Postcard from Central America - Newsletter #93

Due process is an essential element of a justice system

Under the state of emergency, no trial or charges are required to detain someone. Disgruntled neighbours, unhappy partners or rival businessmen can easily take advantage of the breakdown of due process.

Maybe it is time for a third way?

Across Latin America, 12 of 19 countries are now run by left-wing governments. They represent 92% of the region’s people and 90% of its?gdp. This group is a diverse bunch. And yet they all promise big results. Can they deliver? As the world moves towards more state intervention, Latin America’s experiment offers several cautionary lessons.

Will we ever get it right in LatAm?

The political upheaval?comes as Ecuador faces increasing levels of violence and inequality under Lasso’s watch — arguably the greater driving forces behind the push to remove him from office, experts said. While the corruption allegations are serious and concerning, Lasso was deeply unpopular before those allegations gained traction, and for reasons that more intimately impact ordinary people’s lives.

Immigration is fueled by lack of opportunities and injustice at home

Big estates are expanding to build dams, mines and especially plantations of export crops like sugarcane, bananas and African palms, leaving farming communities with?dwindling access to land and water?– and sometimes?displacing?them, López said. Guatemala’s burgeoning African palm plantations, many of which?supply?giants like Cargill, Nestlé and ADM with palm oil, are often at the?centre?of these disputes.

Hypocrite-in-Chief

“The narrative that immigrants are not welcome here is going to have a huge impact on our business community — in particular industries such as construction, hospitality, health care, and agriculture — because they rely solely or primarily on migrant labor. As fear becomes the norm in immigrant communities, a lot of these migrant workers will start leaving the state and looking somewhere else."

Plastic apocalypse

Humanity's relationship with?plastic isn’t just broken—it’s absurd. We’re now churning out a?trillion pounds?of it a year—an altogether more stunning figure when you consider that the material is ultra-lightweight by design.?Less than 10 percent?of that is recycled, while the rest ends up in landfills, leaks into the environment, or is burned. And that dysfunctional relationship is getting exponentially worse, as plastic production could triple by 2060.?

Time to link the profits to the risks

A ruling from Guyana’s high court could change the face of offshore oil drilling throughout the?Caribbean, according to financial and legal analysts.

The ruling?ordered the country’s Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) to require an independent liability insurance policy from Esso Exploration and Production Guyana Limited (EEPGL) and an “unlimited guarantee” from its parent company, ExxonMobil, in the case of any damage caused by the company’s oil and gas development in the country.

A worrying trend

More than half of the?world’s large lakes?and?reservoirs have shrunk?since the early 1990s, chiefly because of climate change, intensifying concerns about water for agriculture, hydropower and human consumption, a new study has found.

Natural lakes and dams store about 87 percent of the Earth’s freshwater, although they cover just 3 percent of the planet’s surface.