Assessing Water Diversions of the Madre Vieja River Basin

This research paper will focus on the Madre Vieja river basin, an area dominated by sugar and palm plantations on Guatemala’s south coast. The goal of this paper is to provide a research counterpart to on-the-ground environmental justice and human rights efforts advocating for greater regulation over unchecked water diversions for large plantations that have led to domestic drought. This paper will focus on the impacts of palm oil expansion, by combining remote sensing and GIS methods with qualitative interviews and literature on the impacts of palm production in Indonesia.  This research may serve to shed light on the current water conflict in the Madre Vieja river basin and impacts of agribusiness expansion in Guatemala.