Venezuela’s environmental crisis is getting worse. Here are seven things to know.

Firefighters fend off a fire in Lara. (Photo courtesy of Twitter/Alvaro Zambrano Carrera)
The wealthy elite have helped degrade many of the country’s protected areas

Venezuela’s economy showed signs of modest recovery last year. Inflation decreased from a shocking 686% to 234%, according to government officials. And the National Survey of Living Conditions (ENCOVI) found that poverty decreased by 15%.

But the income gap also widened. While lower- and middle-class households continue to struggle for basic resources, the country’s elite are able to live lavishly, often taking trips to national parks and tropical resorts on the Caribbean coast. That wouldn’t necessarily be a problem in other countries, but Venezuela offers few protections for wildlife in those areas, making elite tourism an increasingly harmful industry.

Last February, pictures of Canaima National Park made headlines after a group of tourists held a party on top of the Kusary Tepuy, a unique mountain formation off limits to human activity because of its fragile ecosystem and connection to Indigenous traditions.

A resort on Borracha Island, part of Mochima National Park, has been pitched as a premium tourist destination with solar panels and wind energy. But development is technically illegal in the park and the government doesn’t provide access to environmental impact reports.

“They never present the environmental impact assessment and that’s required and should be publicly accessible but right now there aren’t any,” said Elsa Rodríguez, a member of the OEP. “People are finding out about these types of projects through the media but we don’t really know what the impact is.”

The waste management system is collapsing

Venezuela’s trash problem has gotten worse over the years because it doesn’t have the infrastructure and maintenance to supply the population with the landfills, garbage collection and recycling facilities that it needs.

OEP estimated the country produces approximately 28,000 tons of waste daily but that only around 5% of it is recycled. The rest ends up in open-air dumps that often leak into rivers, contaminating drinking water and hurting local ecosystems.

Many communities only collect trash once a month, the report said, forcing residents to come up with their own methods for waste disposal.

Trash scattered on the Venezuelan coast. (Photo courtesy of Twitter/OEP)
Potable water is becoming increasingly scarce

An overwhelming majority of the Venezuelan population has been exposed to contaminated drinking water in some form, the report said. Nearly half of all households have reported using recycled water due to shortages. In the first half of last year, there were 459 protests related to access to drinking water, according to the Venezuelan Observatory of Social Conflict, an NGO.

Part of the problem is infrastructure. Interruptions in the country’s aqueducts due to damage and a lack of maintenance, among other things, has resulted in restricted access to water for over 12 million people, according to a report from HumVenezuela, a humanitarian rights advocacy group.

But it is also an environmental issue. Oil spills in Lake Maracaibo and Valencia pollute potential drinking water for millions of residents. And mercury and other chemicals used in mining have spread through countless rivers in the Amazon.

Deforestation from agriculture, cattle ranching and charcoal production also diminishes the land’s ability to absorb groundwater and act as a natural filter for watersheds, most notably in semi-arid states like Falcón or Lara.

Venezuelans wait in line for clean water. (Photo courtesy of Twitter/Correo del Caroní)
Climate change is making all of Venezuela’s environmental problems much worse

As temperatures rise and weather patterns become more unpredictable, Venezuela’s environmental problems have only intensified. Last year, the country saw abnormal levels of rainfall throughout the country, resulting in mudslides, flooding and the destruction of farmland.

These events, worsened by deforestation and erosion caused by mining and agriculture, displaced around 32,000 people in 2021, according to an Internal Displacement Monitoring Centre report. Another 200,000 people could fall into extreme poverty as a result of climate change by 2030.

“The most vulnerable people are the ones who are in a situation of poverty and have the fewest resources to get out of that situation,” Rodríguez said.

Banner image: A close-up of a brush fire. Photo courtesy of Guardabosqueusb. 

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Agriculture, Amazon Mining, Climate Change, Conservation, Deforestation, Environment, Environmental Law, Environmental Politics, Forests, Gold Mining, Governance, Illegal Mining, Indigenous Peoples, Indigenous Rights, Infrastructure, Logging, Protected Areas, Rainforest Conservation, Rainforest Deforestation, Rainforest Destruction, Rainforest Mining, Rainforests, Threats To Rainforests, Tropical Forests

Latin America, South America, Venezuela

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Publish date : 2023-06-13 03:00:00

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