Guatemala: Learning from the ‘El Fuego’ volcano
By Lizardo Narvaez, Rodrigo Donoso and Ankur Nagar
How close would you like to live to an active volcano — say one that’s called El Fuego (Spanish for “The Fire”)? The answer may depend on how you perceive risk, and more importantly, time.
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Fertile volcanic soils, water resources, tourism potential, and geothermal energy sources around volcanoes in Guatemala offer livelihood opportunities for the poor and investment opportunities for the private sector. Despite the risks, settlements and infrastructure can be really close to active volcanoes. By 2018, over 54,000 people had moved in within 10 kilometers of El Fuego.⁶
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It’s estimated that nearly half the population of several municipalities in El Fuego’s vicinity are internal migrants, displaced by poverty or by political violence.⁸ With a lack of risk-informed land use, settlements in Guatemala’s volcanic hazard zones can grow further. While the private sector investors in such zones can consider insurance, the poor remain the most vulnerable.
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In January 2018, as El Fuego puffed eight kilometers away, people in the village of San Miguel Los Lotes worked — without taking much notice — in the surrounding plantations of coffee, fruits, corn, and other crops. Some were employed at the nearby La Reunión Golf Resort. Guests here played about 7,000 rounds each year, enjoying El Fuego’s views and intermittent rumbles.¹⁰
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