Economists and finance professionals understand this well: stability and predictability are essential for a country to attract and generate investment. Comprehensive forecasting models are carefully developed and serve as the foundation for decision-making. These models account for factors such as laws and regulations that enable the exploitation of natural resources or a customer base likely to adopt a specific product or service.
Technology aims to disrupt existing ways of life and enhance the quality of life for those who use it. Creators of new technologies or ventures take significant risks, including investing their time, facing the possibility that their ideas may not resonate with society, or struggling to secure the necessary funding or approval from governments and institutions. At times, technology is introduced before society is ready to address the large-scale implications and essential conversations that arise once it is deployed.
When discussing artificial intelligence, we should view it as an incremental step in the progression of technological development. While AI has become radically democratized, this doesn’t mean it didn’t exist before tools like ChatGPT. AI has been around for a long time and continues to improve steadily. The difference now is that, with just a laptop or a cell phone, this powerful technology is easily accessible to everyone. It can be used to empower individuals to create content, summarize information, learn new skills, and much more.
However, democratizing technology, knowledge, tools, or resources often sparks numerous side conversations. With ChatGPT being such a hot topic, questions arise: What about copyright issues? What about using AI for critical purposes like medicine, traffic management, or food safety? Are we truly ready to trust a computer model with tasks that are essential to human survival? At the same time, we struggle to agree on basic issues, such as how to equitably manage water and other resources. If we, as a society, cannot reach consensus on these foundational matters, it becomes even harder to harness complex technologies in ways that enhance well-being holistically.
In Guatemala, as in many countries, there is a key document: the Constitution. The Constitution is the most important legal framework, outlining fundamental rights that ensure individuals the freedom to live and participate in society and politics without government interference. In 1985, Guatemala’s Constitution declared all water to be public property. While this might sound beneficial, the reality is far more complicated.
When water becomes public property, laws are needed to enforce, define, and assign rights and responsibilities to various entities at a legislative level, ensuring the implementation of constitutional principles. Despite water being considered public property, there are currently no laws regulating water resource management, including the extraction of groundwater and surface water. There is also no clear framework defining what constitutes “fair” and “equitable” use of water by different entities, groups, or companies. This lack of regulation creates a lawless environment where the most powerful impose their will on others.
A clear example of this was during the construction of the Chixoy Dam, partially financed by the Inter-American Development Bank and the World Bank. Construction began without notifying local populations, and initially, there was no intention to offer compensation for the resettlement of nearly 3,500 Mayan residents. Some sources even suggest that these financial institutions were aware of these issues from the start. When construction was completed in January 1983, military and civil patrols forcibly removed the population at gunpoint. Around ten communities in the Chixoy River Basin were destroyed through mass violence: Río Negro, Los Encuentros, La Laguna, Agua Fría, Comalmapa, Jocotales, Chitucan, Los Mangales, Pascal, and Hacienda Chitucan. A decade later, the Guatemalan Truth Commission declared this state-sponsored violence a genocide.
By the end of the dam’s construction, more than 11,000 people had been displaced, and over 450 Mayan Achi were massacred. Reparations only began in 2014 when the U.S. Congress pressured the Guatemalan government to act.
Guatemala is a deeply complex country, with 25 spoken languages, including Spanish. While the government often prioritizes economic growth and output, Indigenous communities operate under long-standing customary laws and traditions that have been passed down through generations to manage resources like water.
The Mayan customary legal system is guided by four fundamental values: respect, trust, credibility, and dignity. In these communities, public civil servants, known as community representatives, are appointed based on the trust and confidence of the Indigenous Council, including the elders, who believe the individual is capable of handling public matters with caution and professionalism. For example, when selecting a treasurer for a water committee, honesty (or trustworthiness) is the primary criterion.
Indigenous communities also rely on customary mediation practices to resolve disputes. These practices prioritize inclusive participation, ensuring everyone feels heard and understood, and they maintain a strong connection between spirituality and rules.
The Mayan perspective on water is fundamentally different from Western legal concepts. Rooted in ancient traditions that remain alive today, the Mayan cosmovision views water as the “blood of the Earth.” According to the Popol Vuh, the sacred Mayan text on creation and history, water existed before land, with mountains and terrain emerging from it, establishing a sacred relationship between all beings. If you’ve seen the movie Avatar, you could compare this perspective to the way water is represented by Eywa, the Great Mother.
Under Mayan customary laws, water is considered a communal good that cannot be privately owned, with access tied to land—not in terms of ownership, but as a shared resource. Water sources cannot be bought or sold, and there are defined categories for its use, such as domestic, agricultural, construction, or conservation purposes. What’s particularly interesting is the presence of precepts, or “internalized rules,” that all community members must follow. These include prohibitions against excessive use of natural resources beyond personal and communal needs, avoiding water waste or pollution, and maintaining wells and protecting water sources. Communal laws also designate professionals for water-related roles, such as system operators for water treatment plants, forest rangers, and traditional authorities like community mayors and elders.
These customary laws have a long history, existing even before the Spanish colonization of the Americas. From some legal perspectives, customs represent the spontaneous creation of law, whereas legislation formalizes it in written form. In this sense, customs are historically the first source of law (Caponera, 1992). However, Guatemala, as a civil law country, lacks enforceability mechanisms to protect Indigenous communities’ customary rights and practices simply because these customs are not codified into written law. Despite some estimates suggesting that Indigenous people make up as much as 60% of the population, legal pluralism and institutional inclusion remain ineffective. Traditional legal theory dominates, with the government aiming to impose a single source of truth for all Guatemalans, disregarding the foundational identity of its diverse society. The 1996 Peace Agreement, which ended a 36-year civil war, acknowledged an essential truth about Guatemala: it is not a homogenous nation and never will be. Instead, it is a tapestry of different cultures, identities, and a multiethnic, pluricultural, and multilingual essence.
In 1985, Guatemala declared that all water is public. Furthermore, international treaties like the International Labour Organization (ILO) Convention 169, which recognizes the fundamental rights of Indigenous Peoples to their values, customs, and relationships with land and natural resources, have been ratified. These treaties aim to preserve cultural diversity and promote the social and ecological harmony of humankind. Guatemala ratified such agreements in 1988, 1996, and 2000, giving them priority over domestic law under Article 46 of the Constitution. While municipal authorities oversee water services, there is still no national water law or specific regulations on how water rights are granted, nor clear rules on integrating Indigenous water management systems into the national framework.
Indigenous communities must apply for a “permit” or “concession” to be recognized by municipalities as a “legal persona.” This process is based on the Trilogy of Laws from 1996, which includes the Decentralization Law, Municipal Code, and Law on Urban and Rural Development Councils. These laws allow Indigenous communities to participate in local governance while maintaining their traditional organizational structures.
The most significant issue, however, is that no specific regulations have been adopted to fully implement the rights laid out in these agreements. On top of that, the water management system in Guatemala suffers from severe administrative chaos. It is highly fragmented, with responsibilities divided among more than 20 authorities, five of which are considered the leading sectoral ministries.
I had the opportunity to interview Nadya Recinos, a Hydrologist expert in Guatemala with extensive experiences in water management.
During the interview, I learned about the significant lack of coordination between municipal, urban, and other institutions. This fragmentation hinders the development of a unified strategy to maximize financial and other resources for the well-being of the entire population. Currently, water services are heavily focused on urban areas, where only 60% of residents have direct water connections. In rural areas, the situation is even worse, with less than 50% of people having access, and in Indigenous communities, 64% lack access to water systems entirely. Shockingly, only 4% of municipal systems in Indigenous areas provide drinking water.
Urban and rural areas in Guatemala almost feel like two different countries. Urban water connections are subsidized, costing just Q10 per cubic meter as of early 2025. This low fee makes it nearly impossible for water supply companies to generate enough revenue for necessary renovations and CAPEX investments in water sanitation services. Meanwhile, almost 95% of sewage water is discharged untreated, flowing directly into Amatitlán Lake in the Department of Guatemala.
Recinos (2024) explains that the exorheic nature of the lake—its connection to a river that discharges into the sea—has so far prevented it from being fully eutrophicated and irreversibly polluted. A similar warning was issued in 2008 for Lake Atitlán, where surrounding villages and agribusinesses had discharged excessive polluted waters. At that time, action was taken to protect the lake and prevent it from becoming completely unsuitable for human or recreational use. However, most water companies in Guatemala still struggle with poor financial liquidity and solvency, making it difficult to invest in large-scale potabilization plants, sewage treatment, or infrastructure maintenance.
For example, around 55% of water supplied to urban areas is lost through pipe leaks, theft, and vandalism. Additionally, many households rely on outdated water meters—some more than 20 years old—which no longer provide accurate measurements. This makes it challenging for water supply companies to track and charge users for their actual water consumption.
Water awareness among the population, particularly in urban areas, remains low. In the early 2000s, 60% of water for residential and industrial consumption came from surface sources like lakes and rivers, while 40% came from underground reserves. Over time, reliance on underground water has increased due to a lack of regulations on its extraction. Landowners could pump as much water as they wanted without legal restrictions, even during droughts.
As urbanization and internal migration to cities have surged, the risks of contamination have grown significantly. Meanwhile, excessive underground water extraction has led to a shift in supply sources. Now, 60% of water comes from underground reserves—depleting faster than they can recharge—while only 40% comes from surface sources (Recinos, 2024).
Lack of planning, coordination, and poor financial funding strategies continue to negatively impact people’s lives. Pollution in the country’s water basins has reached alarming levels, with up to 90% contamination due to the high discharge of untreated wastewater from domestic, industrial, and agro-industrial activities. Only 5% of discharged water is treated, and, due to dilution, all water sources end up contaminated. Approximately 40% of discharged water comes from households, 40% from agricultural activities, 13% from industrial activities, and 7% from agribusiness.
Municipalities are the primary developers of water and sanitation projects, accounting for 68% of total investments in the sector. These efforts are supported by state institutions such as INFOM (Municipal Development Institute), watershed management authorities, and some associations and private foundations. Public sector opportunities are published as tenders on the government procurement website, [http://www.guatecompras.gt/](https://www.guatecompras.gt/).
In smaller cities, tariffs are even lower due to poor performance metrics. For instance, in Chiquimula, a city near El Salvador, water is only available 2-3 days per week, with frequent cuts. Efforts are made to distribute water as evenly as possible, particularly to vulnerable populations who lack “land” to dig their own wells. The annual tariff per user is as low as $2.50 USD, which makes reinvesting in infrastructure nearly impossible.
Addressing this dire situation requires new business models and, most importantly, cooperation among stakeholders. In my opinion, the issue is not about money but about the perception of water’s value and why it is not prioritized in investments. Economic growth cannot truly be considered growth without improvements in quality of life and the fulfillment of basic rights, as outlined in the UN objectives.
First, I suggest truly listening to indigenous leaders and bringing them into the political arena, giving them a voice in the decision-making process. Drafting a water law must go beyond the centralized decision-making of the Guatemala City elite and instead embrace an inclusive and participatory approach. This would involve incorporating customary law and empowering municipalities with clear legislation to support their projects from a legal perspective. Currently, ambiguity only benefits the most economically powerful institutions, leaving behind most citizens and municipal leaders who lack the means to regulate, prevent misuse of water resources, and stop contamination.
Bibliography
D’Andrea, A. (n.d.). Water Resources Management and Legal Pluralism in Guatemala. Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations, Development Law Service.
Government of the Netherlands. (2025). The Constitution of the Netherlands. Ministry of the Interior and Kingdom Relations. https://www.government.nl/topics/constitution/constitution-and-charter
International Rivers. (2025). Chixoy Dam, Guatemala. https://www.internationalrivers.org/where-we-work/latin-america/mesoamerica/chixoy/
Recinos, N. (2025, February 14). Personal interview [Personal interview with Hydrologist].
U.S. Department of Commerce, International Trade Administration. (2025). Guatemala – Water Treatment Infrastructure. https://www.trade.gov/market-intelligence/guatemala-water-treatment-infrastructure
