified.

All workers are required to contribute seven percent of their wages to the health institution of their choice. Those who are covered by the public health system complain about long waits of weeks or months to see a doctor and of up to a year or even more for surgery.

These were some of the shortcomings that fueled the mass protests that broke out in Chile in October 2019 and raged for months until a referendum was agreed to allow voters to choose whether to replace the constitution inherited from the dictatorship.

Chile has 22 hospital beds for every 10,000 inhabitants. That is a total of about 32,000, with 3,300 for emergencies, which the government aims to increase to 5,200 in the face of the pandemic.

Nelly Alvarado, a professor at the Diego Portales University and a public health specialist, told IPS that “the health system’s capacity is never going to be enough in the face of an unexpected situation coming from the rest of the world.”

She pointed out that critical care beds “have never been abundant either in Chile or the rest of the world. They are expensive and highly complex, because sophisticated equipment and specialised staff are required.”

Venezuela, on the verge of collapse

Official health statistics became unavailable in Venezuela over the past decade. But studies by non-governmental organisations warn that the health care system is on the verge of collapse and that the country is experiencing a “complex humanitarian emergency.”

Venezuela, a country of 30 million people, is at the bottom of the regional charts in terms of health spending and the provision of hospital beds. The NGO Doctors for Health reported that during 2019 there were power failures in 63 percent of 40 large hospitals it monitors, and water supply failures in 78 percent.

Barrio Adentro, a programme launched in 2003 that brought thousands of Cuban doctors to low-income areas, has almost disappeared and most of its premises have closed.

“We are at the bottom of a PAHO list of 33 countries in the hemisphere in terms of preparing for COVID-19,” Oletta said. “And the pandemic follows setbacks in vaccination campaigns and containment of preventable diseases that have re-emerged, such as malaria, measles and tuberculosis.”

The health crisis is part of the general collapse of basic services that has accompanied the economic recession over the past five years and hyperinflation over the past three years, driving the exodus of almost five million of Venezuela’s 32 million inhabitants. Among those who have emigrated were more than 22,000 doctors, according to the medical association.

Latin America, lagging behind in health care and spending, should heed the call of Maria Neira, WHO Director for the Department of Public Health, Environmental and Social Determinants of Health: “Something we have all forgotten is that investment in public health and health systems should not be regretted…it is always going to be a profitable investment.”

This article includes reporting by Ivet González in Havana, Mario Osava in Rio de Janeiro, and Orlando Milesi in Santiago.

Gilberto Gómez stands next to the cow he bought with the support of his migrant children in the United States,which eases the impact of the loss of his subsistence crops, in the village of La Colmena, Candelaria de la Frontera municipality in western El Salvador. This area forms part of the Central American Dry Corridor, where increasing climate vulnerability is driving migration of the rural population. Credit: Edgardo Ayala/IPS

By Edgardo Ayala
CANDELARIA DE LA FRONTERA, El Salvador, Jan 2 2019 (IPS)

As he milks his cow, Salvadoran Gilberto Gomez laments that poor harvests, due to excessive rain or drought, practically forced his three children to leave the country and undertake the risky journey, as undocumented migrants, to the United States.

Gómez, 67, lives in La Colmena, in the municipality of Candelaria de la Frontera, in the western Salvadoran department of Santa Ana.

The small hamlet is located in the so-called Dry Corridor of Central America, a vast area that crosses much of the isthmus, but whose extreme weather especially affects crops in Guatemala, Honduras and El Salvador.

“They became disillusioned, seeing that almost every year we lost a good part of our crops, and they decided they had to leave, because they didn’t see how they could build a future here,” Gómez told IPS, as he untied the cow’s hind legs after milking.

He said that his eldest son, Santos Giovanni, for example, also grew corn and beans on a plot of land the same size as his own, “but sometimes he didn’t get anything, either because it rained a lot, or because of drought.”

The year his children left, in 2015, Santos Giovanni lost two-thirds of the crop to an unusually extreme drought.

“It’s impossible to go on like this,” lamented Gómez, who says that of the 15 families in La Colmena, many have shrunk due to migration because of problems similar to those of his son.

The Dry Corridor, particularly in these three nations, has experienced the most severe droughts of the last 10 years, leaving more than 3.5 million people in need of humanitarian assistance, a report by the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO) warned as early as 2016.

Now Gómez’s daughter, Ana Elsa, 28, and his two sons, Santos Giovanni, 31, and Luis Armando, 17, all live in Los Angeles, California.

“Sometimes they call us, and tell us they’re okay, that they have jobs,” he said.

The case of the Gómez family illustrates the phenomenon of migration and its link with climate change and its impact on harvests, and thus on food insecurity among Central American peasant families.

La Colmena, which lacks piped water and electricity, benefited a few years ago from a project to harvest rainwater, which villagers filter to drink, as well as reservoirs to water livestock.

However, their crops are still vulnerable to the onslaught of heavy rains and increasingly unpredictable and intense droughts.

Domitila Reyes pulls corn cobs from a plantation in Ciudad Romero, a rural settlement in the municipality of Jiquilisco, in eastern El Salvador. The production of basic grains such as corn and beans has been affected by climate change in large areas of the country. Credit: Edgardo Ayala/IPS

In addition to the violence and poverty, climate change is the third cause of the exodus of Central Americans, especially from Guatemala, Honduras and El Salvador, according to the new Atlas of Migration in Northern Central America.

The report, released Dec. 12 by the Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean (ECLAC) and FAO, underscores that the majority of migrants from these three countries come from rural areas.

Between 2000 and 2012, the report says, there was an increase of nearly 59 percent in the number of people migrating from these three countries, which make up the so-called Northern Triangle of Central America. In Guatemala, 77 percent of the people living in rural areas are poor, and in Honduras the proportion is 82 percent.

In recent months, waves of citizens from Honduras and El Salvador have embarked on the long journey on foot to the United States, with the idea that it would be safer if they travelled in large groups.

Travelling as an undocumented migrant to the United States carries a series of risks: they can fall prey to criminal gangs, especially when crossing Mexico, or dieon the long treks through the desert.

Another report published by FAO in December, Mesoamerica in Transit, states that of the nearly 30 million international migrants from Latin America, some four million come from the Northern Triangle and another 11 million from Mexico.

The study adds that among the main factors driving migration in El Salvador are poverty in the departments of Ahuachapán, Cabañas, San Vicente and Sonsonate; environmental vulnerability in Chalatenango, Cuscatlán, La Libertad and San Salvador; and soaring violence in La Paz, Morazán and San Salvador.

And according to the report, Honduran migration is strongly linked to the lack of opportunities, and to high levels of poverty and violence in the northwest of the country and to environmental vulnerability in the center-south.

With respect to Guatemala, the report indicates that although in this country migration patterns are not so strongly linked to specific characteristics of different territories, migration is higher in municipalities where the percentage of the population without secondary education is larger.

In Mexico, migration is linked to poverty in the south and violence in the west, northwest and northeast, while environmental vulnerability problems seem to be cross-cutting.

“The report shows a compelling and comprehensive view of the phenomenon: the decision to migrate is the individual’s, but it is conditioned by their surroundings,” Luiz Carlos Beduschi, FAO Rural Development Officer, told IPS from Santiago, Chile, the U.N. organisation’s regional headquarters.

He added that understanding what is happening in the field is fundamental to understanding migratory dynamics as a whole.

The study, published Dec. 18, makes a “multicausal analysis; the decision to stay or migrate is conditioned by a set of factors, including climate, especially in the Dry Corridor of Central America,” Beduschi said.

For the FAO expert, it is necessary to promote policies that offer rural producers “better opportunities for them and their families in their places of origin.”

It is a question, he said, “of guaranteeing that they have the necessary conditions to freely decide whether to stay at home or to migrate elsewhere,” and keeping rural areas from expelling the local population as a result of poverty, violence, climate change and lack of opportunities.

In the case of El Salvador, while there is government awareness of the impacts of climate change on crops and the risk it poses to food security, little has been done to promote public policies to confront the phenomenon, activist Luis González told IPS.

“There are national plans and strategies to confront climate change, to address the water issue, among other questions, but the problem is implementation: it looks nice on paper, but little is done, and much of this is due to lack of resources,” added González, a member of the Roundtable for Food Sovereignty, a conglomerate of social organisations fighting for this objective.

Meanwhile, in La Colmena, Gómez has given his wife, Teodora, the fresh milk they will use to make cheese.

They are happy that they have the cow, bought with the money their daughter sent from Los Angeles, and they are hopeful that the weather won’t spoil the coming harvest.

“With this cheese we earn enough for a small meal,” he said.

Immigrants in Chile, which draws migrants from other countries in Latin America, celebrate the Fiesta of Cultures for a Dignified Migration waving flags from their countries at the emblematic Plaza de Armas in Santiago on Dec. 18, International Migrants Day. Credit: Orlando Milesi/IPS

By Orlando Milesi
SANTIAGO, Dec 20 2018 (IPS)

A landmark global migration pact provides dignity and rights to migrants in every situation and context, stressed representatives of non-governmental organisations in Latin America and the Caribbean, where some 30 million people live outside their countries, forced by economic, social, security, political and now also climatic reasons.

Experts and migrants from the region lamented that some countries are marginalising themselves from this multilateral and collaborative effort to solve a global problem by breaking with a pact that “establishes a minimum foundation for dialogue,” as Rodolfo Noriega of Peru, leader of the National Immigrant Coordinating committee in Chile that includes 72 organisations, told IPS.

The Global Compact for Safe, Orderly and Regular Migration was approved at a Dec. 10-11 intergovernmental conference in Marrakech, Morocco by 164 countries, which on Dec. 19 endorsed it in a vote at the United Nations in New York."There are places where the most urgent thing is for the migrant not to lose his or her life, or not to be persecuted, or not to be kidnapped by a trafficking network. There are other contexts in which the problem has to do with discrimination, access to opportunities, access to rights, one's value as a person and not being seen as just a number." -- Juan Pablo Ramacciotti

The right-wing governments of Chile and the Dominican Republic abstained from voting on the agreement, arguing that it does not protect the interests of their countries. This South American country is currently a destination for migrants from neighboring countries, and the Dominican Republic receives a major influx of people from Haiti, with which it shares the island of Hispaniola.

The non-binding agreement has 23 objectives and aims to “minimise the structural factors” that force mass exodus, while including measures against trafficking in persons and the separation of migrant families, and calling for international cooperation, as a first step towards establishing a common approach in a world in which one in 30 people is a migrant.

Juan Pablo Ramacciotti, an official with the Chilean Jesuit Migrant Service, told IPS that the agreement “recognises migrants as people who have dignity and rights in every situation and every context.”

The expert in Latin American migration recalled that currently in this region of 657 million inhabitants, the points of greatest need and crisis for migrants in the region are in the northern triangle of Central America and Venezuela.

In the first case, migrants from Guatemala, Honduras and El Salvador cross Mexico in their attempt to reach the United States, and in the second, thousands of Venezuelans are fleeing a collapsing country and changing the situation in other South American countries.

“Today the caravan of 7,000 migrants (heading to the U.S. via Mexico) has made the headlines around the world, but it is a situation that is constantly repeated. There are caravans that may not be so massive, but they are permanently seeking to reach the United States. It’s a serious situation, a critical issue, where violations of rights and discrimination abound,” Ramacciotti said.

He added that the second problem arises from the economic and political crisis in Venezuela “because many people are leaving that country, presenting a humanitarian challenge, also because of the incorporation of Venezuelans in different countries, especially in South America.”

There are 258 million migrants around the world, and about 30 million of them are from Latin America and the Caribbean. The phenomenon of migration “has a diverse range of expressions that have placed the issue on the global agenda,” said Alicia Bárcena, executive secretary of the Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean (ECLAC).

Venezuelan immigrants, whose presence grew explosively in Chile as a result of the chaos in their country, successfully sell their products and typical foods in stalls in Vega Central, Santiago’s main food market, which has become a meeting point for Venezuelans. Credit: Orlando Milesi/IPS

This U.N. agency was responsible for coordinating the Latin American position during the talks leading up to the pact. At its headquarters in Santiago, the first regional meeting to establish a common position was held in August 2017, which concluded with the demand that the agreement ratify the human right to free movement of persons.

In this region, migration increased mainly with the exodus from Central America to the United States. By 2015, 89 percent of Salvadoran migrants, 87 percent of Guatemalan migrants and 82 percent of Honduran migrants resided in the United States.

Bárcena has indicated that the pact “is a response by the international community to the challenges and opportunities posed by migration, in a global agenda. It is a historic instrument that constitutes an example of renewed multilateral interest.”

In the opinion of the senior U.N. official, the complexity of the phenomenon of migration in the region “has been growing, as revealed by the movements in Central America and the insufficient responses to the so-called mixed flows, including unaccompanied migrant children; emigration from Venezuela and the new realities faced by the receiving countries; and emigration from Haiti and the discrimination suffered by migrants from that country.”

“And as a corollary, the picture of contrasting realities expressed in the endless adversities faced by many migrants on their journeys,” Bárcena said.

Ramacciotti pointed out that migration is caused by situations of humanitarian crisis, political crisis, extreme poverty and war and that therefore it is very important “that we jointly take charge of a problem and a challenge that we all face.”

Juan Pablo Ramacciotti, an expert on migration in Latin America with the Chilean Catholic Jesuit Migrant Service, gives an interview to IPS in Santiago. Credit: Orlando Milesi/IPS

The U.N. Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO), whose regional headquarters are also in Santiago, added two other ingredients driving people out of Latin American countries: climate change and the lack of opportunities in the countryside.

In Central America, for example, “The massive irregular migration we have seen in recent months is a direct consequence of food insecurity, climate crises, the erosion of the social fabric and the lack of economic opportunities in the rural villages and areas of these countries,” said Kostas Stamoulis, deputy director-general of FAO’s Economic and Social Development Department, earlier this month.

Because of the complexity of the phenomenon, “that migration is an issue that each country sees according to its own criteria, from the borders inward, is not a path that allows us to approach the phenomenon with a vision of the future or understanding that it is a problem that involves everyone: countries of origin, transit and destination,” Ramacciotti said.

He added that the fact that “we reached a pact in which we agree on major issues and which helps us move forward together is very good news for all.”

Noriega, for his part, criticised the non-binding nature of the pact and said that, furthermore, “the power and authority of the State is overvalued without giving a more explicit and full guarantee to the right to migrate.”

The pact means “having a minimum level of dialogue,” he said, but he criticised the reaffirmation of “the power of the State to decide who enters and who does not enter their countries and to decide what treatment irregular or regular immigrants should receive.”

He added that “a rather positive aspect is that it reaffirms principles that international law has already been asserting, such as, for example, that deportation should be a last resort in exceptional circumstances.”

With regard to the biggest threats to migrants, Ramacciotti said that depends on the context and the area in question.

“There are places where the most urgent thing is for the migrant not to lose his or her life, or not to be persecuted, or not to be kidnapped by a trafficking network. There are other contexts in which the problem has to do with discrimination, access to opportunities, access to rights, one’s value as a person and not being seen as just a number,” he explained.

Susana Gómez, who was left blind by a beating from her then husband, says in a park in the city of La Plata, Argentina that she did not find support from the authorities to free herself from domestic violence, but a social organisation saved her from joining the list of femicides in Latin America - gender-based murders of women, which numbered 2,795 in 2017 in the region. Credit: Fabiana Frayssinet/IPS

By Fabiana Frayssinet
LA PLATA, Argentina, Dec 1 2018 (IPS)

Left blind by a beating from her ex-husband, Susana Gómez barely managed to avoid joining the list of nearly 2,800 femicides committed annually in Latin America, but her case shows why public policies and laws are far from curtailing gender-based violence in the region.

“I filed many legal complaints (13 in criminal courts and five in civil courts) and the justice system never paid any attention to me,” Gómez told IPS in an interview in a square in her neighborhood in Lisandro Olmos, a suburb of La Plata, capital of the province of Buenos Aires.

Although they already existed in Argentina in 2011, when the brutal attack against her took place, the specialised women’s police stations were not enough to protect her from her attacker.

Her life was saved by La Casa María Pueblo, a non-governmental organisation that, like others in Latin America, uses its own resources to make up for the shortcomings of the state in order to protect and provide legal advice to the victims of domestic violence.

Gómez, her four children and her mother, who were also threatened by her ex-husband, were given shelter by the NGO.

“We had nothing. We went there with the clothes on our back and our identity documents and nothing else because we were going here and there and everyone closed the door on us: The police didn’t do anything, nor did the prosecutor’s office,” said Gómez, who is now 34 years old.

“Without organisations like this one I wouldn’t be here to tell the tale, the case wouldn’t have made it to trial. Without legal backing, a shelter where you can hide, psychological treatment, I couldn’t have faced this, because it’s not easy,” she said.

In April 2014, a court in La Plata sentenced her ex-husband, Carlos Goncharuk, to eight years in prison. Gómez is now suing the government of the province of Buenos Aires for reparations.

“No one is going to give me my eyesight back, but I want the justice system, the State to be more aware, to prevent a before and an after,” said Gómez, who once again is worried because her ex will be released next year.

Lawyer Darío Witt, the founder of the NGO, said Gómez was not left blind by an accident or illness but by the repeated beatings at the hands of her then-husband. The last time, he banged her head against the kitchen wall.

“The aim of the reparations is not simply economic. What we want to try to show in the case of Susana and other victims is that the State, that the authorities in general, whether provincial, municipal or national and in different countries, have a high level of responsibility in this. The state is not innocent in these questions,” Witt told IPS.

“When I went blind and realised that I would no longer see my children, I said ‘enough’,” Gómez said.

Alarming statistics

According to the Gender Equality Observatory (OIG) of the Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean (ECLAC), at least 2,795 women were murdered in 2017 for gender-based reasons in 23 countries in the region, crimes classified in several countries as femicides.

The list of femicides released this month by OIG is led by Brazil (1,133 victims registered in 2017), in absolute figures, but in relative terms, the rate of gender crimes per 100,000 women, El Salvador reaches a level unparalleled in the region, with 10.2 femicides per 100,000 women.

Charts showing absolute numbers of femicides by country in Latin America and the Caribbean, as well as the rate of gender-based murders per 100,000 women. Credit: ECLAC Gender Equality Observatory

Honduras (in 2016) recorded 5.8 femicides per 100,000 women, and Guatemala, the Dominican Republic and Bolivia also recorded high rates in 2017, equal to or greater than two cases per 100,000 women.

The OIG details that gender-based killings account for the majority of murders of women in the region, where femicides are mainly committed by partners or ex-partners of the victim, with the exception of El Salvador and Honduras.

“Femicides are the most extreme expression of violence against women. Neither the classification of the crime nor its statistical visibility have been sufficient to eradicate this scourge that alarms and horrifies us every day,” said ECLAC Executive Secretary Alicia Bárcena as she released the new OIG figures.

Ana Silvia Monzón, a Guatemalan sociologist with the Gender and Feminism Studies Programme at the Latin American Faculty of Social Sciences (Flacso), pointed out that her country has had a Law against Femicide and other Forms of Violence against Women since 2008 and a year later a Law against Sexual Violence, Exploitation and Trafficking in Persons.

“Both are important instruments because they help make visible a serious problem in Guatemala, and they are a tool for victims to begin the path to justice,” she told IPS from Guatemala City.

However, despite these laws that provided for the creation of a model of comprehensive care for victims and specialised courts, “the necessary resources are not allocated to institutions, agencies and programmes that should promote such prevention, much less specialised care for victims who report the violence,” she said.

In addition, “prejudices and biased gender practices persist among those who enforce the law” and “little has been done to introduce educational content or programmes that contribute to changing the social imaginary that assumes violence against women as normal,” and especially against indigenous women, she said.

#NiUnaMenos, #NiUnaMás

In the region, “significant progress has been made, which is the expression of a women’s movement that has managed to draw attention to gender-based violence as a social problem, but not enough progress has been made,” Monzón said.

Five-year-old Olivia holds up a sign with the slogan against femicide, #NiUnaMenos (Not One Woman Less), which has spread throughout Latin America in mass mobilisations against gender violence. Olivia participated in a neighborhood activity in the Argentine city of La Plata on the International Day for the Elimination of Violence against Women, celebrated Nov. 25. Credit: Fabiana Frayssinet/IPS

According to U.N. Women, a total of 18 Latin American and Caribbean nations have modified their laws to punish sexist crimes against women such as femicide or gender-based aggravated homicide.

But as Gómez and other social activists in her neighborhood conclude, much more must be done.

The meeting with the victim took place on Nov. 25, during an informal social gathering in the Juan Manuel de Rosas square, organized by the group Nuevo Encuentro.

The activity was held on the occasion of the International Day for the Elimination of Violence against Women, which launched the 16 Days of Activism against Gender Violence. This year’s slogan is #HearMeToo, which calls for victims to be heard as part of the solution to what experts call a “silent genocide.”

María Eugenia Cruz, a neighborhood organiser for Nuevo Encuentro, said that despite the new legal frameworks and mass demonstrations and mobilisations such as #NiUnaMenos against machista violence and feminicide, which have spread throughout Argentina and other countries in the region, “there is still a need to talk about what is happening to women.”

“In more narrow-minded places like this neighbourhood, it seems like gender violence is something people are ashamed of talking about, the women feel guilty. Making the problem visible is part of thinking about what tools the State can provide,” she told IPS.

“Or to see what those tools are,” said Olivia, her five-year-old daughter who was playing nearby, and who proudly held a sign that read: “Ni Una Menos,” (Not One Woman Less) the slogan that has brought Latin American women together, as well as #NiUnaMás (Not One More Woman).

She exemplifies a new generation of Latin American girls who, thanks to massive mobilisations and growing social awareness, are beginning to speak out early and promote cultural change.

“Today women are becoming aware, starting during the dating stage, of the signs of a violent man. He doesn’t like your friends, he doesn’t like the way you dress. Now there’s more information available, and that’s important,” said Gómez, who is a volunteer on a hot-line for victims of violence.

“Now they call you, they ask you for advice, and that’s good. In the past, who could you call? Besides the fear, if they promise to conceal your identity, that prompts you to say: I’m going to file a complaint and I have a group of people who are going to help me,” said the survivor of domestic abuse.

Excerpt:

A girl helps her family peeling cassava in Acará, in the northeast of Brazil's Amazon jungle. More than five million children are chronically malnourished in Latin America, a region sliding backwards with respect to the goal of eradicating hunger and extreme poverty, while obesity, which affects seven million children, is on the rise. Credit: Fabiana Frayssinet/IPS

By Orlando Milesi
SANTIAGO, Oct 14 2018 (IPS)

For the third consecutive year, South America slid backwards in the global struggle to achieve zero hunger by 2030, with 39 million people living with hunger and five million children suffering from malnutrition.

“It’s very distressing because we’re not making progress. We’re not doing well, we’re going in reverse. You can accept this in a year of great drought or a crisis somewhere, but when it’s happened three years in a row, that’s a trend,” reflected Julio Berdegué, FAO’s highest authority in Latin America and the Caribbean.

The regional representative of the Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO) of the United Nations said it is cause for concern that it is not Central America, the poorest subregion, that is failing in its efforts, but the South American countries that have stagnated."More than five million children in Latin America are permanently malnourished. In a continent of abundant food, a continent of upper-middle- and high-income countries, five million children ... It's unacceptable." -- Julio Berdegué

“More than five million children in Latin America are permanently malnourished. In a continent of abundant food, a continent of upper-middle- and high-income countries, five million children … It’s unacceptable,” he said in an interview with IPS at the agency’s regional headquarters in Santiago.

“They are children who already have scars in their lives. Children whose lives have already been marked, even though countries, governments, civil society, NGOs, churches, and communities are working against this. The development potential of a child whose first months and years of life are marked by malnutrition is already radically limited for his entire life,” he said.

What can the region do to move forward again? In line with this year’s theme of World Food Day, celebrated Oct. 16, “Our actions are our future. A zero hunger world by 2030 is possible”, Berdegué underlined the responsibility of governments and society as a whole.

Governments, he said, must “call us all together, facilitate, support, promote job creation and income generation, especially for people from the weakest socioeconomic strata.”

In addition, he stressed that policies for social protection, peace and the absence of conflict and addressing climate change are also required.

New foods to improve nutrition

In the small town of Los Muermos, near Puerto Montt, 1,100 kilometers south of Santiago, nine women and two male algae collectors are working to create new foods, with the aim of helping to curb both under- and over-nutrition, in Chile and in neighboring countries. Their star product is jam made with cochayuyo (Durvillaea antarctica), a large bull kelp species that is the dominant seaweed in southern Chile.

“I grew up on the water. I’ve been working along the sea for more than 30 years, as a shore gatherer,” said Ximena Cárcamo, 48, president of the Flor del Mar fishing cooperative.

Julio Berdegué, FAO regional representative for Latin America and the Caribbean, in his office at the agency’s headquarters in Santiago, Chile, during an interview with IPS to discuss the setback with regard to reaching the zero hunger target in the region. Credit: Orlando Milesi/IPS

The seaweed gatherer told IPS from Los Muermos about the great potential of cochayuyo and other algae “that boost health and nutrition because they have many benefits for people,” in a region with high levels of poverty and social vulnerability, which translate into under-nutrition.

“We are adding value to products that we have in our locality. We want people to consume them and that’s why we made jam because children don’t eat seaweed and in Chile we have so many things that people don’t consume and that could help improve their diet,” she explained.

In the first stage, the women, with the support of the Aquaculture and Fishing Centre for Applied Research, identified which seaweed have a high nutritional value, are rich in minerals, proteins, fiber and vitamins, and have low levels of sugar.

The seaweed gatherers created a recipe book, “cooking with seaweed from the sea garden”, including sweet and salty recipes such as cochayuyo ice cream, rice pudding and luche and reineta ceviche with sea chicory.

Now the project aims to create high value-added food such as energy bars.

“We want to reach schools, where seaweed is not consumed. That’s why we want to mix them with dried fruit from our sector,” said Cárcamo, insisting that a healthy and varied diet introduced since childhood is the way to combat malnutrition, as well as the “appalling” levels of overweight and obesity that affects Chile, as well as the rest of Latin America.

The paradox of obesity

“Obesity is killing us…it kills more people than organised crime,” Berdegué warned, pointing out that in terms of nutrition the region is plagued by under-nutrition on the one hand and over-nutrition on the other.

“Nearly 60 percent of the region’s population is overweight. There are 250 million candidates for diabetes, colon cancer or stroke,” he said.

He explained that “there are 105 million obese people, who are key candidates for these diseases. More than seven million children are obese with problems of self-esteem and problems of emotional and physical development. They are children who are candidates to die young,” he said.

According to Berdegué, this problem “is growing wildly…there are four million more obese people in the region each year.”

A seaweed gatherer carries cochayuyo harvested from rocks along Chile’s Pacific coast. The cultivation and commercialisation of cochayuyo and other kinds of seaweed is being promoted in different coastal areas of the country, to provide new foods to improve nutrition in the country. Credit: Orlando Milesi/IPS

The latest statistic for 2016 reported 105 million obese people in Latin America and the Caribbean, up from 88 million only four years earlier.

In view of this situation, the FAO regional representative stressed the need for a profound transformation of the food system.

“How do we produce, what do we produce, what do we import, how is it distributed, what is access like in your neighborhood? What do you do if you live in a neighborhood where the only store, that is 500 meters away, only sells ultra-processed food and does not sell vegetables or fruits?” he asked.

Berdegué harshly criticised “advertising, which tells us every day that good eating is to go sit in a fast food restaurant and eat 2,000 calories of junk as if that were entirely normal.”

Change of policies as well as habits

“You have to change habits, yes, but you have to change policies as well. There are countries, such as the small Caribbean island nations, that depend fundamentally on imported food. And the vast majority of these foods are ultra-processed, many of which are food only in name because they’re actually just chemicals, fats and junk,” he said.

He insisted that “we lack production of fruits, vegetables and dairy products in many countries or trade policies that encourage imports of these foods and not so much junk food.”

And to move toward the goal of zero hunger in just 12 years, Berdegué also called for generating jobs and improving incomes, because that “is the best policy against hunger.”

The second of the 17 Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), which make up the 2030 Development Agenda, is achieving zero hunger through eight specific targets.

Poverty making a comeback

“In Latin America we don’t lack food. People just can’t afford to buy it,” Berdegué said.

He also called for countries to strengthen policies to protect people living in poverty and extreme poverty.

According to the latest figures from the Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean (ECLAC), poverty in the region grew between 2014 and 2017, when it affected 186 million people, 30.7 percent of the population. Extreme poverty affects 10 percent of the total: 61 million people.

Moreover, in this region where 82 percent of the population is urban, 48.6 percent of the rural population is poor, compared to 26.8 percent of the urban population, and this inequality drives the rural exodus to the cities.

“FAO urges countries to rethink social protection policies, particularly for children. We cannot allow ourselves to slow down in eradicating malnutrition and hunger among children,” Berdegué said.

He also advocated for the need for peace and the cessation of conflicts because “we have all the evidence in the world that when you lose peace, hunger soars. It is automatic. The great hunger hotspots and problems in the world today are in places where we are faced with conflict situations.”

“We have countries in the region where there is upheaval and governments have to know that this social and political turmoil causes hunger,” he concluded.

Excerpt:

Delegates from 24 countries of Latin America and the Caribbean pose next to Argentine authorities, after the opening of the seventh meeting of the negotiating committee on a regional agreement that will enable access to information, participation and justice in environmental matters, held in Buenos Aires. Credit: Daniel Gutman/IPS

By Daniel Gutman
BUENOS AIRES, Aug 4 2017 (IPS)

The final declaration of the Earth Summit held in Rio de Janeiro in 1992 stated that “Environmental issues are best handled with the participation of all concerned citizens.” However, this rarely happens in Latin America and the Caribbean.

That was acknowledged by most countries in the region, which 25 years later are drafting a supranational legal instrument with the aim of making public access to information and to environmental justice a reality for people in Latin America and the Caribbean.

Delegates from 24 countries are taking part Jul. 31 to Aug. 4 in the Seventh Meeting of the Negotiating Committee of the Regional Agreement on Access to Information, Public Participation and Access to Justice in Environmental Matters in Latin America and the Caribbean, known as Principle 10 of the 1992 Rio Declaration on Environment and Development.“Social conflicts over environmental issues resulted in 200 deaths last year around the world, 60 per cent of which were documented in Latin America. The most violent region has been the Amazon rainforst, where 16 people died for defending their land.” -- Danielle Andrade

This week’s meeting in Buenos Aires, organised by the Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean (ECLAC) and the government of Argentina, is to be the second-to-last debate on Principle 10, and is being held behind closed doors.

The final document is to be approved in November or December in an as-yet undetermined city.

But there is still a long way to go.

At the current meeting it has become clear that the debate on how far public participation should go has not come to a conclusion, although the ECLAC-sponsored negotiations began in November 2014.

The main sticking point is whether or not the document will be binding on signatory states.

If an agreement is reached for a binding document, it would set minimum standards for the participating countries to guarantee public participation in environmental matters.

If the decision is that it should be non-binding, it could merely become yet another declaration of principles that changes nothing.

The UN special rapporteur on Human Rights and the Environment, John Knox of the United States, said “the instrument should be binding, even though that would make it harder to reach a consensus.”

“If it isn’t binding, the impression will be that instead of taking a step forward, we took a step back,” he said.

Knox was a special guest speaker during the opening of the meeting, which was held at Argentina’s Foreign Ministry, with the presence of three Argentine cabinet ministers and Costa Rica’s deputy minister of environment, Patricia Madrigal.

The Costa Rican official took part on behalf of the Negotiating Committee board, which is presided by her country and Chile, and is also composed of Argentina, Mexico, Peru, Trinidad and Tobago, and Saint Vincent and the Grenadines.

In the same vein as Knox, the Argentine expert on environmental law, Daniel Sabsay, a speaker at a special session on the implementation of the future agreement, said he was “worried by the prospect that the text will just end up as another grand declaration, without any actual results.”

“The drafts that have been released until now set out no concrete instruments which countries are required to enforce and which would empower civil society. If it is not binding, it will not be useful,” he told IPS.

The debate is taking place against a backdrop of escalating disputes over land and natural resources, around the world and in this region in particular.

“Social conflicts over environmental issues resulted in 200 deaths last year around the world, 60 per cent of which were documented in Latin America. The most violent region has been the Amazon rainforst, where 16 people died for defending their land,” said Danielle Andrade of Jamaica, chosen as a civil society representative in the negotiations.

This situation shows the failure of governments to address the concerns of local communities in the face of extractive or land use projects that affect them.

Principle 10 of the Río Declaration establishes that States must facilitate and promote social participation in debates on environmental issues, making information widely available and guaranteeing access to legal and administrative proceedings.

The consensus is that Latin America in general has sufficient regulations in this respect. In fact, Argentine Foreign Minister Jorge Faurie said that “since 1992, 20 countries in the region have incorporated in their constitutions the right to a healthy and sustainable environment.”

The issue, it seems, is how to put into practice those rights which are only on paper.

“Nearly every country has environmental laws, but they have problems enforcing them. That is why we believe the creation of a committee for implementation of the treaty is crucial, to which people in the region could turn with their environmental conflicts, and which should include public participation, and should have powers to intervene,” Andrés Nápoli of Argentina, another civil society representative in the negotiations, told IPS.

The agreement that is being negotiated is inspired by the so-called Aarhus Convention, approved in 1998 in that city in Denmark, within the United Nations Economic Commission for Europe (UNECE). The Convention was especially useful for Eastern Europe countries, which had abandoned Communism a few years before, and had few environmental regulations.

“The countries of Latin America have been developing environmental laws since the 1990s, and recently some English-speaking Caribbean nations have being doing so,” said Carlos de Miguel, head of ECLAC’s Policies for Sustainable Development Unit.

“For that reason, the aim is enhancing the capacities of countries to ensure the rights established in the existing laws. Some countries have not been able to implement their environmental legislation, not because they don’t want to, but due to a lack of training and of financial resources,” he told IPS.

De Miguel said “we expect an ambitious agreement, that includes the creation of the institutions that will enforce it. We hope it will be signed not only by the 24 countries that are negotiating, but by all 33 countries in the region.”

The countries taking part in the discussions include all of the nations of South America except for Venezuela, Guyana and Surinam, and all of the countries of Central America with the exception of Nicaragua, while Caribbean island nations like Barbados and Cuba are absent.

Among the articles that are under discussion in Buenos Aires are article 6, which defines the scope of the right to information; 7 and 8, on the participation of citizens in decision-making processes; and 9, which regulates access to justice.

The last meeting will discuss the articles that define the institutions created by the treaty and whether or not to create an enforcement committee that, according to the majority, will define its effectiveness.

“It is essential to establish mechanisms to ensure that participation is real and ensure the most vulnerable populations have access to information, because official bodies and NGOs on their own cannot mobilise participation,” said Leila Devia, head of the Basel Convention Regional Centre for South America, at the special session on implementation.

That convention, which has 186 member States, deals with the Control of Transboundary Movements of Hazardous Wastes and Their Disposal.

Alicia Bárcena in the Forum of the Countries of Latin America and the Caribbean on Sustainable Development, in Mexico City. Credit: ECLAC

By Alicia Bárcena
MEXICO CITY, Apr 28 2017 (IPS)

The end of last year and the start of the current one were marked by major changes and enormous uncertainties, although there were also some notable advances and great opportunities, both at the global level and for Latin America and the Caribbean.

The 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development and its 17 Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), adopted in September 2015 by the United Nations General Assembly, offer an important road map for the construction of a new and ambitious international consensus regarding the need for greater cooperation to correct asymmetries and set the foundations for an open, sustainable and stable multilateral system.

The civilizing, universal and indivisible 2030 Agenda places human dignity and equality at its centre and, consequently, demands the broadest participation by all actors, including States, civil society and the private sector.

The current context, characterized by a weakening of multilateralism, the return of protectionism and the rise of extremist political movements, undermines the advancement of that global consensus, poses a grave challenge to the world economy and threatens the attainment of the 17 Sustainable Development Goals.

The current context, characterized by a weakening of multilateralism, the return of protectionism and the rise of extremist political movements, undermines the advancement of that global consensus, poses a grave challenge to the world economy and threatens the attainment of the 17 Sustainable Development Goals.
In our region, we face a complex scenario of lower economic growth, with notable steps forward such as the peace process in Colombia, and also great uncertainties in the political and economic future of the region, in a year of key elections and electoral preparations.

The unfavourable economic climate and low levels of investment impacting productivity and restricting the structural change necessary to progress towards a new development model threaten the social achievements attained by our region’s countries in recent decades, in particular the reduction of poverty and inequality. That is a cause for concern since, even today, poverty still affects 175 million people in Latin America and the Caribbean, 75 million of whom face the day-to-day challenges of extreme poverty.

For that reason, it is a matter of urgency for the civilizing agenda for equality offered by the 2030 Agenda to acquire an identity and a home in Latin America and the Caribbean. For us to give it a Latin American and Caribbean face and institutions, in accordance with our history and our circumstances and with our rich diversity and shared hopes, and to shape it according to the urgent demands that our reality imposes.

ECLAC has stressed that social issues cannot be addressed in the social arena alone, and that macroeconomic management and industrial policies, innovation and technology are crucial in resolving social problems. Neither can productivity and structural change be addressed solely in the economic arena. The fact of the matter is that social investment increases productivity and generates positive externalities throughout the system, whereas its absence raises costs and leads to lost income.

As regards the environment, the region’s countries must gear their efforts towards increasing investment and strengthening technological capacities in the developing countries, in order to decouple rising gross domestic products from increased emissions of greenhouse gases and other pollutants through a big environmental push.

In this context, understanding the urgency of the challenges they face in the present circumstances and the need to bolster the region’s voice in global sustainable development forums, the countries of our region created the Forum of the Countries of Latin America and the Caribbean on Sustainable Development which seeks, through exchanges of experiences, good practices and shared learning, to encourage peer-to-peer collaboration and to bring about a comprehensive, coherent and more efficient implementation of the 2030 Agenda.

The Forum, which held its first meeting in Mexico City on 26 to 28 April, is an annual mechanism that will launch a new methodology for multi-actor engagement, and its results will be used for the region’s submissions to the High-level Political Forum that meets in New York every July.

It provides a space for the region’s countries to reflect on what their medium- and long-term development strategies and priorities will be, and it also strengthens regional integration as an essential tool for meeting the challenges of the global context.

Today more than ever, we must promote and expand cooperation and integration on a multilateral basis. The 2030 Agenda and the SDGs are universal not only in that they aspire to include all the world’s countries and that their attainment only makes sense at the planetary level. They are also universal in that national efforts can be bolstered by the presence of global and regional cooperation or severely compromised by its absence.

Excerpt:

Rural workers in the Bajo Lempa region of El Salvador. In Latin America and the Caribbean, 78.1 per cent of employed women work in low productivity sectors, which implies lower pay, less contact with technology and innovation, and in many cases poor quality jobs. Credit: Edgardo Ayala/IPS.

By Alicia Bárcena
SANTIAGO, Mar 3 2017 (IPS)

Latin America and the Caribbean is the only region in the world where, for the past four decades, states have continuously met to discuss and commit themselves politically to eradicating discrimination and gender inequality and moving towards guaranteeing women the full exercise of their autonomy and human rights.

Since the first Regional Conference on Women in Latin America and the Caribbean, held in Havana in 1977, the region has been through years of political, economic, social and cultural changes, which have meant progress for women in the region but which also have shown the persistence of inequality.

We have overcome a number of obstacles, collectively giving rise to exceptional developments. But there is still a wide wage gap in the region, as well as pending issues in terms of sexual and reproductive rights and the challenge of achieving greater political participation for women.

The sustainable development goal involving gender equality, born from the synergy between the Regional Gender Agenda and the 2030 Agenda, leads us to focus our attention and action on the structural basis of inequality in our societies.

In the first place, we look at socio-economic inequality and poverty and the necessary transformation of the prevailing development model towards one that incorporates new patterns of sustainable production and consumption, and of redistribution of wealth, income and time.

In Latin America and the Caribbean, 78.1 per cent of employed women work in sectors defined by the Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean (ECLAC) as low productivity sectors, which implies lower pay, less contact with technology and innovation, and in many cases poor quality jobs.

The labour market is the master key to equality; the redistribution of income and the guaranteeing of rights begin there. The proportion of women in the labour market has increased in countries in the region. However, in the last 10 years women’s participation in the labour force in the region has remained stagnant around 53 per cent, revealing a ceiling on the incorporation of women in remunerated work.

In its latest studies, ECLAC has shown that a rise in the proportion of women in the labour market would contribute to the reduction of poverty in the region, with paradigmatic cases such as El Salvador, where poverty could be reduced by up to 12 percentage points if more women earned an income.

ECLAC Executive Secretary Alicia Bárcena. Credit: Lorenzo Moscia/ECLAC

To understand the barriers that women face it is crucial to analyse two key aspects of economic autonomy. On the one hand, access to their own monetary resources, and on the other hand, the dimension of time use.

In the region, the proportion of women without an income of their own amounts to about 30 per cent; that is to say, one in three women in Latin America and the Caribbean still lack their own source of income. This is without a doubt a great challenge for the autonomy of women who depend on other members of the household to satisfy their needs and those of their families.

Moreover, 26 per cent of women over 15 earn less than the minimum wage. As a result, more than half of the women in the region either have no income of their own or earn so little that real economic autonomy is impossible.

Proposals such as a universal basic income or the enforcement of a minimum wage in certain female-dominated sectors which today have no legal protection are tools that would boost women’s access to their own income.

With respect to time use, it has been demonstrated that women across the region invariably have a larger total workload than men. The traditional sexual division of labour, very marked in the region, assigns non-remunerated work mainly to women, and makes it virtually their exclusive responsibility.

This is one of the main obstacles for women to join the labour market and have access to personal and professional development. The reduction of the workday and policies to promote shared responsibility in care-giving are tools that could modify and help balance the current inequality in the workload between women and men.

Along with indicators on time use, putting a monetary value on housework and unpaid caregiving in the household and including it in the national accounts has been a powerful tool for making women’s contribution to national economies visible.

Estimates indicate that the value of unpaid work represented 24.2 per cent of Mexico’s GDP in 2014, 20.4 per cent of Colombia’s GDP in 2012, 18.8 per cent of Guatemala’s GDP in 2014, and 15.2 per cent of Ecuador’s GDP in 2012.

Figures reveal that if unpaid housework and caregiving was given a market value, approximately one-fifth of the wealth quantified in the national accounts would be produced in the households, mainly by women.

This information clearly points to the need to design public policies aimed at achieving equality, which recognise women’s contribution to the economy through unpaid work and promote shared responsibility and a more equitable distribution of the workload.

What are needed are public policies to avoid reproducing gender stereotypes, taking into account the different roles that women play, and strengthening their insertion in the labour market and their professional development at the highest level, to capitalise on their training and skills in sectors of higher productivity. This would undermine the foundations of the horizontal and vertical segmentation that characterises the labour market for women today.

In October 2016, the governments gathered at the XIII Regional Conference on Women agreed to implement the Montevideo Strategy and put into effect the premises established in previous agreements, and to comply with the Sustainable Development Goals included in the 2030 Agenda.

This synergy raises the challenge of implementing gender equality as a key cross-cutting component of every public policy, in pursuit of fulfilling the 2030 Agenda.

The time has come for a shift in the gender paradigm in our countries, to put an end to patriarchal society. It is time to pave the way for equality in all its forms and in all possible scenarios, to respect and view women beyond our gender, for all our capabilities and for our continuous struggle for the construction of a more just and equitable society, not just for all women, but for everyone.

This article is part of a series of stories and op-eds launched by IPS on the occasion of this year’s International Women’s Day on March 8.

Excerpt:

One of the concerns about compliance with Habitat III is how to finance the new public works, taking into consideration the considerable investment required. In the image, a photocomposition of European cities in a Habitat III exposition in Quito. Credit: Emilio Godoy/IPS

By Emilio Godoy
QUITO, Oct 27 2016 (IPS)

“We as mayors have to govern midsize cities as if they were capital cities,” said Héctor Mantilla, city councilor of Floridablanca, the third-largest city in the northern Colombian department of Santander.

He told IPS that “citizens not only demand public services, but also infrastructure; and environmentally and financially sustainable construction works are needed.”

Mantilla, who took office in January, participated in the United Nations Conference on Sustainable Housing and Urban Development (Habitat III), held Oct. 17-20 in the capital of Ecuador, which produced the “Quito Declaration on Sustainable Cities and Human Settlements for All,” known as the New Urban Agenda (NUA).

At the summit, organised by U.N. Habitat every 20 years, Mantilla talked about infrastructure needs and management.In 2015, 54 percent of the world population lived in urban areas, a rate that will climb to 66 percent by 2050. The Americas will be the most urbanised region in the world, with 87 percent urban population.

Floridablanca, population 300,000, is part of the Bucaramanga metropolitan area, together with two other municipalities. To address people’s demands, the local administration built two highway interchanges and a paragliding park.

The mayor’s experiences and expectations reflect the concerns of governments, particularly local administrations. In fact, one of the NUA’s major challenges is the environmental and financial sustainability of the infrastructure required to meet the commitments made in Quito with regard to housing, transport, public services and digitalisation.

For Alicia Bárcena, executive secretary of the Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean (ECLAC), the priorities are mobility, water and sewage, adequate housing, resilience, renewable energy, promotion of digitalisation and the fight against segregation and inequality.

“There is a lack of infrastructure. It is not sufficiently integrated. We have two scenarios: the United States with high car use rates, or the European, with smaller cities, where the use of private cars is discouraged,” she told IPS.

Bárcena said that “a certain kind of infrastructure and planning is required” in order for cities to be “resilient”, a concept touted in recent years by international organisations such as the World Bank and the Inter-American Development Bank (IDB), defined as the capacity of an ecosystem to absorb environmental stress without undergoing fundamental changes.

In 2015, 54 percent of the world population lived in urban areas, a rate that will climb to 66 percent by 2050. The Americas will be the most urbanised region in the world, with 87 percent urban population. The projected proportions are 86 percent in Latin America and the Caribbean; 74 percent in Oceania; 82 percent in Europe; 64 percent in Asia; and 56 percent in Africa.

Mayor Héctor Mantilla (right) spoke at Habitat III about the infrastructure needs in midsize cities, in his case, Floridablanca, in Colombia’s northern department of Santander. Credit: Emilio Godoy/IPS

The report “Latin America and the Caribbean. Challenges, dilemmas and commitments of a common urban agenda”, released at the Quito summit, observes that, despite the significant expansion in infrastructure in recent decades, the deficit in cities remains one of the main challenges for developing countries in general.

The document, drafted by the Forum of Ministers and High-level Authorities of the Housing and Urban Development Sector in Latin America and the Caribbean (MINURVI), ECLAC and U.N.-Habitat’s Regional Office for Latin America and the Caribbean, points out that Latin America and the Caribbean have an investment rate of two percent of GDP, compared to eight percent of regional GDP in Southeast Asia.

The overall rate of investment in infrastructure “has declined in the last three decades, blaming a reduction in public investment, a marginal increase in private investment and the retraction of multilateral financing.”

In the developing South, large cities face challenges like pollution, exposure to climate change, chaotic growth, traffic congestion, informal employment and inequality.

There have been different attempts to calculate the scale of infrastructure needs. The IDB’s Emerging and Sustainable Cities Initiative estimates a need for 142 billion dollars in priority investments in urban infrastructure.

Meanwhile, the Cities Climate Finance Leadership Alliance (CCFLA) estimates a global need of 93 trillion dollars in investment in low-carbon climate resilient infrastructure over the next 15 years.

The NUA mentions the word “infrastructure” 33 times, although it outlines no means or goals to develop it.

Money is short

A recurring question is where the funding for infrastructure will come from, given that regions such as Latin America are experiencing an economic downturn, after a decade of growth that made it possible to fight poverty and expand public works.

Andrés Blanco, a Colombian expert on urban development and housing with the IDB, proposes several mechanisms, including “land value capture”: capturing the increases in property values for the state. This refers to a municipality’s ability to benefit from the rise in real estate value generated by infrastructure improvements (access to highways, the paving of roads, public lighting, sewers, etc.) or the implementation of new land-use rules (e.g., from rural to urban).

“The main idea is to use this resource to finance infrastructure. But this has not been done, because there is a cash flow problem. The cost is paid by the government and the communities, but only private property owners benefit,” he told IPS.

In three Brazilian cities, the IDB found that investing one dollar per square metre in drinking water pipes increased the land value by 11 dollars, while three dollars per m2 invested in sewage brought up the value to 8.5 dollars, and 2.58 dollars per m2 invested in paving raised the value by 9.1 dollars. In Quito, the transformation of rural to urban land enhanced the value by 400 percent.

In the Ecuadorean capital, the IDB released the report “Expanding the use of Land Value Capture in Latin America”.

In Floridablanca, the local government recovered 30,000 dollars of a total of 175,000, that the owners of 100 plots of land must pay for having benefited from investment in urban improvements.

“The main challenge facing the New Urban Agenda is how to find funding. We as mayors have to prioritise small-scale projects, but we need major infrastructure in outlying areas,” Mantilla said.

For Bárcena, Habitat III leaves an immense financing task. “Land use could be more profitable. States cannot do it alone. For this reason, there has to be a grand coalition between governments, companies, and organisations to make urban and public space more habitable, and to make cities more connected,” she said.

ECLAC, which is carrying out a study on time use in cities, proposes mechanisms such as: public policies on land value capture, to increase revenue collection and guide the way urban infrastructure is developed; the issue of municipal bonds to raise capital for long-term infrastructure projects; and platforms to draw private investment.

The United Nations Environment Programme’s “Global Outlook on Walking and Cycling”, released in Quito, calls for countries to invest at least 20 percent of their transport budget on infrastructure for pedestrians and cyclists, in order to save lives, curb pollution and reduce carbon emissions.

Two farmers in Cobquecura in central Chile show visitors changes made in their subsistence crops to withstand the effects of global warming, with the support of public policies to strengthen food security in times of climate change. Credit: Claudio Riquelme/IPS

By Orlando Milesi
SANTIAGO, Oct 12 2016 (IPS)

Climate change is leading to major modifications in agricultural production in Latin America and the Caribbean, and if mitigation and adaptation measures of the productive system are not urgently adopted, threats to food security will be exacerbated.

This could reverse the significant progress made in the region by means of plans to achieve the Zero Hunger goal, the experts told IPS.

For example, to maintain coffee yields, crops had to be moved from 1,000 to between 1,200 and 2,000 metres above sea level, while many Chilean vineyards had to be moved south, to get more sun and rain.

Large companies can afford to buy other land, but many family farmers find their livelihood at risk and wonder if the time has come to change crops or even to leave their land and move to a city, in order to survive.“If the climate is no longer suitable for production, you have to move to other areas where the agroecological and climate conditions are adequate. For large companies this is not a big problem, but it is for small-scale producers with less technology, lower levels of investment and a more reduced capacity for stockpiling.” -- Adrián Rodríguez

“Climate change puts us in a situation of insecurity. If in the past we were able to more or less estimate average temperatures or humidity for a particular area, now we have lost the capacity to make forecasts based on a certain degree of probability,” Jorge Meza, an Ecuadorian expert in the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO) regional office, told IPS.

“Considering that the effects could be either positive or negative, it has been estimated that by 2030 the impacts from climate change on the regional economy could reach an average of 2.2 per cent of GDP in damage,” he said.

“Some of the effects could be beneficial, like an increase in rainfall that would mean more water for crops,” said Meza, the senior forestry officer in the Santiago office.

But in general terms, he said, if the losses amount to 2.2 per cent of GDP, “there will be countries with zero economic growth, and beyond the economic factor, there will be a strong social impact, of four to five per cent.”

FAO’s aim is to underscore the links between climate change mitigation and adaptation and food security, with the slogan “Climate is changing. Food and agriculture must too”, for this year’s World Food Day, celebrated Sunday Oct. 16.

One example to be considered is the Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean (ECLAC) forecast for Central America.

If the necessary climate change mitigation and adaptation measures are not taken, production of basic grains could be reduced 25 per cent by 2050, the regional U.N. agency estimates.

“This is alarming for two reasons: first because it means a shortage of food, and second because the remaining food – that 75 per cent – will become more expensive. Both phenomena will have an impact on the poor: with less food available, and more costly food, there will be reduced possibilities of access to basic grains.” Meza said.

A family farm in the state of Rio de Janeiro,Brazil, with a planting system adapted to the manifestations of climate change in the area. Credit: Fabiola Ortiz/IPS

Viviana Espinosa, a 60-year-old Chilean woman, grows a variety of crops for family consumption.

At her home in the Cajón del Maipo region, in the foothills of the Andes mountains, about 17 km from Santiago, Espinosa plants food that she puts on her table and also distributes among her children and grandchildren.

“Food is increasingly expensive. For example, the cost of a kilo of tomatoes soared to 2,500 pesos (3.7 dollars) in September. If I plant at home, I not only save that expense, but in addition, I get a natural, organic product, free of pesticides,” she told IPS.

Apart from tomatoes, this married mother of three grows beets, lettuce, carrots and onions.

“My goal now is for everything that I plant to be organic, and I hope the weather will be favourable. In November 2015 heavy rains destroyed everything we planted,” she said.

Climate change is seen in Latin America in some 70 annual weather events, including hurricanes, drought, fires, landslides, and mainly floods, which affect an average of five million people.

Meanwhile, one third of the 625 million people in Latin America live in high-risk areas, exposed to climate events that pose a threat to their livelihood.

At the same time, climate change has more long-term effects, such as declining productivity in agriculture and a greater need to shift crop production areas.

“They say that if you don’t move and continue planting in the same area, you will probably have lower yields, and that could require more inputs or technologies and more resistant seeds,” Costa Rican economist Adrián Rodríguez, head of the Agricultural Development Unit in the ECLAC regional office, told IPS.

“From the point of view of family farming or the production of crops that play an important role in food security, an increase in food prices could affect farmers and consumers,” he said.

He added that there is another effect that has already been seen: the need for relocalisation of productive activities.

“If the climate is no longer suitable for production, you have to move to other areas where the agroecological and climate conditions are adequate. For large companies this is not a big problem, but it is for small-scale producers with less technology, lower levels of investment and a more reduced capacity for stockpiling,” he said.

In 2015, Latin America became the first region in the world to reach the two global anti-hunger goals: the prevalence of malnutrition fell to 5.5 per cent and the total number of malnourished people dropped to 34.3 million.

Thus, the region reached the target set in the Millennium Development Goals – which were replaced by the Sustainable Development Goals this year – and also at the last World Food Summit.

However, the challenge now is to reach zero hunger, a goal that could be affected by climate change, which has an impact on the four pillars of food and nutritional security: stability in food production, availability of food, physical access and affordability of food, and adequate use of food.

Meza called for mitigation actions that take into consideration a change in the energy sector towards renewable sources and, in agriculture, a shift towards organic practices, avoiding deforestation, the use of animal waste to generate biogas, and improvements in the diets of livestock with the aim of reducing greenhouse gas emissions, among other measures.

Rodríguez said mitigation should start by providing farmers with timely meteorological information while developing varieties of crops more resistant to drought, moisture and variability in availability of water and sunlight, and optimising the use of water with more efficient irrigation systems.

He also proposed strengthening research based on the knowledge of “family farmers and indigenous people, who have traditional varieties better suited to certain climates or soils…It is important to take this knowledge into account.”

Excerpt:

Indigenous schoolchildren standing in front of the Miskhamayu school in an isolated part of Bolivia’s Andes highlands. Many students walk 12 km or more every day, along steep roads and trails from their remote villages, to get to school. Credit: Marisabel Bellido/IPS

By Orlando Milesi
SANTIAGO, Aug 4 2016 (IPS)

Education, the most powerful instrument in the struggle against exclusion and discrimination, is still elusive for indigenous people in Latin America who remain the most disadvantaged segment of the population despite their wide presence in the region.

Recognition of the growing need to provide greater access to quality education for indigenous people, which respects cultural differences and local native traditions, is still far from translating into real, long-term public policies, the mayor of the Chilean municipality of Tirúa, Adolfo Millabur, told IPS.

In Chile, for example, “everyone expresses a willingness, but this isn’t put into practice,” said Millabur, whose municipality, 685 km south of Santiago, is located in the region of La Araucanía, home to nearly half of the Mapuche population, the country’s largest indigenous community.

Millabur grew up in the town of El Malo, 35 km from Tirúa. He and his eight siblings would get up every weekday at 5:00 AM and walk 30 km to school, in the town of Antiquina. After a couple of hours in class, they would all set out on the long trek back home.

He doesn’t remember how he learned to read and says he had no idea how to sign a check when he became Chile’s first Mapuche mayor in 1996, at the age of 28.

The right to education is the theme of this year’s Day of the World’s Indigenous Peoples, celebrated Aug. 9.

Access to culturally appropriate education that recognises diversity and indigenous values and specific needs, including the necessity for native people to learn their mother tongue, is considered key to combating their vulnerability and exclusion.

According to figures from the United Nations Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean (ECLAC), 8.3 percent of the population of Latin America – 45 million of a total of 605 million people – is indigenous.

Of Bolivia’s population of 10.6 million people, 62 percent identify themselves as belonging to an indigenous community, making it the Latin American country with the largest proportion of native people, followed by Guatemala, where 41 percent of the population of 16 million identify themselves as indigenous.

Next in line is Peru, where 24 percent of the population is indigenous, and Mexico, where the proportion is 15 percent.

These are the official statistics, based on the way people self-identify in the census.

According to the 2014 study “Indigenous Peoples of Latin America”, published in Spanish by ECLAC, there are 826 distinct native groups in the region.

Two Juruna children at the school in the indigenous villaje of Paquiçamba, on the banks of the Xingú River in Brazil’s Amazon region. Credit: Mario Osava/IPS

At one extreme is Brazil, with indigenous people making up just 0.5 percent (900,000 people) of the population of 200 million, divided in 305 different groups, followed by Colombia (102 groups), Peru (85) and Mexico (78). At the other extreme are Costa Rica and Panama (nine indigenous peoples each), El Salvador (three) and Uruguay (two).

The Quechua, Nahua, Aymara, Maya Yucateco, Maya K’iche’ and Mapuche are the largest native groups in the region, according to the study.

Despite their large presence and strong influence in the region, the native peoples of Latin America still represent one of the most disadvantaged population groups, the ECLAC report says.

Indigenous people have not only suffered the systematic loss of their territory, with severe consequences for their well-being and way of life, but they are also the population group facing the highest poverty levels and the most marked inequality.

In this scenario, the right to education is essential to the full enjoyment of human and collective rights, and is a powerful tool in the battle to eradicate exclusion and discrimination.

“Indigenous peoples are among the big absentees from educational policies and curriculums,” said Loreto Jara, a researcher on educational policy with the Chile NGO Educación 2020.

“They are absent as historical subjects in the curriculums themselves, but also as social actors in the participatory processes involved in designing the curriculums,” she told IPS.

While progress has been made in recent years with regard to education for Latin America’s indigenous peoples, it is a mistake to see all of the processes as similar ”just because it is easier to work in a scenario of similarity than to address diversity,” she said.

She said education for any native group “has a different dynamic than that of our school system,” which means it is necessary to incorporate, for example, intercultural teachers in schools.

Jara cited the experience of Colombia, where there are “many different ethnic groups, which vary greatly among themselves, smaller groups, which speak specific dialects and are involved in a struggle to recuperate their territory and keep their cultures alive.”

She said that in Colombia, “indigenous cultures are gaining more recognition and understanding in rural areas…and rural schools are doing a great deal to revitalise indigenous languages.”

These efforts, also aimed at stemming the migration of young people from rural areas to large cities, are seen in some parts of Mexico as well, she added.

In the Chilean region of La Araucanía, there are 845 schools that teach Mapudungun, the language of the Mapuche people, up to fourth grade of primary school.

Of these, 300 receive direct support from the Education Ministry and the rest rely on private funding, said María Díaz Coliñir, supervisor of the government’s Bilingual Intercultural Education programme.

Under Chilean law, all schools with more than 20 percent indigenous students must have bilingual intercultural education programmes that teach Mapudungun, Quechua, Aymara or Rapa Nui, depending on the region.

Although the programme does not guarantee that children learn their native languages, it does bolster their sense of identity. “A great deal of progress has been made in helping Mapuche children have a stronger sense of who they are, and strengthening their self-esteem,” Díaz Coliñir told IPS.

Jara concurred that efforts like these would have positive results for all indigenous groups in the region. “The assertion of their rights is based on language, because it represents their world view. Beneath indigenous languages lies the cultural wealth of each native group,” she said.

She said addressing the need to bring greater visibility to native peoples as social actors, teaching their history and their link to the broader history of this country, is one of the pending tasks in the area of education.

“Today people are demanding to participate in decision-making in many areas, and indigenous people are among the social actors who must be given the most attention,” Díaz Coliñir said.

The Reventazón Hydroelectric Project, Costa Rica’s fifth hydropower dam, will begin to operate in the first half of this year. Credit: Instituto Costarricense de Electricidad

By Diego Arguedas Ortiz
SAN JOSE, Mar 1 2016 (IPS)

Over the last decade, Central America has managed to reduce its dependence on fossil fuels for the production of electric power, while expanding coverage. But the progress made by each country varies widely.

“The question is not whether or not demand is met, but which sources we are using to generate electricity,” Diego Fernández, one of the researchers with the State of the Region Programme (PER) of the Consejo Nacional de Rectores (CONARE), which groups Costa Rica’s four public universities, told IPS.

Fernández pointed out that more and more Central Americans are connected to their national power grids. The electrification rate climbed from an average of 69 percent in 2000 to 90 percent in 2013, according to a joint study by PER and the Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean (ECLAC).

“The biggest advances in the region (in terms of energy) have been seen in the electricity sector,” says the October 2015 report.

However, the growth has not been uniform. In electrification, Nicaragua has only 75 percent coverage, much lower than the regional average, while coverage in Costa Rica has reached 99 percent.

The sources chosen to generate electricity are the clearest demonstration of the priorities in each country’s energy strategy.

Costa Rica is the leader in clean energy sources, which now account for 95 percent of the country’s electricity.

Meanwhile, Honduras and Nicaragua have the dirtiest power grids, with nearly half of their electricity coming from plants that run mainly on low-cost bunker fuel, which is the heavy, residual oil that is left over after gasoline, diesel and other light hydrocarbons are extracted from crude oil during the refining process. This low-quality fossil fuel has an impact on the health of local inhabitants.

The clearest evidence that decisions about electric power have a direct impact on local economies is what countries spend on oil – nations that use fossil fuels to generate electricity spend twice as much as those that rely more heavily on renewable sources.

“In countries that produce more electric power from renewable sources, like Costa Rica, the oil bill is less than five percent of GDP; in Honduras and Nicaragua, the oil bill is 12 percent,” the researcher said.

Central America, with a total population of 48 million, is a net importer of fossil fuels, which are used mainly for transportation, and to a lesser extent in power generation.

As a result, Central America’s oil bill climbed from 3.5 percent of GDP in 2000 to 8.5 percent in 2014, according to statistics provided by PER and ECLAC.

But overall, expansion in electricity generation in the region between 2003 and 2014 largely involved renewables.

There are major disparities in Central America, where Costa Rica’s electricity, for example, comes almost entirely from renewable sources, while half of Nicaragua’s power comes from fossil fuels. And coal has been making a comeback. Credit: State of the Region

“Thanks to regional accords and national policies, the share of renewable energies increased….from 57 to 64 percent,” Víctor Hugo Ventura, the head of ECLAC’s Energy and Natural Resources Unit, told IPS.

The Guatemalan expert said the region still puts a priority on hydroelectricity, but medium and large-scale projects are blocked and delayed by opposition from social and environmental activists.

However, it is difficult to generalise about the region in terms of electricity production, because of the differences between the countries.

Guatemala, for example, increased the share of renewable energy from 50.7 to 56.1 percent of its energy mix between 2009 and 2014, according to ECLAC, but it continues to invest in coal-fired power stations, the most highly polluting form of energy.

A coal plant belonging to Jaguar Energy Guatemala, a subsidiary of the U.S.-based Ashmore Energy International, began to operate in Guatemala in 2014. Built at an estimated cost of 750 million dollars, it has an installed capacity of 300 MW, and is now the country’s biggest power plant.

However, Ventura said the plant does not necessarily mean the country intends to increase its dependence on coal. He argued that it was the result of a misguided decision taken when the price of oil skyrocketed in 2007. “Problems with the generators forced it to stop operating, and it is currently not producing electricity. Sometimes what’s cheap turns out to be expensive,” he said.

The ECLAC expert predicted a rise in consumption of natural gas, another fossil fuel, over the next decade in Central America.

But for years, this region, made up of Belize, Costa Rica, El Salvador, Guatemala, Honduras, Nicaragua and Panama, has been urged to reduce its dependence on fossil fuels to generate electricity.

Overall, the region has responded, although it has not stopped installing power stations that run on coal and bunker fuel, drawing criticism in reports by international bodies.

“The outlook has been very positive for wind power, whose capacity has grown by a factor of nearly 10 so far this millennium,” states the joint PER/ECLAC report.

Three countries have large wind power farms: Costa Rica, Honduras and Nicaragua.

In Nicaragua, wind energy represented 14.8 percent of the country’s energy production in 2013.

These unconventional sources also make it possible to bring electricity to isolated rural areas, where community organisation plays a major role.

“We can mention several cases of solar panel projects, where the installation and maintenance has been put in the hands of local women sent for training to India,” said Ventura from the subregional ECLAC office in Mexico.

He said the countries of Central America must take climate change and the need to cut greenhouse gas emissions into account in their long-term plans.

“Climate change represents major challenges for the region, where the effects and impacts of this phenomenon also have to be taken into consideration in terms of renewable resources and capacity to generate less polluting forms of energy,” Alejandra Sobenes, a lawyer who is an expert on sustainability, told IPS.

Sobenes, a former Guatemalan deputy minister of natural resources, said her country has recognised the need to take measures to prevent electricity shortages after 2026.

“But the commitment to reduce our emissions by at least 11.2 percent, or 22.6 percent in a more ambitious scenario, must be kept in mind, and the use of coal should be reconsidered,” she said from the Guatemalan capital.

Another problem is the variability of the most accessible clean energy sources: wind and the sun.

“In the case of solar and wind energy, the insertion of renewable sources in the region’s energy mix has been facilitated a great deal, but with one problem: these sources are variable,” Javier Orozco, director of electrical planning in the Costa Rican power utility, Instituto Costarricense de Electricidad, told IPS.

Each country gets around this variability as best it can. One strategy is to turn to geothermal energy, which is abundant and relatively untapped in the region. Another alternative is to build enormous reservoirs to release water when sun or wind are in short supply. And then there is the option of burning fossil fuels.

“In Costa Rica we use the most adequate technological solution: hydropower dams. We store up energy, or water, and release it as needed,” said Orozco.

Edited by Estrella Gutiérrez/Translated by Stephanie Wildes

Members of the Red de Artistas Únete artists network, which organised a “no to gender violence” flash mob on the International Day for the Elimination of Violence Against Women in Havana, Cuba. Credit: Jorge Luis Baños/IPS

By Patricia Grogg
HAVANA, Dec 31 2015 (IPS)

Activists and researchers dedicated to the study of gender violence in Cuba insist on the need for a comprehensive law to protect the victims and prevent the problem, which was publicly ignored until only a few years ago in this socialist Caribbean island nation.

Legislation is necessary “because even when the ideal in our society is justice and equality, there are social expressions of violence against women that have been kept invisible, which contributes to the impunity enjoyed by the abusers,” psychologist Valia Solís told IPS.

Solis, with the non-governmental Christian Centre for Reflection and Dialogue – Cuba (CCRD), based in Cárdenas in the western province of Matanzas, added that the law should not be limited to providing for prison terms, because violence requires a preventive approach in order to keep the behavior and its consequences from getting worse.

Several articles of the Cuban constitution, the penal code and other legislation refer to gender equality. But there are no specific laws aimed at fighting sexist violence, or adequate instruments to protect the victims.

People who face gender-related mistreatment are “in a state of vulnerability, and a law could attenuate this,” said Aida Torralbas, a professor and researcher at the university of the eastern province of Holguín, who said the phenomenon is largely unnoticed and surrounded by impunity.

In her view, although a punitive response is not the best option, because it addresses the problem after the act, it is important because it recognises gender violence as something that must be punished and that hurts the integrity of another person. Torralbas concurs with other academics that education is an essential factor in combating the problem.

“That’s why a law of this kind must also take into account the possibility of educating society in non-patriarchal and non-sexist values that modify ways of thinking and acting,” she said. The expert also argued that it is important to strengthen training of judicial system and law enforcement personnel with respect to how to deal with these issues.

“It’s a fact that the police themselves do not know how to handle these questions,” Mercedes Abreu, a social worker with the Integral Neighbourhood Transformation Workshop (TTIB) of Pogolotti, in the Havana district of Marianao, told IPS.

The TTIBs were created in 1988 to carry out social work in poor neighbourhoods in the capital, and are under municipal government administration.

“Women themselves often do not know that they’re the victims of violence in the family, in the workplace, in the community. Ignorance leads us to turn a blind eye to this problem,” said Abreu, who also said the Cuban population “has very little legal awareness.”

From left to right: Yamila Delgado, Nidia Tamayo, Lidia Santos and Alina Sabor, victims of domestic violence who belong to the group “Women with a purpose”, in the offices of the Integral Neighbourhood Transformation Workshop (TTIB) in the Libertad neighbourhood in Havana, Cuba. Credit: Jorge Luis Baños/IPS

The TTIBs and civil society organisations have helped pull out of the closet a reality that is the product of Cuba’s patriarchal culture, which runs counter to the progress made towards equality such as equal wages for men and women, the massive incorporation of girls and women in education and the labour market, and free, universal access to abortion on demand.

For example, since 2007, the “Oscar Arnulfo Romero” Centre for Reflection and Solidarity (OAR) and other groups have been organising an annual National Day for Non-Violence Against Women, to coincide with the 16 days of global activism between Nov. 25 and Dec. 10.

Without underestimating the impact achieved by this activism, Abreu believes the question of violence must be addressed continually from different angles. “We can’t just focus on it during the week of activism against violence. Progress can’t be made this way,” said the social worker, who has worked for several years in a low-income neighbourhood.

In her view, the efforts must involve families, schools, the family doctor, social workers, the Federation of Cuban Women, decision-makers, the media, churches, activists, lawyers, judges and the police.

Elaine Saralegui, a theologian and pastor of the Metropolitan Church in Cuba, in the western province of Matanzas, told IPS that “violence has to do with the established order and with the relations between people or groups in unequal positions of power.”

She said laws were needed to protect and promote free expression of gender identity. “When we talk about gender, people generally think about men and women, and we tend to ignore other expressions of gender that don’t fit in the heteronormative mindset,” she said.

Lawyer Indira Fajardo speaking during the event “You are more: Reflections on gender violence in Cuba” in the Multifactorial Panel during the National Day to Eliminate Violence Against Women 2015, whose theme was “Prevention of and attention to gender violence as a health, social and rights problem” in Havana, Cuba. Credit: Jorge Luis Baños/IPS

She said the country needs “laws that can offer legal protection across the board, explicitly, where each one of the faces of the people hurt by heteronormativity, patriarchal sexism and gender violence are taken into consideration.”

“So we’re talking about heterosexual women, but also about people with different sexual orientations and gender identities,” she said.

In 2012, the first National Conference of the governing Communist Party of Cuba (PCC) included the rejection of gender and domestic violence in its objectives, in what was seen as an important official recognition of the issue.

The PCC is organising its seventh congress for April 2016, with an agenda that includes assessment of compliance with the agreements reached at the party’s sixth congress and First National Conference. The last congress, in 2011, approved a programme of reforms to update the country’s socialist model of development.

Next year, the governmental Women’s Studies Centre and the National Statistics and Information Office plan to carry out a national survey on gender equality, although it is not clear whether gender violence will be included in the questions.

According to the Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean (ECLAC), 20 countries in Latin America and the Caribbean now have laws against gender violence, although only eight have earmarked specific funds in the national budget.

Meanwhile, 14 countries have created a separate criminal classification for femicide – gender-motivated murders – and two have established that it is homicide aggravated by gender hostility in their legislation.

Edited by Verónica Firme/Translated by Stephanie Wildes

“Not one step back” in compliance with the region’s demographic agenda, demanded activists at the Second Session of the Regional Conference on Population and Development in Latin America and the Caribbean, held Oct. 6-9 in Mexico City. Credit: Emilio Godoy/IPS

By Emilio Godoy
MEXICO CITY, Oct 10 2015 (IPS)

“The countries of Latin America have not fully committed themselves to the international conventions and have not given indigenous peoples access. Nor have their contents been widely disseminated,” to help people demand compliance and enforcement, said Guatemalan activist Ángela Suc.

The indigenous community organiser’s criticism is an alert regarding the pledges made at the Second Session of the Regional Conference on Population and Development in Latin America and the Caribbean, organised Oct. 6-9 in Mexico City by the Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean (ECLAC) and the United Nations population fund (UNFPA).

“We need land, territory, and access to culturally sensitive healthcare and education in line with our traditions and knowledge and in our languages,” Suc told IPS.

Suc, a representative of the Pocomchí people in the Guatemalan delegation to the conference, said the native population also experiences demographic phenomena such as migration and ageing, just like the non-indigenous population in the region.

The vicissitudes of native and black populations were part of the focus of the debates at the conference, which followed the one held in Montevideo in August 2013. A civil society gathering was also organised parallel to the official conference.

Participants discussed the problems still affecting these groups, such as poverty, discrimination, lack of opportunities, and high maternal and infant mortality rates.

More than 45 million indigenous people live in this region of around 600 million. They belong to over 800 native groups, according to the ECLAC report “Indigenous peoples in Latin America: progress in the last decade and pending challenges for guaranteeing their rights.”

Brazil heads the list, with 305 different native groups, followed by Colombia (102), Peru (85) and Mexico (78). At the other extreme are Costa Rica and Panama (nine), El Salvador (three) and Uruguay (two).

The countries with the largest numbers of indigenous people are: Mexico (nearly 17 million), followed by Peru (7.2 million), Bolivia (6.2 million), and Guatemala (5.9 million).

ECLAC reports the fragile demographics of many native peoples, who are at risk of actually disappearing, physically or culturally, as observed in Bolivia, Brazil, Colombia and Peru.

The problems they face include forced displacement from their land, scarcity of food, pollution of their water sources, soil degradation, malnutrition and high mortality rates.

Birth rates are dropping in the region, with an average of 2.4 children per indigenous women in Uruguay, 4.0 in Nicaragua and Venezuela, and 5.0 in Guatemala and Panama.

Map of indigenous peoples of Latin America and the Caribbean, drawn up by ECLAC, which estimates the number of native people at 45 million. Credit: ECLAC

Infant mortality rates among indigenous people are still higher than among the rest of the population. The biggest inequalities are found in Panama, Peru and Bolivia, in that order. And malnutrition is a major problem in Guatemala, Ecuador, Bolivia and Nicaragua.

The ECLAC report stresses that indigenous children grow up in material poverty and that violence against native children and women remains a major challenge.

Of the region’s 12.8 million indigenous children, 2.7 million are in Mexico, 2.4 million in Guatemala, and 2.2 million in Bolivia.

“Our demands have been set forth in different international platforms and are still valid,” Dorotea Wilson, general coordinator of the Network of Afro-Latin American, Afro-Caribbean and Diaspora Women (RMAAD), told IPS.

“We are going to monitor, observe and follow up to ensure that countries assume these commitments and comply with them,” said the Nicaraguan activist, who also took part in the regional conference. She added that compliance with the measures in favour of minorities requires political will, as well as agreements between the authorities and civil society, and specific budgets.

More than 120 million afro-descendants also live in the region, including 97 million in Brazil, one million in Ecuador and 800,000 in Nicaragua, according to national census data that included specific questions about ethnic identity. In other countries there are no specific statistics, such as Colombia, which has a significant black population.

The report “Afro-descendant Youth in Latin America: Diverse Realities and (un)Fulfilled Rights”, produced by ECLAC in 2011, showed that teen motherhood among young blacks was more widespread than among the rest of the population, especially in Colombia, Ecuador, Guatemala, Nicaragua and Panama.

One of the problems discussed at the conference is the lack of demographic statistics on the region’s afro-descendant population.

In the Montevideo Consensus on Population and Development, which contains the conclusions reached by the first edition of the conference, the region’s countries pledged to take into account the specific demographic dynamics of indigenous people in the design of public policies, and guarantee their right to health, including sexual and reproductive rights, and to their own traditional medicines and health practices.

They also agreed to adopt the necessary measures to guarantee that indigenous women, children, adolescents and young people enjoy full protection and guarantees against all forms of violence and discrimination.

With respect to blacks, they agreed to tackle gender, race, ethnic and generational inequalities, guarantee the enforcement of their right to health, in particular sexual and reproductive health, and promote human development in this population group, while ensuring policies and programmes for improving women’s living conditions.

The plenary of the second conference approved the “Operational guide for the implementation and follow-up of the Montevideo Consensus on Population and Development”, which includes 14 provisions for indigenous and afro-descendant peoples.

Approval of the guide was hindered by the Caribbean delegations’ protest that they had not been given the document ahead of time – an obstacle that was not resolved until the early hours of the morning of the last day of the conference.

“To the extent that full participation by indigenous peoples exists, the guide will be complied with. This is a challenge for the State,” Suc said.

The process can be an engine driving progress in the U.N. International Decade for People of African Descent 2015-2024.

“The guide can be improved. We can influence the follow-up. But it is a challenge,” Wilson said.

The Political Declaration of the Social Forum held parallel to the official conference, which brought together social organisations from throughout the region, stressed that every indicator in the guide should be broken down by age, sex, gender, race and ethnicity.

But it also complained that two years after the approval of the Montevideo Consensus, the “ambitious, innovative agenda has not yet translated into substantive progress, and in some cases there have even been setbacks” in areas such as gender violence, hate crimes, high maternal mortality rates, a rise in teenage pregnancies, and discrimination.

Edited by Estrella Gutierrez/Translated by Stephanie Wildes

A Honduran peasant on his small farm. Two-thirds of rural families in Central America depend on family farming for a living. Credit: Neil Palmer/CIAT

By Diego Arguedas Ortiz
MANAGUA, Aug 27 2015 (IPS)

Central America’s toolbox to pull 23 million people – almost half of the population – out of poverty must include three indispensable tools: universal access to water, a sustainable power supply, and adaptation to climate change.

“These are the minimum, basic, necessary preconditions for guaranteeing survival,” Víctor Campos, assistant director of the Humboldt Centre, a leading Nicaraguan environmental think tank, told IPS.

These three tools are especially important for agriculture, the engine of the regional economy, and particularly in rural areas and indigenous territories, which have the highest levels of poverty.

Campos stressed that this is the minimum foundation for starting to work “towards addressing other issues that we must pay attention to, like education, health, or vulnerable groups; but first these conditions that guarantee minimal survival have to be in place.”

In Central America today, 48 percent of the population lives below the poverty line. And the region is facing the Post-2015 Development Agenda, which the international community will launch in September, with the concept of survival very much alive, because every day millions of people in the region struggle for clean water and food.

Everyone agreed on the vulnerability of the region and its people at the Central American meeting “United in Action for the Common Good”, held Aug. 21 in the Nicaraguan capital to assess the Post-2015 Development Agenda and the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs).

The 17 SDGs are the pillar of the agenda and will be adopted at a Sep. 25-27 summit of heads of state and government at United Nations headquarters in New York, with a 2030 deadline for compliance.

The issues of reliable, sustainable energy, availability and sustainable management of water, and urgent action to combat climate change and its impacts are included in the SDGs. But the experts taking part in the gathering in Managua stressed that in this region, the three are interlinked at all levels with the goal of reducing poverty.

“In our countries, our fight against poverty is complex,” Campos said.

This region of 48 million people, where per capita GDP is far below the global average – 3,035 dollars in Central America compared to the global 7,850 dollars – needs to come up with new paths for escaping the spiral of poverty which entraps nearly one out of two inhabitants.

Central America’s GDP improved in real terms in the last 13 years, but remains lower than the Latin American and global averages. Credit: State of the Nation

According to the 2012 report “The Economics of Climate Change in Central America” by the U.N. Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean (ECLAC), “reduction of and instability in the availability of water and of agricultural yields could affect labour markets, supplies and prices of basic goods, and rural migration to urban areas.”

That would have an impact on subsistence crops like maize or beans or traditional export products like coffee, which are essential in the region made up, from south to north, of Panama, Costa Rica, Nicaragua, Honduras, El Salvador, Belize and Guatemala. (U.N. agencies also include the Dominican Republic, an island nation, in the region.)

A key area is the so-called Dry Corridor, an arid strip that runs from Guatemala to Costa Rica, which according to experts has grown.

“We are modifying land use, which is associated with the climate phenomenon, and as a consequence the Dry Corridor is not limited to the Corridor anymore: we are turning the entire country into a kind of dry corridor,” Denis Meléndez, executive secretary of Nicaragua’s National Forum for Risk Management, told IPS.

The “Outlook for Food and Nutritional Security in Central America” report published by the U.N. Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO) in 2014 says this could hinder compliance with the goal of eliminating hunger in the region.

The first of the eight Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) adopted by the international community in a global summit in 2000 – now to be replaced by the SDGs – is to eradicate extreme poverty and hunger, cutting in half the proportion of extremely poor and hungry people by 2015, from 1990 levels.

FAO reported that the countries of Central America have come close to meeting the goal, with the proportion of hungry people being reduced from 24.5 to 13.2 percent of the total, but the percentage is still more than double the Latin American average of 6.1 percent.

Meanwhile, the impact of climate change on the most vulnerable people goes beyond agriculture, access to water, or sustainable energy.

According to ECLAC, two out of three inhabitants of the region live in shantytowns or slums in unsanitary conditions, where climate change will drive up the prevalence of diseases associated with poverty, such as malaria and dengue.

Nearly half of the population of Central America lives in poverty, with Honduras in the most critical situation, with a poverty rate of close to 70 percent. Credit: FAO

“Because climate change is the biggest challenge that humanity is facing at the present and in the coming decades, we have to think about adaptation not necessarily as a cross-cutting issue, but in terms of ‘what goes around, comes around’,” Francisco Soto, the head of El Salvador’s Climate Change Forum, told IPS.

This impact has been acknowledged by governments in the region, and in 2010 the Central American Integration System (SICA) described it in its Regional Climate Change Strategy as a phenomenon that would “make social challenges like poverty reduction and governance more difficult to fight.”

Experts like Andrea Rodríguez of Bolivia stressed at the meeting that every government anti-poverty project should take into account the impacts of climate change.

“If this is not taken into consideration, we won’t be able to find an effective solution, because climate change and development are like twins – they go hand in hand and have to be addressed simultaneously in order for aid and cooperation to be effective,” she told IPS.

Rodríguez, a legal adviser to the Interamerican Association for Environmental Defense (AIDA) Climate Change Programme, insisted on the need to jointly plan long-term investment in energy infrastructure and sustainable development.

“The only way to combat climate change and contribute to economic development is by leaving aside fossil fuels and looking for cleaner alternatives,” she said.

Civil society organisations grouped in the Central American Alliance for Energy Sustainability (ACCESE) propose small-scale renewable installations as a solution for meeting the growing demand for energy while at the same time empowering vulnerable communities.

In the region, 15 percent of the population does not have electricity, and up to 50 percent cook with firewood, according to figures provided by ACCESE. This portion of the population is mainly found on islands and in remote mountainous and rural areas.

Edited by Estrella Gutiérrez/Translated by Stephanie Wildes

Costa Rica’s National Stadium, donated by China as a gift for the reestablishment of bilateral ties in 2007, and built in 2009-2010 by a Chinese company with Chinese labour. Credit: Diego Arguedas Ortiz/IPS

By Diego Arguedas Ortiz
SAN JOSE, Aug 21 2015 (IPS)

For years, Latin America has exported its raw materials to China’s voracious factories, fuelling economic growth. But now that the Asian giant is putting a priority on domestic consumption over industrial production, how will this region react?

China’s dizzying growth gave a boost to the economies of Latin America, and in exchange, this region received manufactured products, credits, and heavy investment in infrastructure.

Given the slowdown in China’s growth, the countries of Latin America have two options: move toward a more value-added economy or lose relevance with an obsolete economic model inherited from the 20th century, said several experts consulted by IPS.

“Over the last five years, the relationship between Latin America and China has been dominated by Latin America sending China a few raw materials and China sending Latin America manufactured goods,” U.S. academic Rebecca Ray told IPS.“In simple terms, China’s rebalancing is aimed at reducing the relative importance of investment and exports in its economic growth, relying on household consumption playing a larger role.” -- Keiji Inoue and Sebastián Herreros

“But this may be about to change,” added the research fellow at the Boston University Global Economic Governance Initiative, where she coordinates the Working Group on Development and the Environment in the Americas’ China in Latin America project and coauthors the China-Latin America Economic Bulletin.

According to Ray, China’s leaders are shifting toward a development strategy with an emphasis on slower but steady growth, which prioritises internal consumption over factory production, thus opening up opportunities for importing manufactured goods from other countries.

The path toward that future was one of the central focuses of the Forum for East Asia-Latin America Cooperation (FEALAC) meeting in the Costa Rican capital from Tuesday, Aug. 18 to Friday, Aug. 21, which brought together foreign ministers and other senior officials from 36 countries under the theme “Two Regions, One Vision”.

The experts who spoke to IPS all agreed that given China’s slowdown, decision-makers in Latin America must take the initiative and propose economic alternatives based on more value added.

But the region has been slow to make the leap. Just five commodities – soy, iron, oil and unrefined and refined copper – account for 75 percent of exports to China, only a tiny share of which are manufactured goods.

But the other major economic flow between China and Latin America, investment in infrastructure, could paradoxically benefit from the slowdown and the shift in direction of the Chinese economy, the experts said.

The deceleration in the engine of the global economy since 2014, when China’s growth stood at 7.4 percent, the lowest level in 24 years, “May hurt Latin American economies that have become dependent on exporting those few commodities. In contrast, China’s infrastructure investments can help all industries do well,” Ray said.

Ponta da Madeira, a port in northeast Brazil where ships carrying iron ore set out, mainly for China. Credit: Mario Osava/IPS

Well-administered, she said, Chinese-financed projects could close the region’s historic gap in infrastructure and serve as a platform for the development of other industries that would benefit from investment in transport and energy, two main areas of interest for China.

“Hopefully, policy makers will make use of this opportunity to spur development in non-traditional industries,” Ray said.

Keiji Inoue and Sebastián Herreros, with the Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean’s (ECLAC) International Trade and Integration Division, concurred.

“To the extent that these projects are aligned with the priorities of countries in the region, a greater Chinese presence could help gradually close Latin America’s infrastructure gap, thus strengthening regional integration and improving the region’s international competitiveness,” they stated in a joint analysis for IPS.

One of the aims of China’s investments in infrastructure in Latin America, they noted, is for that country’s to invest people’s savings.

But the direction taken by the growing links between Latin America and China do not leave much room for optimism.

Up to now, the region’s exports to China “Support fewer jobs, generate more net greenhouse gas emissions, and use more water than other LAC (Latin American and Caribbean) exports,” according to a study by GEGI.

China, meanwhile, has been promoting and financing controversial megaprojects in the region, like the “great inter-oceanic canal” in Nicaragua, to be built by the Chinese consortium Hong Kong Nicaragua Canal Development (HKDN-Group) at an estimated cost of 50 billion dollars, and the projected 5,000-km Transcontinental Railway, which would connect Brazil and Peru.

Chinese investment has also fuelled trade ties based on raw materials. According to ECLAC, between 2010 and 2013 nearly 90 percent of China’s investment in the region went into the extractive industry, mainly mining and fossil fuels.

Executives of the Chinese consortium HKDN-Group behind a big banner on Dec. 22, 2014 in the town of Brito Rivas on the Pacific ocean coast, at the ceremony for the formal start of construction of the Great Canal of Nicaragua, which will cut across the country. Credit: Mario Moncada/IPS

“From that perspective, China’s high level of demand for raw materials at a global level has effectively consolidated and reinforced the specialisation of these processes, also known as ‘re-primarisation’ of the economy,” Enrique Dussel, director of the Centre for China-Mexico Studies of the National Autonomous University of Mexico, told IPS.

But Dussel said emphatically that the countries of Latin America will have to respond, given the signals. “It is Latin America and the Caribbean that have the responsibility – and need – to make a decision, not China,” he stated.

This refocusing of the economies of the region on the production of primary commodities for export happened when Latin America was seduced by last decade’s high commodities prices and prioritised exports of raw materials over exports of greater added value.

Raw materials represent more than 60 percent of the region’s exports – the highest proportion seen since the early 1990s, according to ECLAC studies – up from 44 percent at the start of the century.

Manufactured goods like machinery and electronic devices, meanwhile, make up 64 percent of China’s exports to this region, and are less sensitive to price swings.

Between 2000 and 2014, imports from China rose from two to 14 percent of the regional total.

Dussel said China’s growth highlighted the serious problems faced by the region’s exports. In his view, the problems do not necessarily lie in the predominance of raw materials, but in the fact that these industries have “very little value added and technology.”

ECLAC’s Inoue and Herreros say the shift in focus of China’s development presents an opportunity.

They said that “in simple terms, China’s rebalancing is aimed at reducing the relative importance of investment and exports in its economic growth, relying on household consumption playing a larger role.”

“To the extent that this process has an effect, it should favour the diversification of Latin America’s exports to China,” they said.

They expect sectors like agribusiness and processed food to become more important in the region, although they warn that it could take years for the effects to be felt, and say that in order for that to happen, decision-makers would have to take ambitious steps toward consolidating the region as a trade bloc.

“We must also make more decisive progress towards a truly integrated regional market,” Inoue and Herreros wrote. “That would make Latin America more attractive and increase its bargaining power vis-à-vis China, the rest of Asia and other big global economic actors.”

Edited by Estrella Gutiérrez/Translated by Stephanie Wildes

One of the 31 wind parks operating in Mexico. By 2020 installed wind power capacity should have climbed to 15,000 MW. Credit: Courtesy of Dforcesolar

By Diego Arguedas Ortiz
SAN JOSE, Aug 12 2015 (IPS)

Latin America is facing a two-pronged challenge: double power generation by 2050 while reducing greenhouse gas emissions. The only solution? Green energy.

Studies show that these two goals could be within the reach of Latin America, because this region still has huge untapped potential in terms of renewable energy.

Along with transportation and land-use change, electricity generation is one of the region’s unresolved challenges in the fight against climate change.

With regard to energy production, Latin America is the planet’s greenest region, due to its long-time emphasis on hydroelectricity. But the question now is how to keep increasing the proportion of renewable energies in the face of growing domestic demand. “When you look at it as a whole, the region’s infrastructure continues to be built like in the 20th century, even though the 21st century has a completely different outlook and requirements.” --- Joseluis Samaniego

“When you look at it as a whole, the region’s infrastructure continues to be built like in the 20th century, even though the 21st century has a completely different outlook and requirements,” Joseluis Samaniego, a Mexican expert who is the director of the Sustainable Development and Human Settlements Division of the United Nations Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean (ECLAC), told IPS.

Electricity is key to the design of the Intended Nationally Determined Contributions (INDCs) – the commitments that each nation assumes to reduce carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gas emissions.

According to the Inter-American Development Bank study “Rethinking Our Energy Future”, the region will need to increase its installed power capacity two-fold by 2050.
However, it remains dependent on fossil fuels like oil, coal and natural gas which generate greenhouse gas emissions that cause global warming.

This raises the question of what kind of infrastructure Latin America will include in its energy future. According to the IDB study, Latin America’s renewable energy generation capacity – wind, solar, hydropower, geothermal and biomass – is so extensive that only four percent of the total technical potential would be needed to meet the region’s needs by 2050.

But in recent years, the region has invested in dirtier energy sources. Although hydroelectric plants have been the main source of electricity across much of Latin America for decades, the latest figures show that its share is shrinking.

The Itaipú hydropower dam shared by Brazil and Paraguay is the second-largest in the world, after China’s Three Gorges. Credit: Mario Osava/IPS

The Latin American Energy Organisation (OLADE) reported that it represented just 38 percent in 2013, surpassed by natural gas, which now provides 40 percent.

The countries of Latin America will have to revert that process if they want to set forth more ambitious and realistic targets in their INDCs. Only a robust energy policy will make it possible to set adequate goals, experts agree.

So far, only Mexico has formally presented its INDCs, while Chile, Colombia and Peru have shown progress.

All countries must present their national commitments by Oct. 1, to be incorporated in the new binding universal treaty to be approved at the December climate summit in Paris.

“Latin America, like the rest of the world, should focus on developing electric power infrastructure with renewable sources and with the least possible environmental impact, in an attempt to depend less and less on fossil fuels,” Santiago Ortega, a Colombian engineer who specialises in renewable energy sources, told IPS.

Ortega, who is also a professor at the Engineering School in the northwest Colombian region of Antioquia, called for a balance in renewable energy generation between local, less-invasive projects and megaprojects like large dams that make it possible to store up energy, providing a reliable supply.

“Financial resources will always be scarce, and they must be invested in the most intelligent way possible,” said Ortega.

Otherwise, the global energy future will be costly. With a business-as-usual high-carbon economy, about 90 trillion dollars, or an average of six trillion a year, will be invested in infrastructure in the world’s cities, agriculture and energy systems over the next 15 years, according to the New Climate Economy report “Better Growth, Better Climate”.

But the report adds that only around 270 billion dollars a year would be needed to accelerate the global transition to a low-carbon economy, through clean energy, more compact cities, better public transport systems and smarter land use.

Experts like Costa Rican economist Mónica Araya say “the shift that is happening around the world, and we won’t be an exception, is towards energy diversification and decentralisation.”

But electricity is only part of the region’s energy mix, where fossil fuels still reign supreme.

OLADE figures from 2013 indicate that oil represents 49 percent of primary energy in the region, natural gas 26 percent, and coal seven percent.

Only six percent of primary energy comes from hydropower. Biomass, nuclear and other renewable sources complete the picture.

What does Latin America do with 80 percent fossil fuels, if the electricity supply is largely green?

According to Pablo Bertinat, director of the Observatory of Energy and Sustainability at the National Technological University in Argentina, nearly half of that energy goes to the transport sector.

“In transport, infrastructure is key,” Bertinat told IPS. “A large part of the public monies in the region goes into infrastructure works largely aimed at consolidating energy-intensive modes of transportation.”

As an example, Bertinat pointed out that while 75 percent of cargo in Argentina is moved by truck, the proportion is just 20 percent in France or the United States, which put a priority on rivers or railways.

Changes are also needed in cities, and Araya calls for modern, clean collective public transport, with electrification of private fleets of taxis or cargo vehicles.

“We lack imagination,” Araya, who heads the Costa Rican think tank Nivela, told IPS. “Neither the political class nor the business community have woken up to the need to invest in clean, modern public transit and cargo transport.”

These efforts in the energy industry will also require proposals from other fields. The main regional sources of greenhouse gases are land use and forestry (47 percent), followed by the energy industry (22 percent), agriculture (20 percent), and garbage (three percent).

Edited by Estrella Gutiérrez/Translated by Stephanie Wildes

A worker prepares seeds in the nursery where Costa Rica’s energy utility, ICE, grows 300,000 trees a year in Cachí, in the central province of Cartago, which it distributes to the public as well as institutions and companies. Credit: Diego Arguedas Ortiz/IPS

By Diego Arguedas Ortiz
SAN JOSE, Jul 13 2015 (IPS)

Millions of Latin Americans have better access to clean water and decent housing than 25 years ago. But the region still faces serious environmental challenges, such as deforestation and greenhouse gas emissions – a legacy of the model of development followed in the 20th century.

Fifteen years after signing on to the eight Millennium Development Goals (MDGs), the countries of Latin America have made significant headway in eradicating slums, expanding sanitation services, and providing access to clean water.

But progress towards ensuring environmental sustainability is lagging due to a fossil fuel-intensive development model based on the extraction of minerals and monoculture agriculture and livestock raising that expand at the expense of the forests.

“There has been uneven progress, with ups and downs,” said Joseluis Samaniego, director of the Division for Sustainable Development and Human Settlements of the Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean (ECLAC).

“In general terms, you have clear, outstanding advances in terms of access to water and sanitation, and we have the impression that those targets will be met,” he told Tierramérica from ECLAC’s regional headquarters in Santiago.

These targets form part of the seventh MDG, which refers to ensuring environmental sustainability, with measurable time-bound targets for the end of this year, based on 1990 indicators.

At year-end, the MDGs will be replaced by 17 Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), which the heads of state and government of the 193 United Nations member states are to approve at a summit in September.

Of the targets set by the seventh MDG, this region met the one for halving the proportion of people without sustainable access to safe drinking water, five years before this year’s deadline. And between 1990 and 2015, the proportion of the population with sustainable access to an improved water source increased from 85 to 95 percent, although there are still millions of Latin Americans without clean water.

Furthermore, from 1990 to 2014, the proportion of Latin Americans living in slums was nearly cut in half, from 37 to 20 percent, according to U.N. figures.

But that means there is still a long way to go, with more than 100 million people in this region living in slums and shantytowns.

Samaniego said the progress made towards meeting these targets reflects the region’s public spending effort and the clarity of the goals.

“When the MDGs were approved…the clear targets and incentives for monitoring helped countries organise and move forward towards the goals,” the ECLAC official said.

But with respect to incorporating sustainable development and the environment in public policies, there have been fewer advances.

“In terms of deforestation, we’re not doing so well,” said Samaniego. “From 1990 to 2010, forest cover shrank from 52 to 47.4 percent.”

The latest U.N. report assessing global and regional progress towards the MDGs, published Jul. 6, shows that Latin America has not made impressive progress in achieving environmental sustainability.

“Forests are disappearing at a rapid pace, despite the establishment of forest policies and laws supporting sustainable forest management in many countries,” says a regional synthesis document on the report.

Latin America’s economies are still fairly carbon-intensive. One mechanism to measure this is carbon intensity, or how many grams of carbon it takes to produce one dollar of GDP.

While the global average dropped from 600 grams per dollar in 1990 to 470 in 2010, the regional average only fell from 310 to 280 grams per dollar of GDP – an almost statistically insignificant change, according to Samaniego.

That view is shared by United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) regional experts.

“There is an almost linear correlation between a country’s GDP growth and energy consumption, and as long as the energy mix is still based on fossil fuels, it will be directly linked to a rise in emissions,” said Gonzalo Pizarro, regional adviser on poverty, MDGs and human development at the UNDP regional service centre for Latin America and the Caribbean, in Panama City.

In 1990, the region emitted just under one billion metric tons of carbon dioxide (CO2) equivalent – less than five percent of the world total.

Although the region’s share remained the same in 2011, in just two decades emissions produced by Latin America and the Caribbean rose 80 percent, to 1.8 billion metric tons of CO2, according to the UNDP.

This target, included in the seventh MD, has one particularity: although policies arise from internal decision-making in each country, the results have a global impact.

Although indicators like emissions and loss of forest cover “are linked to people’s well-being, they also have to do with the development model followed by countries,” Pizarro told Tierramérica.

“In economies based on raw materials or commodities, like most of the countries of Latin America and the Caribbean, the deforestation rate will remain high, because economic pressure to exploit the forests will continue to be extremely heavy,” he said.

According to the expert, the challenge to be met is modifying the energy mix, while the decisions taken by countries are still focused on the large-scale production of commodities that affect biodiversity.

“As long as decision-makers are incapable of comparing the short-term benefits of this exploitation with the real value of the ecosystemic services provided by forests, this is likely to continue happening on a large scale,” Pizarro said.

The ECLAC and UNDP experts recognised the environmental efforts made by countries in the region like Cuba and Costa Rica, which have reforested; Chile and Uruguay, which have successfully integrated forest industries in their economies; and Brazil, which reduced deforestation in the Amazon.

This story was originally published by Latin American newspapers that are part of the Tierramérica network.

Edited by Estrella Gutiérrez/Translated by Stephanie Wildes

A wind park in Mexico. Credit: Courtesy of Dforcesolar

By Emilio Godoy
MEXICO CITY, Mar 9 2015 (IPS)

Traditionally, falling oil prices have discouraged development of renewable energy sources, but clean energy is making steady progress in Latin America, according to regional experts.

Most Latin American countries have set medium and long-term targets for alternative energy supply and consumption and these projects are being maintained in spite of economic fluctuations and plummeting international crude oil prices.

According to Hugo Ventura, the head of the Energy and Natural Resources Unit of the Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean (ECLAC), there are two factors that call into question the view that cheaper oil will act as a brake on the development of renewable energy sources.

“One of these factors is that countries are committed to increasing the contribution of renewables, in order to diversify their energy mix, decrease dependence on fossil fuels and reduce carbon dioxide emissions because of climate change. The other aspect is that players in the energy sector are taking the long-term view,” Ventura told IPS.

Studies provide evidence that renewable energy sources in the region are in robust health. The World Wind Energy Association (WWEA) said on Feb. 5 that preliminary figures for 2014 were “very bright,” in a report that confirmed that “wind power investment is still speeding up at an enormous pace.”“There is unstoppable inertia; many projects under construction will soon be operating , so growth is continuing. There are renewable energy tendering schemes in the pipeline that are not going to stop.” -- Hugo Ventura

“Especially the new markets in Latin America as well as in Africa are reflecting the importance which wind power is now playing in the electricity supply, as a cheap and reliable power source,” said Stefan Gsänger, the Secretary General of the WWEA, which is based in the German city of Bonn.

The collapse of fossil fuel prices is damaging the economies of producer countries in the region, such as Argentina, Bolivia, Brazil, Colombia, Ecuador, Mexico, Peru and Venezuela, where state oil companies are experiencing difficulties in planning and operations.

But it is benefiting net importers, like Central American countries and Chile, which are paying less for their oil. Consumers in both groups of countries may see the cost of their electricity bills fall.

In these circumstances, renewable energy sources are already cost-competitive with fossil fuels like natural gas, according to the report “Renewable power generation costs in 2014” by the International Renewable Energy Agency (IRENA) based in Abu Dhabi, with 139 states as members.

If the health and environmental costs of fossil fuel-fired power are taken into account, renewable sources are even more cost-competitive.

The IRENA study indicates that the average cost of electricity produced by solar plants has fallen to within the range of fossil fuel power generation . Electricity from solar plants installed in 2013 and 2014 cost 11 cents per kilowatt-hour in South America, 12 cents in North America and over 31 cents in Central America and the Caribbean.

Model of the first solar energy plant in Latin America, due to begin operating in the Atacama desert in northern Chile in 2017. Credit: Abengoa Chile

The average cost of power generated by hydroelectric plants in South America was four cents per kWh.

Hydropower is the biggest renewable source in the region, but it is vulnerable to droughts, like the one currently affecting the south of Brazil. Brazil has 86,000 megawatts (86 gigawatts) of installed hydropower capacity, Mexico has more than 11,000 MW (11 GW), Argentina 10,000 (10 GW) and Colombia almost as much, according to IRENA’s figures.

“Countries will continue to pursue renewable energy sources. For example, wind power is much more economical than natural gas combined cycle plants or hydroelectric power,” Eduardo Rincón, a professor at Universidad Autónoma de la Ciudad de México (Autonomous University of Mexico City), told IPS.

Clean energy alternatives effectively contribute to lowering oil consumption and avoiding carbon dioxide emissions, which cause global warming. Moreover, they generate jobs and attract investment, he said.

Climatescope 2014’s report on “Mapping the global frontiers for clean energy investment” states that Brazil attracted as much as 96.3 billion dollars of investment between 2006 and 2013 for renewable energy development.

Renewables now represent 15 percent of Brazil’s total installed capacity of 126 gigawatts, according to the Climatescope document, which contains 55 country profiles compiled by the Multilateral Investment Fund of the Inter-American Development Bank, in partnership with public and private entities from several countries.

Mexico’s renewable energy sector attracted investments of 11.3 billion dollars in the period 2006-2013. The country has a total installed electricity capacity of 64 gigawatts, of which five percent is contributed by renewable sources.

Clean energy investment in Chile amounted to 7.1 billion dollars in the same period. Total installed power capacity is 17.8 gigawatts with renewable energies having an eight percent share. Peru’s renewables sector received 3.4 billion dollars in investments; the country’s total installed power capacity is 10 gigawatts.

Ventura, of ECLAC, predicted that oil prices will stabilise in 2016 at between 70 and 80 dollars a barrel, a moderate level compared to the average price in 2013 of over 100 dollars a barrel.

“At these prices, there is a viable niche for renewable power. Investors could find stability in the field of electricity,” he said. In his view, the region should aim for a diversified energy matrix, with wind, solar and geothermal power.

“There is unstoppable inertia; many projects under construction will soon be operating , so growth is continuing. There are renewable energy tendering schemes in the pipeline that are not going to stop,” Ventura said.

Argentina wants eight percent of total demand to be provided by renewable sources by 2016.

Chile’s goal is for 20 percent of its electricity to be provided by renewable sources by 2025.

Mexico has set targets of 23 percent of consumption to be supplied by clean energy sources by 2018, 25 percent by 2024 and 26 percent by 2027.
In Ventura’s view, these goals underpin regional plans to reduce polluting emissions by cutting fossil fuel consumption in spite of the current situation of low oil and gas prices.

Rincón, the university professor, said people’s awareness should be raised so that citizens exert pressure for legal changes to be made “in accordance with their demands, not with the interests of small, powerful groups.

“We need a transition towards low-cost energy systems, and renewable resources are heaven-sent: they are free,” he said.

In his view, “It’s a matter of getting the sums right. How much does a wind park or solar installation cost, over its planned service life, compared with continuing to build combined cycle plants?” he asked.

Mexico adopted an energy reform in August 2014 that opened up the entire sector to private local and international capital, including electricity generation from renewable sources.

The package of laws governing the reform includes one on geothermal energy, a resource that the authorities particularly wish to promote.

Edited by Estrella Gutiérrez/Translated by Valerie Dee

Emiliana Mamani holds up a magazine from the year 2000, which warned of “the silent invasion” of Bolivians in Argentina. The picture was even photoshopped, she said, to make the immigrant look like he was missing a tooth. Credit: Fabiana Frayssinet/IPS

By Fabiana Frayssinet
BUENOS AIRES, Feb 13 2015 (IPS)

In the movie “A Day Without a Mexican“, the mysterious disappearance of all Mexicans brings the state of California to a halt. Would the same thing happen in some Latin American countries if immigrants from neighbouring countries, who suffer the same kind of discrimination, went missing?

The response is that the situation is not comparable. But a new report by the Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean (ECLAC), only available in Spanish, shows that intraregional migration flows intensified in the 2000-2010 period, growing at a rate of 3.5 percent a year, while migration to the rest of the world slowed down.

There are 28.5 million Latin Americans living outside their countries, 20.8 million of them in the United States.

And of the 7.6 million immigrants in Latin America, 63 percent are from other countries in this region.

Nor are the strict immigration policies of the United States or Europe comparable with those of Latin America, where regional integration accords have facilitated residency for citizens of neighbouring countries and where “the unilateral and restrictive measures of some developed countries” have been rejected, ECLAC says.“Above and beyond progress made in legislation regarding equal treatment for immigrants, full rights, and the elimination of restrictions on migration, there are precedents of xenophobia in all societies in the region – from social actors to political groups and the media.” -- Pablo Ceriani

Nevertheless, Pablo Ceriani, an expert on immigration issues from Argentina, said the hypothetical plot of “A Day Without a Latin American in Latin America” could be based on something that this region shares with the United States, which has come in for so much criticism: expressions of xenophobia.

“Above and beyond progress made in legislation regarding equal treatment for immigrants, full rights, and the elimination of restrictions on migration, there are precedents of xenophobia in all societies in the region – from social actors to political groups and the media,” Ceriani, a member of the U.N. Committee on the Protection of the Rights of All Migrant Workers and Members of their Families, told IPS.

“Our region isn’t much different from other regions in terms of the reproduction of myths and false ideas about migration that are not supported by the statistics and which generate an attitude of rejection that stands in the way of progress in creating new laws,” he added.

According to Ceriani, discrimination is notorious in immigration policies like those of Mexico, “which detained 21,500 children last year and deported them to their home countries: Honduras, Nicaragua, El Salvador and Guatemala,” the main sources of intraregional migration to Mexico.

But there are also more subtle examples in countries that have migration agreements, such as the one in force in the Southern Common Market (Mercosur, made up of Argentina, Brazil, Paraguay, Uruguay and Venezuela), which in 2002 established the right to residency for citizens of any of the bloc’s member countries – all they have to do is present an identity document and prove they have no criminal record.

“They bring crime, they bring their customs, they take our jobs…,” said Ceriani, listing some of the xenophobic myths.

Emiliana Mamani, a Bolivian woman who has been living in Argentina for 30 years, knows all about prejudice.

“You always suffer discrimination for ‘having the wrong face’ – there’s this belief that Bolivians take work away from other people,” Mamani, the president of the Madres 27 de Mayo Association and the cooperative of the same name, the first one run here by Bolivian women, told IPS.

Bolivians are the second-most numerous group of intraregional immigrants in Argentina, after Paraguayans. They are followed by Chileans and Peruvians. In this country of 42 million people, there are 1.8 million foreign nationals, 4.5 percent of the population.

Chart on the percentage of immigrants coming from the rest of the region in 10 Latin American countries, from the ECLAC report “Trends and Patterns in Latin American and Caribbean Migration in 2010 and Challenges for a Regional Agenda”. Credit: Screenshot by IPS

ECLAC reports that the Latin American countries with the largest numbers of immigrants from the rest of the region are Argentina, Venezuela, Costa Rica and the Dominican Republic, while Brazil and Mexico are the only countries that receive more immigrants from outside of the region – the former from Europe and the latter from the United States.

“Sometimes we have to hear ‘why don’t you go back to your country? Don’t come here to act all macho or to be a wise guy. Why don’t you go home, you dirty drunk Bolivian’,” said Mamani, whose cooperative obtained a soft loan from the Housing Institute, which they used to build an apartment building where 12 Bolivian families live.

Mamani has three children – one born in Bolivia and two in Argentina. The two younger ones are now university students, and say they suffered discrimination in primary school, such as questions about why they were taking part in patriotic events.

They have also experienced discrimination in hospitals, even though by law in Argentina all foreign nationals have the right to receive health care, regardless of their migration status.

“In the hospitals sometimes they say the doctor’s not taking any more patients, or they ask us for our documents when they’re not supposed to…but if a blond gringo goes there, like someone from the United States or Europe, they try hard to understand him, even using sign language,” Mamani said.

Immigrants complain of this situation even though Argentina has had a migration law that is very advanced in terms of protection of human rights for 10 years. And since 2006, the situation of 736,000 Bolivian, Brazilian, Chilean, Colombian, Ecuadorian, Paraguayan, Peruvian, Uruguayan and Venezuelan immigrants has been regularised.

Mamani said that efforts to combat discrimination in society should start in the schools, hospitals and other public institutions, “which would seem to be unfamiliar with the migration laws.”

Another focus should be the media, which reproduce stereotypes, she said.

“For example in a robbery, if there’s one Bolivian or Peruvian in a group of Argentines, the media make it a point to say there was a Bolivian who was stealing,” she said.

These deeply-rooted prejudices based on primitive fears of what is “different take a long time to combat,” an official in the national migration office, who asked to remain anonymous, told IPS.

Ceriani said that in Argentina, as in other Latin American countries, there is an idealised vision of European migration from the 19th and early 20th centuries, when compared to the Latin American migration of today.

But a perusal of the literature or press reports from that time period clearly shows that there was also discrimination against Spanish, Italian and Portuguese immigrants.

“Stereotypes of them as ‘poor’, ‘ignorant’ or ‘thieves’ gradually faded with time,” Ceriani pointed out.

Both then and now, the decision to move to another country was prompted by the aim of finding a better life.

“All we do is work, work, work. When we decide to pack our bags in our country, the idea is to find work. We don’t come for anything else but to work,” said Mamani, who decided to come to Argentina because a friend told her “that in just one year I would make a lot of money.”

With their work, Bolivians in Argentina add to the country’s wealth, said Ceriani, by bringing, for example, original techniques for planting fruits and vegetables.

And in the textile factories, where they often work in sweatshop conditions, they produce clothing for the most upscale brands.

Paraguayans are widely employed in the construction industry and as domestics. Peruvians often work caring for children, the elderly, and the ill. But many Latin American immigrants are skilled workers or professionals.

Examples in the region abound. In northern Brazil, Haitians are working on the construction of megainfrastructure like dams, or in the mining industry.

In Costa Rica, Nicaraguans form a large part of the workforce in the construction industry, agriculture and domestic service, just as Colombians do in Venezuela.

The increased integration will bring many more examples of unrestricted intraregional circulation of people. But economic growth in some countries and stagnation in others will continue to create discriminatory stereotypes.

Ceriani underscores that migration must be addressed in terms of its structural causes. And that is done, he said, by reducing the social and economic gaps between the countries of Latin America.

Edited by Estrella Gutiérrez/Translated by Stephanie Wildes

Young Chileans in one of the numerous mass protests demanding free quality education in Santiago, the capital of Chile. Credit: Marianela Jarroud/IPS

By Marianela Jarroud
SANTIAGO, Jan 27 2015 (IPS)

Young people in Latin America now enjoy greater access to education. But in many cases their future is dim due to the lack of opportunities and the siren call of crime in a region where 167 million people are poor, and 71 million live in extreme poverty.

“We are concerned, even alarmed, at the situation facing Latin America’s youth,” Alicia Bárcena, executive secretary of the Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean (ECLAC), told IPS.

“We believe young people should be the central focus of the next regional meetings, but with a different vision this time, not just focusing on drugs and violence,” she added.

According to ECLAC figures, one out of four of the 600 million inhabitants of Latin America and the Caribbean is between the ages of 15 and 29.

Despite that, spending on the young is relatively low, especially if you compare the region’s public and private investment on post-secondary education with what is spent in emerging countries of Southeast Asia, or in Europe.“Young people aren’t necessarily the most violent – we have to fight that stigma. Youth should not be identified with violence, with detachment from the institutions. Young people want to work, they want to study, they want opportunities, new utopias, and they have new ideas.” -- Alicia Bárcena

The report, Social Panorama of Latin America 2014, presented Monday Jan. 26 in the Chilean capital, revealed significant advances in educational coverage among Latin America’s young people, but also found that they continue to suffer from higher unemployment rates and lower levels of social protection than adults.

They are also the main victims of homicides in the region, where seven of the 14 most violent countries in the world are located.

The ECLAC report shows that the progress in reducing poverty has slowed down. Poverty continues to affect 28 percent of the population in the region, while extreme poverty grew from 11.3 to 12 percent, based on the 15 countries that provided up-to-date statistics.

However, inequality has been reduced in nearly every country.

There are some 160 million young people in this region of 600 million. And although the population has begun to age, the young will remain a significant proportion of the population over the next few decades.

The report says that “Despite these major attainments in terms of education coverage and lower inequality, there are still large structural divides in capacity-building opportunities between the region’s young people.”

Bárcena said it’s not just about achieving greater social spending on education, housing or health, but also about things that are less tangible but no less important, such as improving participation by young people in the design of public policies.

“Transparency and information have to go farther than what is happening today,” she said.

Although they have greater access to education, inequality is still a problem for young people in the region.

For example, people between the ages of 15 and 29 in the three lowest income quintiles have unemployment rates between 10 and 20 percent, compared to rates of five to seven percent among young people in the two highest income quintiles.

And only 27.5 percent of young wage earners between the ages of 15 and 19 are enrolled in the social security system, compared to 67.7 percent of adults aged 30 to 64.

ECLAC Executive Secretary Alicia Bárcena (centre) with other ECLAC officials at the presentation of the Social Panorama of Latin America 2014 on Jan. 26 in Santiago, Chile. Credit: Carlos Vera/ECLAC

“The idea is to advance in social policies that take into account the complete cycle of life and the different priorities that arise throughout a person’s life,” Daniela Trucco, social affairs officer with ECLAC’s Social Development Division, told IPS.

She said the assessment and analysis of public policies in the region should take into account the differences between sub-regions, because Latin America is very diverse.

For example, “the Southern Cone countries are much more advanced, with a much more educated young population that has unemployment problems similar to adults,” she said.

By contrast, “in the countries of Central America young people aren’t even finishing secondary school. A large proportion of adolescents and young people are outside the educational system, and that is where we have the worst problems of violence and gangs.”

Trucco said there are key areas to be addressed among the young, such as education and employment. But although these are the most important, they are not the only ones, she added.

“There is a proportion of young people who don’t fall into these areas, but it’s not because they aren’t doing anything; they’re often employed without pay, for example, in domestic or care work in the home, a very important question for young and adult women,” she said.

The Social Panorama reports that 22 percent of people aged 15 to 29 in Latin America were neither studying nor in paid employment in 2012. Of that proportion, a majority were women engaged in unpaid care and domestic work.

Another essential area to be addressed, besides health, is participation, with the aim of involving young people themselves in the formulation of better public policies targeting that segment of the population.

“We have to think about the issue of participation in a modern, up-to-date manner,” Trucco said.

“There is a great deal of interest in political participation, but not the traditional politics linked to political parties. The question of social networks, and digital inclusion, also has to be considered,” she said.

She stressed the work carried out by ECLAC to combat two kinds of stigmas faced by young people: those who neither work nor study, and the question of youth violence.

And although the main victims of homicide are between the ages of 15 and 44, the stigma of youth violence distorts public policy options, the report says.

“We see that adolescents do participate significantly [in the violence], but young adults do too,” said Trucco. “They are young people not incorporated in other forms of social inclusion, or maybe they are, but with different expectations, and caught up in contexts of violence or inclusion in other groups.”

The expert called for “a change in approach to the problem of violence to figure out how society can overcome it and what alternatives can be offered in terms of development and opportunities.”

A prejudiced approach makes people forget that young people are the principal victims of crime, as shown by the fact that on average, 20 percent of young people in the region say they have been the victims of crimes, four percentage points higher than adults.

The proportion of victims who are young people is higher in the countries with the highest crime rates, such as the seven that are on the list of the world’s 14 most violent countries: Honduras, Venezuela, Belize, El Salvador, Guatemala, Jamaica and Colombia, in that order.

Mexico is in the process of joining that list of violent countries, Bárcena said in her interview with IPS.

The head of ECLAC said greater comprehension is needed with respect to violence among the young.

“Young people aren’t necessarily the most violent – we have to fight that stigma. Youth should not be identified with violence, with detachment from the institutions. Young people want to work, they want to study, they want opportunities, new utopias, and they have new ideas,” she said.

Edited by Estrella Gutiérrez/Translated by Stephanie Wildes

A farmer from Alauca, Honduras plants maize on his land. Agriculture, which accounts for up to 20 percent of GDP in some countries in the region, has been hit hard by climate change. Credit: Neil Palmer/Ciat

By Diego Arguedas Ortiz
SAN JOSE, Nov 25 2014 (IPS)

Worried about the effects of global warming on agriculture, water and food security in their communities, social organisations in Central America are demanding that their governments put a priority on these issues in the COP20 climate summit.

In the months leading up to COP20 – the 20th session of the Conference of the Parties to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) – civil society in Central America has met over and over again to reach a consensus position on adaptation and loss and damage.

These, along with mitigation, are the pillars of the negotiations to take place in Lima the first 12 days of December, which are to give rise to a new climate change treaty to be signed a year later at COP21 in Paris.

“Central American organisations working for climate justice, food security and sustainable development are trying to share information and hammer out a common position,” Tania Guillén, who represents Nicaragua’s Humboldt Centre environmental group at the talks, told IPS.

That consensus, in one of the regions of the world most vulnerable to global warming, will serve “to ask the governments to adopt positions similar to those taken by civil society,” said the representative of the Humboldt Centre, a regional leader in climate change research and activism.

Guillén said the effort to hold a Central American dialogue “is aimed at guaranteeing that adaptation will be a pillar of the new accord, and there is a good climate for that.”

The Nicaraguan activist stressed that the other question of great interest to the region is loss and damage, aimed at addressing and remedying the negative effects of climate change already suffered by the countries of Central America.

“Studies indicate that we have spent 10 percent of GDP to recover from Mitch, which was basically the starting point of risk management in the region,” said Guillén, referring to the hurricane that caused billions of dollars in damages and claimed thousands of lives in Central America in 1998.

These two main thematic areas dominate the agendas of Central American networks seeking solutions to climate change, like the Central American Alliance for Resilience, the Regional Coalition for Risk Management and the Vulnerable Central America Forum.

On Nov. 14 these organisations signed the declaration of the Second Central American Conference on Loss and Damage from Climate Change, where activists from the region studied water stress, food security and the risks facing the population.

One of their demands was that during COP20 the seven governments of the region “promote the declaration of Central America as a region highly vulnerable to the effects of climate change.”

The same thing was demanded by the Fifth Regional Meeting on Vulnerable Central America, United for Life, held in September.

Another gathering in preparation for COP20 will take place Wednesday Nov. 26 in Honduras.

Costa Rican farmer José Alberto Chacón grows beans on terraces to control the water flow that erodes the soil on his small farm in Pacayas, on the slopes of the Irazú volcano. Terraces are one example of adaptation to climate change. Credit: Diego Arguedas Ortiz/IPS

The demands set forth by civil society are backed by studies highlighting the climate fragility of this region, which is set between two oceans.

In the 2012 report “The economics of climate change in Central America”, the United Nations Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean (ECLAC) predicted that precipitation in the region would decline by at least 11 percent by 2100.

This year, a report by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) confirmed that forecast.

The effects of climate change on agriculture in this region could also be devastating.

ECLAC estimated that if global warming continues at the current pace, the negative impacts on agricultural production would lead to a loss of nearly 19 percent of GDP in Central America.

For all of these reasons, civil society groups are demanding that governments in the region and the Central American Integration System (SICA) take a firmer stance on climate change adaptation.

In the meantime, they are developing projects to curb the negative effects of global warming in the region.

In Costa Rica, the Tropical Agricultural Research and Higher Education Centre (CATIE) is working with local authorities to implement a river basin management plan.

The plan includes the Barranca river, which flows into the Pacific ocean after running through an important farming area.

“We are developing a master plan for the basin and we put special importance on future scenarios of climate change and variability,” the coordinator of the CATIE programme, Laura Benegas, told IPS.

The research centre is also carrying out an ambitious seed protection and improvement programme, to guarantee food security in Costa Rica.

SICA, the government counterpart to the regional social organisations, is currently presided over by Belize, whose government ensured that addressing climate change would be among its top priorities.

However, the organisations are sceptical about the possibility of the government delegations taking their positions on board.

“Civil society does not have an influence on the official position to be taken to the talks because there are no mechanisms for that and because many segments of civil society are still having a hard time taking that step,” Alejandra Granados, president of the Costa Rican organisation CO2.cr, told IPS.

With respect to the climate summit in Lima, Central America has the advantage that Costa Rica currently presides over the Independent Alliance of Latin America and the Caribbean, made up of middle-income countries pushing for an adaptation initiative within the UNFCCC.

The group also includes Guatemala, Panama, Colombia, Chile and the COP20 host country Peru.

During the Sep. 23 climate summit held at U.N. headquarters in New York, the countries of Central America committed themselves to making their economies even greener.

Costa Rica confirmed its commitment to become carbon neutral by 2021, Nicaragua promised to continue to invest in renewable energies, and Guatemala pledged to reforest 3.9 million hectares between 2016 and 2020.

Nevertheless, this region shares very little responsibility for global warming.

While China and the United States together account for 45 percent of global greenhouse gas emissions, Central America is responsible for just 0.8 percent.

By contrast, according to the Global Climate Risk Index produced by GermanWatch, three nations in this region were among the 10 countries in the world affected the most by climate change between 1993 and 2012.

Honduras is in first place on that list, Nicaragua in fourth place and Guatemala in 10th place. El Salvador is in 13th place, Belize 22nd, Costa Rica 66th and Panama 103rd.

Edited by Estrella Gutiérrez/Translated by Stephanie Wildes

(1) Tax evasion and fraud join forces in Latin America to exacerbate inequality in the region. Credit: Marianela Jarroud/IPS

By Marianela Jarroud
SANTIAGO, Oct 14 2014 (IPS)

Corruption and tax evasion are flagrant violations of human rights in Latin America, where they contribute to inequality and injustice in the countries of the region, according to studies and experts consulted by IPS.

“Tax evasion means that those who are most vulnerable are denied the full enjoyment of their economic and social rights, including health and education,” said Rocío Noriega, an adviser on governance, ethics and transparency for the United Nations Development Programme.

“Corruption has a negative impact on the enjoyment of human rights,” she added. It also constitutes “a threat to democracy, because it systematically violates the foundation of citizenship by perpetuating inequality based on access by the few to power, wealth and personal connections,” she told IPS.

Corruption, as a way of distributing public resources for purposes other than the common good, is a serious violation of human rights, experts agreed.

In 2013 the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights said that, since corruption can occur in many different forms and contexts, it is almost impossible to identify all the human rights that are violated.

They added that corruption is an obstacle for the development of societies, but is also a serious problem for strengthening the legitimacy of democracy, because its prevalence and the perception of citizens of its incidence in public affairs and institutions can greatly undermine support for democratic regimes.

The 2013 Latinobarómetro poll indicates that 26 percent of all Latin Americans said they were aware of at least one case of corruption in their country in the past 12 months. A similar percentage said that nearly everyone in their government was corrupt.

Venezuela and Mexico top the ranking for perception of corruption, with 39 percent making these statements, followed by Paraguay (38 percent) and Chile (35 percent). Among the countries with the lowest perception of corruption were Uruguay (19 percent), Nicaragua (17 percent), Honduras Guatemala and Brazil (16 percent), and El Salvador (eight percent).

Francisca Quiroga, a political analyst and expert on public policies at the University of Chile, told IPS that both corruption and tax evasion are directly correlated to inequality and injustice.

She said: “Tax policies are a potential instrument for distributing resources and funding the development of social policies.

“The underlying rationale is the duty to combat inequality and to redistribute resources, as well as to build more sustainable economies,” she said.

“When talking about human rights and social rights, in particular, one of the elements to take into account is taxation policy, and the institutional mechanisms to ensure the legitimacy of the decisions taken,” she said.

High inequality is one of the most distinctive characteristics of Latin America’s social situation.

According to the Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean (ECLAC), income distribution inequality in the region is substantially higher than in other global regions, with an average Gini coefficient of 0.53.

The Gini coefficient is a measure of income inequality, expressed as an index between zero and one. Zero represents perfect equality, while a value of one represents complete inequality.

For example, the least unequal country in the region is more unequal than any non-Latin American member of the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD), or than any country in the Middle East and North Africa, according to a report titled “Evasión y Equidad en América Latina” (Evasion and Equality in Latin America) by the ECLAC Economic Development Division.

The five Latin American countries with the worst income distribution, according to the report, are Brazil, Guatemala, Honduras, Paraguay and Chile, in that order.

In Chile, most employed people earn around 500 dollars a month, in a country where bread costs two dollars a kilo, while the richest 4,500 families live on more than 30,000 dollars a month.

“Tax evasion is a form of fraud that undermines equality, there is no doubt about it,” sociologist Marta Lagos, the head of Latinobarómetro, told IPS.

“There is massive empirical evidence that shows that income distribution improves when taxes are paid,” she said.

“The lack of formality of our state agencies allows tax evasion to occur,” and this may happen in powerful and wealthy circles as well as among ordinary citizens, she said.

She calls this phenomenon “social fraud,” pointing to its basis in customs overwhelmingly regarded as acceptable in social practice, so that the state is unable to eradicate it. “It is customary, however wrong, illegal and immoral,” she said.

Lagos stressed that social fraud may be wrong, immoral or illegal. Wrongness refers to offences that are not legally penalised but affect coexistence, such as parking a vehicle badly and paralysing traffic. Immoral acts include situations like eating something while shopping in a supermarket and not paying for it.

Illegal social fraud, in turn, may occur on a mass scale and covers those who avoid paying for a bus ticket, use state subsidies improperly, or evade paying taxes.

In Chile, as in other Latin American countries, it is common practice for retail outlets in outlying neighbourhoods not to issue receipts for every purchase, said Lagos, and this is wholly accepted by the population.

“I don’t really care,” Bernarda, a middle-aged woman who buys bread every day from a small store near her home in La Florida, a mainly middle class suburb southeast of Santiago, but who does not always receive a formal receipt for her purchase.

“I have known this woman (the store owner) for years and I know she is honest,” she said. “It’s all the same to me,” said another neighbour beside her. “What do I want a tax receipt for? Anyway, everybody does it,” she said.

This behaviour is widespread in the region and is reflected daily in the question that retailers and service providers in many countries constantly ask consumers when it is time to pay: “With IVA (value added tax) or without IVA?”

Lagos said that over the past decade tax evasion has come to be seen as increasingly legitimate, since corruption in high places “increases people’s perception that it is acceptable not to pay taxes, because the money is being stolen and misspent.”

Quiroga, however, believes the time has come for citizens to realise that their political and social rights are infringed whenever the system allows tax evasion and corruption to become common practice.

“This is the only way we are going to be able to overcome this scourge,” she said.

Edited by Estrella Gutiérrez/Translated by Valerie Dee

Ángel and Guadalupe Villalobos work near the University of Costa Rica in San José. He is a hairdresser at a beauty salon and she distributes fruit for a small business run by this brother and sister. Credit: Diego Arguedas Ortiz/IPS

By Marianela Jarroud
SANTIAGO, Jul 10 2014 (IPS)

In Latin America, young people are the main link in the chain of poverty leading from one generation to the next. Civil society groups, academics and young people themselves say it is imperative to strengthen the connection between education today and decent employment tomorrow.

“The region’s youth is a subject in its own right, with great symbolic power. It is probably the age group that generates the richest range of identities and cultural expressions,” Martin Hopenhayn, head of the social development division of the Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean (ECLAC), told IPS.“We have a great responsibility, because we are the future of this country." -- María Fernanda Tejada

One in four Latin Americans is aged between 15 and 29, according to the Santiago-based ECLAC. This makes it a young continent, “but not for long,” Hopenhayn said.

The population aged 0-15 has fallen markedly in the region, so in 20 years’ time it will have an ageing society.

“That’s why it is very important to invest now in young people, because in 20 years’ time we are going to need the non-aged population to be much more productive,” Hopenhayn said.

But investment in youth is relatively low in Latin America, especially when public and private investment in post-secondary education is compared with emerging countries in southeast Asia, or with European countries.

“Young people are the main link in the intergenerational transmission of poverty,” Hopenhayn said. This transmission will determine whether young people currently becoming economically independent will re-experience “the income poverty and job insecurity of previous generations, that is, of their parents,” he said.

The key mechanism to interrupt this intergenerational transmission is to improve the connection between education today and employment tomorrow, he said.

“We must reduce the gap in educational attainments between poor and non-poor young people,” by focusing investment on education for lower-income sectors, he said.

According to ECLAC figures, only 28 percent of young people aged 20-24 from the poorest 20 percent of the population have completed their secondary education; while among the richest 20 percent, about 80 percent have completed secondary education.

“At present, completing secondary education is the minimum requirement for a young person moving into the world of work and a lifelong career to have real expectations of achieving well-being and social mobility, and overcoming poverty,” Hopenhayn said.

Ángel and Guadalupe Villalobos, a brother and sister who have set up a small fruit distribution business of their own near the University of Costa Rica, in San José, are well aware of this fact.

Ángel, 21, finished his studies as a hairdresser in December 2013 and began working in January 2014. When his 22-year-old sister and her partner separated, the brother and sister started to distribute fruit in local beauty salons.

“Perhaps the main barrier is that if you are experienced and older, it is difficult to get a job, and if you are young, in spite of all your energy, it’s also difficult, but here (in the salon) they have offered me good opportunities,” Ángel told IPS.

Neither of them has started university and Guadalupe has not finished secondary school. In Costa Rica, with its 4.8 million people, 22 percent of young people work in the informal economy, which Ángel and Guadalupe intend to leave.

In Mexico, 37 million people are aged 15-29, out of a total population of 118 million. Nearly 26 percent of this age group are neither studying nor working, and almost 45 percent of them live in poverty.

“I am worried about the lack of opportunities and the prospect of unemployment,” 18-year-old María Fernanda Tejada told IPS. In August she will start studying internatioal relations at the Autonomous University of Mexico, in the capital city.

“We have a great responsibility, because we are the future of this country,” added Tejada, who is the eldest of four children.

In Santiago, 19-year-old Daniel Hurtado is studying medicine, in spite of the social expectation that he would probably work “in a call centre, or as a supermarket packer, in construction or as a waiter,” his father Hugo, himself a waiter, told IPS.

A wage earner in Chile, which has a population of 17.6 million, earns an average of 500 dollars a month, and generally has no chance to send children to university, where medical studies cost between 900 and 1,200 dollars a month. “It’s a gruelling effort,” said the father. “But we are breaking through the barrier,” said the son.

In Hopenhayn’s view, intervening in education is the best means to break the intergenerational cycle of poverty, because it is a mass phenomenon that is socially recognised, and has a major impact on the world of work.

According to a study by ECLAC and the United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA), nearly one-third of young people in Latin America and the Caribbean live in poverty, which contravenes their human rights, enshrined in international treaties.

The study, published in 2012, says that the poverty and extreme poverty rates among young people aged 15-29 in the region are 30.3 percent and 10.1 percent, respectively. Together with under-15s, this group is the most vulnerable to poverty in the region.

Employment opportunities are limited for young people, who have an unemployment rate of 15 percent, while for those aged over 30, unemployment is only six percent.

Another factor is the high rate of informal employment in the region, which particularly affects young people.

“For instance, in Chile between 45 and 50 percent of workers are in informal employment, but in the 15-29 age group, 60 percent are informal workers,” sociologist Lucas Cifuentes, a researcher with the Work, Employment, Equity and Health programme at the Latin American Faculty of Social Sciences (FLACSO), told IPS.

He said, “undoubtedly employment is the lynchpin of social development,” and added that “it is impossible to overcome poverty without decent, dignified and protected work.”

In Hopenhayn’s view, recent years have brought about major institutional progress in youth policies, moderate progress in terms of investment in young people, and insufficient progress in investment in young people’s education.

While waiting for that to materialise, Latin American societies continue to seek their own alternative solutions to problems like inequality, and young people demand – in some countries, on the streets – investment to break the transmission of inequality in their generation.

With additional reporting from Emilio Godoy in Mexico City, and Diego Arguedas in San José.

Excerpt:

Flooding in Trinidad's capital of Port of Spain in May 2013 left residents little choice but to wade through the deluge. Credit: Peter Richards/IPS

By Jewel Fraser
PORT OF SPAIN, Trinidad, Aug 19 2013 (IPS)

The Caribbean is in danger of becoming “a region of serial defaulters” with respect to international debt obligations, according to one expert, and this may partly be due to its economies suffering frequent shocks from natural disasters.

Caribbean nations are among the world’s most vulnerable to natural disasters, with the region being struck by 187 such disasters in the past 60 years.

According to an International Monetary Fund study entitled “Caribbean Small States: Challenges of High Debt and Low Growth” and published in February, “The effects of natural disasters on [the region’s] growth and debt are also significant,” and “many Caribbean economies face high and rising debt to GDP ratios that jeopardize prospects for medium-term debt sustainability and growth.”

Commenting on the region’s restructuring of loans after some countries had defaulted on bond payments, a Bloomberg news report quoted an expert in international finance from American University who claimed Caribbean governments find it easier to default on bond payments than to reduce their spending.

Over the past three years, a number of Caribbean countries have restructured bond payments, making this period one of the highest for defaults on loan agreements by Caribbean governments. The Bloomberg report cited Grenada, Jamaica and Belize as three of the Caribbean countries restructuring debt obligations.

However, Michael Hendrickson, an economic affairs officer with the Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean (ECLAC), emphasised the pressures brought by natural disasters on these countries’ economies over the past decade.

“In Grenada, GDP contracted largely due to the fallout from Hurricane Ivan, the growth rate declined from 9.5 percent in 2003 (before Ivan) to -0.7 percent in 2004 (year of Ivan) then recovered strongly in 2005, with growth of 13.3 percent, no doubt related to strong reconstruction, i.e. investment, but declined again in 2006, after the investment had run its course.

“Jamaica also felt the impact of Ivan and its growth rate slowed from 3.7 percent in 2003 to 1.3 percent in 2004 [the year Ivan struck the island]. This reflected the impact on productive sectors such as agriculture, mining and tourism.

“Moreover, the impacts lingered into 2005, when the economy grew by only 0.9 percent. In Belize, growth slowed to 1.1 percent in 2007 from 5.1 percent in 2006, partly as a result of the impact of Hurricane Dean, owing to damage to agriculture and productive infrastructure,” he told IPS.

Regional governments’ tendency to fund social and economic development through borrowing rather than through establishing an appropriate framework for sustainable economic development has also contributed to the high debt to GDP ratio.

Some Caribbean countries “have debt levels that can be considered unsustainable”, Hendrickson said. “Moreover, debt service payments, namely, interest and principal repayments, absorbed a full 29 percent of government revenue in 2011.

“We are still collating numbers for 2012. This reduces the ability of governments to finance public investment and social protection programmes.”

The 2013 IMF study noted that “part of the build-up can be traced to the cost of natural disasters, successive years of fiscal deficit, public enterprise borrowing and off-balance-sheet spending, including for financial sector bailouts.”

An IMF working paper entitled “Macroeconomic Implications of Natural Disasters in the Caribbean” observes that following natural disasters in the Eastern Caribbean region, “the tendency appears to have been a marked increase in expenditure and a small reduction in total revenue (including grants) despite an increase in inflows of official assistance and aid.”

The working paper said this “is not surprising, as governments and households would be expected to borrow in response to temporary shocks.”

Since natural disasters affect two of the largest economic sectors in the region, tourism and agriculture, the impact on countries’ economic growth is considerable.

According to ECLAC’s “The Economics of Climate Change in the Caribbean Summary Report,” it is estimated that natural disasters due to climate change will likely cost countries in the subregion up to five percent of annual GDP between 2011 and 2050.

It is also estimated that GDP in the region has declined by about one percent annually over the past several years because of natural disasters.

However, because of their middle income status, the majority of the region is unable to benefit from international debt relief, says the 2013 IMF study on Caribbean debt. The study also noted that “only a few Caribbean countries still qualify for concessional borrowing at the World Bank.”

“Given the exceptionally high costs of natural disasters, small states in the Caribbean should be seen as frontline candidates for support from climate-change funding,” the IMF report stated.

The president of the Caribbean Development Bank (CDB), Dr. Warren Smith, also stated a case for increased insurance coverage to help offset the impact of natural disasters due to climate change, at a recent meeting of the CDB’s governors.

He made specific reference to the region’s need to make greater use of the Caribbean Catastrophe Risk Insurance Facility (CCRIF), an organisation set up to insure Caribbean countries against natural disasters.

Dr. Simon Young, who heads Caribbean Risk Managers Ltd., which supervises most of the technical aspects of CCRIF, said 16 countries in the region have policies with CCRIF.

“Those policies cover hurricane and earthquake and the total amount of risk that is covered amounts to just over 600 million” for all 16 countries, he told IPS.

Dr. Young conceded, “It is not adequate, but the adequacy of the coverage is a function of the countries’ ability to pay premiums that would be needed to buy adequate coverage. CCRIF provides premiums at less than half of what the commercial market would require.”

Yet, many countries find it difficult to pay for coverage even at those preferential rates. As a result, the insurance coverage has provided only “a very small amount” of compensation to islands hit by natural disasters in recent years.

Dr. Young added that insurance coverage should not be seen as a “silver bullet” for disaster risk reduction.

“Caribbean countries need to look for cost efficient ways to manage disaster risk reduction,” he said, and CCRIF provides just one tool for doing so.

Ahmad Alhendawi, the U.N. secretary general's special envoy on youth, speaks with participants in the programme Jóvenes en Red (Youth Net) from Manga, a working-class neighbourhood on the outskirts of Montevideo. Credit: David Puig/UNFPA

By Raúl Pierri
MONTEVIDEO, Aug 13 2013 (IPS)

Shortcomings in the educational system in Latin America and the Caribbean fuel inequalities that remain hurdles to access to the labour market and safe sex for a large part of the region’s youth.

Around half of the region’s sexually active youngsters have never used any form of birth control, and an estimated 20 percent of children in the region were born to mothers between the ages of 10 and 19.

The HIV/AIDS rate, meanwhile, has declined but remains high: some 250,000 Latin Americans aged 15 to 24 are living with HIV.

These statistics were reported at the first session of the Regional Conference on Population and Development in Latin America and the Caribbean, running Aug. 12-15 in Montevideo, the capital of Uruguay.

Marcela Suazo, regional director of the United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA), said the problem is that “there is insufficient access to sex education in the region.

“Sex education is still missing from the basic national curriculum in many public schools, although some private schools are providing knowledge and information,” she told IPS.

Suazo said that as medical care continues to advance, education and information on sexual and reproductive rights remain limited, which makes it difficult for young people to receive adequate attention.

The UNFPA official took part in a forum Monday to mark World Youth Day – observed Aug. 12 – ahead of the regional gathering.

This week’s meeting, which is assessing the progress made in implementing the Programme of Action of the International Conference on Population and Development (ICPD) held in Cairo in 1994, is organised by the Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean (ECLAC) and the Uruguayan government, with support from UNFPA.

Suazo also said sex education continues to face prejudices.

“Adults behave differently with people who we consider young and less prepared, who are thus treated in a prejudiced manner,” she said.

But even when good sexual and reproductive services exist, many young women do not use them because they fear they will be judged because of their sexual behaviour, she said.

“We need to overcome this barrier because it’s directly related to teen pregnancy, to the reproduction of poverty and inequality, which is a pending challenge for Latin America and the Caribbean,” she stressed.

Limitations on the sexual and reproductive rights of young women in Latin America directly influence their chances of completing their studies and avoiding poverty.

In this region, between 15 and 40 percent of young women say their first sexual experience was forced, while nearly 30 percent of adolescent girls are married before the age of 18.

The U.N. secretary general’s special envoy on youth, Ahmad Alhendawi, also stressed the importance of sexual education.

“We believe it’s fundamental for young people to know more about their bodies,” he told IPS. “Every six minutes a young person is affected with HIV/AIDS and this is unacceptable. These are dangerous numbers. We believe by providing tools and information we’ll be able to tackle this issue.”

According to figures from the ICPD high-level task force, the region is experiencing the largest youth cohort in history: Of the 600 million people in Latin America and the Caribbean, more than 26 percent are aged 15 to 29 – a demographic boom that should be harnessed, experts say.

But youth unemployment is the expression of a gap between education and the labour market.

“The education system is not equipping young people with the skills and the knowledge that they need to enter the labour market. This mismatch is daunting and shrinking young people’s chances to get decent job opportunities,” Alhendawi said.

“Globally, 73.4 million young people are unemployed, and this is a number that requires all of us to respond quickly to this problem,” he added.

Alhendawi underlined the importance of increasing investment in this age group, and called on governments and private institutions to provide financial services to enable young people to set up their own businesses, so that they can stop being job-seekers and become innovators and job-creators instead.

In Latin America and the Caribbean, only 10 percent of young people work in the formal economy, Suazo noted.

Young people “are the first to lose their jobs when there are cutbacks,” she said. “And when they want to get a formal sector job, they face requisites, like five years of experience, when they are just coming out of the university.”

Besides, she added, “we are facing a new industrial-technological revolution. Education systems should be reviewed so that they allow the development of the necessary skills, capacities and knowledge for young people to take part in this innovation.”

The UNPFA official acknowledged that education has improved in certain respects in Latin America. For example, 95 percent primary school enrolment has been achieved.

“But when we look at the secondary and university levels, the numbers start to come down considerably,” she said.

“Primary education does not manage to develop the necessary competence and skills for people to take part in development processes in productive areas,” she said.

The secretary general of the Ibero-American Youth Organisation (OIJ), Alejo Ramírez, urged governments to put a priority on youth when it comes to spending.

“The economic growth seen in Latin America in recent years has helped develop many sectors. But the youth, who are hardest hit by unemployment and inequality, are the last to be reached by public spending,” he lamented.

Only an estimated 20 percent of social spending benefits people under the age of 30, he said.

The OIJ also presented the First Ibero-American Youth Survey. Ramírez told IPS that the study’s main finding was that two out of three young people believe that in five years they will be better off, “pointing to a strong degree of optimism.”