Guatemala for almost twenty years is taking out an energy plan seeking for transition towards renewable hydroelectric energy. But this great plan is in the meantime leading to social conflicts and environmental destruction for the mere benefit of the large companies investing in the wmarket. This is the case of the construction project “REBORN” (RENACE in Spanish) aiming at setting five hydroelectric plants in the tributaries of the Cahabon River in the Department of Alta Verapaz. This project is led by MultiInversiones Corporation (MIC) owned by the family Guitierrez-Bosch. Part of those plants were built or projected to be in partnership with the powerful Spanish group COBRA which is part of the international consortium of construction activities and services (ACS), whose President is Florentino Perez, also President of the Spanish football club Real Madrid. According to an environmental report published by Madre Selva, a Guatemalan environmental group, these plants are located in a region of high environmental value by its tropical forests that maintain the ecological connectivity of the area. Moreover, the Cahabon River and its tributaries are the main source of drinking water for the population living in its basin and enables its inhabitants to earn income thanks to the touristic activities of the area such as the sightseeing site of Semuc Champey Lanquin caves. Protests against the plants came from the communities hardly impacted bt the project denounciating irregular practices committed by MIC in order to access communities’s land such as a set of acts of violence against inhabitants and indigenous community´s leaders to repress protests, not making payments promised to the families in exchange for their land etc. The inhabitants of the area also reported that the plants are contaminating the river as well as causing deforestation by the expansion of highways ant the construction of the plants itself. In September 2015, the Ministry of Environment and Natural Resources (MARN) fined the companies for violating environmental commitments when studying the environmental impacts of project REBORN II. Despite this decision, MIC obtained a construction license and began to buy land and expand the highway for the construction of the plants REBORN IV and V. The project is still going ahead with the complicity of the government at the expense of the indigeneoushuman rights and against the claims of these communities to use its veto on projects that do not contribute to its development and that in contrast, are just ways of plundering and looting. Nevertheless, two future hidrolectric projects in the same river were temporarly suspended by the Supreme Court of Justice.

Location

Cahabon River, Department of Alta Verapaz, Guatemala

Google maps: https://goo.gl/maps/RebornPlantsGuatemala

Environmental impact

• Air pollution
• Water pollution
• Land degradation (e.g. drought, soil contamination, erosion and desertification)
• Alteration of landscape aesthetics and built heritage

Ethical/ legal issues

• Health and well-being

Information sources & materials

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