Guatemala cannot meet SDGs based on extractivism and remittances

Guatemala should abandon the old patterns of ‘development’ based on the extraction of natural wealth, environmental predation and exploitation of cheap labour, and turn its gaze towards more creative and inclusive forms of production, promote democracy and make the distribution of wealth and political power more equitable, recommends the civil society report on the SDGs contributed by Helmer Velasquez and Arlyn Jimenez of the Coordination of NGOs and Cooperatives of Guatemala (CONGCOOP).

Guatemala is a country without sustained public investment and with private investment based on financial speculation, textile maquilas and extraction of raw materials, highly dependent on prices abroad, with no capacity for sovereign maneuver and not many possibilities to generate endogenous development processes. The economy is kept afloat by the remittances sent by the poor working in the United States.

Source: Guatemala National Report 2017.