Environmental Conflict and the Expansion of Renewable Energy in Central America: Exploring Canadian Participation
Publisher: Canadian Journal of Latin American and Caribbean Studies
Author(s): Simon Granovsky-Larsen and Paulina Larreátegui Benavides
Date: 2023
Topics: Climate Change, Conflict Causes, Conflict Prevention, Extractive Resources, Governance, Land, Public Health, Renewable Resources
Countries: Canada, Costa Rica, El Salvador, Guatemala, Honduras, Nicaragua, Panama
As capacity to generate and distribute renewable energy expands across Central America, environmental conflict is on the rise, with communities confronting dispossession of water and territory. Renewable energy holds a central position within the extractivist economic model in the region, but little is known about the involvement of Canada in Central American renewable energy sectors. This paper addresses that gap by asking what role Canada plays within a scenario of expanding and conflictual renewable energy projects across Central America. The authors combine Canadian public records with data from projects, including GeoComunes and the Environmental Justice Atlas, to analyze 726 renewable energy and 162 traditional extractive projects in Central America, and to connect 156 of these projects to evidence of conflict with surrounding communities. While Canadian private companies own very few renewable energy projects in Central America, the authors argue that this does not imply an absence of Canadian involvement. Instead, the paper explores Canadian participation at multilateral venues, support for energy projects by the federal government, and the benefits that renewable energy expansion presents to the Canadian private sector. The invisibility of the Canadian presence in Central American renewable energy, we suggest, serves to obscure Canadian responsibility for a scenario defined by high levels of conflict.