Environmental Problems in El Salvador

Unsafe water supplies are often contaminated with infectious agents, toxic chemicals, and radiological hazards. In 2000, the World Health Organization and UNICEF identified some 2.4 billion people who did not have basic sanitation facilities, and 1.1 billion people without a safe drinking water supply. (Wagner, 2009) Some communities experienced diarrhea, caused by a variety of parasites, viruses, and bacteria that infect people as a result of contaminated drinking water or poor hygiene. In India, more than 500,000 children die from diarrhea every year. Like other tropical diseases, when diarrhea does not kill, it weakens, leaving people more susceptible to other infections, such as tuberculosis and HIV. (Whitman, 2008).

El Salvador is a small and beautiful country in Central America bordered by Honduras, Guatemala, and the Pacific Ocean. During recent years, violence and poverty have plagued the country due to over-population and class struggles. “The civil war in El Salvador began in 1980 to 1992 due to discontent with social inequalities, a poor economy, and the repressive measures of dictatorship” (Wiarda, p. 213). There remains conflict between the rich and the poor, this has existed for more than a century and is still a big problem.

That “over 1 billion people lack access to safe water supplies;” and that “2.6 billion people lack adequate sanitation.” (WHO, 2005)

The current state of the nation's resources is in a very poor state, with toxic rivers and depleted natural resources, all that is left in the nation is the service and technology industries.With the large influence that gangs hold in the economy the nation's service and agriculture industry is limited to 15 percent, much lower than more developed nations such as the US whose own economy is service based. Also the natural environment plays a pretty big role in the economy, with a large sector of the economy being dominated by agriculture, it's easy to understand why the economy suffers when the nation's own poor waste management system results in toxification of is rivers. With the global business economy I don’t El Salvador's technology to give access to regular citizens. Because that haven't grown in that technology part where everybody has access to a phone and the internet. And this will come back and bit them in the butt because of how the countries around them are advancing and there not in the Global Business. Well also the fact that El Salvador is apart of the Dominican

Because so much land is being taken from these people it is sometimes hard for them to have the resources that they once had in order to survive. The land grabs completely change the social and ecominc stance of whatever country that they are in “these land grabs erode local control, often re-orienting production from meeting local needs to meeting global market demands for food, feed and fuel. The impact on a land-based livelihoods--- those of peasants and indigenous peoples whose survival hinges directly on access to land and nature—has been deeply devastating” (2). The people of these countries and Honduras are the ones that get hurt more than anyone by these land

After decades of conflict, countries across Central America emerged from the 1980s with a renewed possibility. Among the major

Water contamination is one of the reasons are health and many other people’s health is not good. Half of the world’s hospital beds are being used for people that are suffering from a water related disease. Globally, about 1.8 billion people use a drinking water source that is contaminated with feces. Contaminated water can transmit many different diseases such as diarrhea, cholera, dysentery, typhoid, and polio. Eighty-eight percent of diarrhea are estimated to be attributable from unsafe drinking water.

The lack of knowledge on proper hygiene, water sanitation, and water disposal are factors that hinder access to potable water and sanitary facilities thus affecting the members of a poor rural community in San Gabriel, Honduras. The source of drinking, cooking, and bathing water for most households in San Gabriel comes from wells, which is contaminated with microorganisms, parasites, and bacteria. 60% of households use their home’s wells, 20% use their neighbor’s wells, 15% have piped water in their homes, and 5% use their neighbor’s piped water. 1 As a result of poor hygiene, the contaminated wells has led to water-related illnesses such as diarrheal disease and parasitism that affect the members of the San Gabriel community but mostly the

El Salvador, the smallest country in Central America has become the first country in the world to ban metal mining after a series of disputes with a Canadian-Australian company over the environmental aspects of the gold project. The country also has a partial ban in elements, such as the cyanide. The gold project was established between the company mentioned earlier and El Salvador. This project was supposed to bring economic benefits for the country. It is important to recall that metal mining has been one of the biggest sources of the income of the country since the 1990s after its civil war. Moreover, El Salvador is facing external debts and does not have many sources to pay it back. Hence, the gold project was seen as a crucial source of income. However, El Salvador has terminated this project because it was going to do a lot of environmental damages. A group composed of officials, lobbyists, academics and the church were united for the bill passed in the country against gold mining. The draft law against mining passed with 69 votes in favor, even though only 43 ballots were required for the bill to be passed.

claimed many lives of children under five. The lack of preventive measures such as clean water and

for example, Guajira is the one of cities that has major problem with the supply of drinking water in this part of Colombia where there are more deaths of children due to malnutrition besides diseases that generates not having access to drinking water. (Mejia, 2016).

Deforestation in Honduras started to become a huge problem in the 1990’s. Before that Honduras was almost completely covered in trees. Today because of Deforestation a little over half the tree population has been completely wiped out. Between 1990 and 2005 Honduras saw a decline of 35% of its forest cover. Because only half of the trees in Honduras are remaining that will push all the animals from the non covered areas to the forests that are left and that will cause problems.

By analyzing the economic status of the region, this research intends to demonstrate the underlying scenarios that promote the destruction of Honduras’ forests. It narrows down to poverty encouraging illegal abuse of the forest, which is likely tolerated by the widespread corruption in the country. With the support of those driving factors, this research intends to demonstrate that the distressing environmental condition of Honduras is resulted from deforestation, which then increases the threat to global warming of the planet. It will also take a look at how other poor countries surrounding Honduras suffer from similar scenarios and how they influence the situation. The overall goal of this research is to explore the evolution of forest in

Ever since Hurricane Mitch hit Nicaragua, a countless number of its people had lost loved ones and material possessions. The damage of the hurricane was subsequently extensive that political leads in Nicaragua did not to disclose how terrible the damage was to other world leaders. Thinking it would show that Nicaragua is a vastly weak country that they weren’t able to help their people. Yet, the essential thing that was damaged was the access to potable water. “The population in the third group lost access to potable water on account of the destruction of the water systems or wells on which they relied on. This group was therefore exposed to the risk of epidemics, since

From source 6 we learned that Nicaragua has many sources of freshwater, but very little of it is safe to drink. About 900 thousand people in Nicaragua are without safe drinking water because of insufficient investment following devastation of war, natural disasters, contamination from mining and agricultural activities, deforestation, and soil erosion. Many water-related diseases put a