Osvaldo lives with his wife and their baby in Lambaré, a town on the outskirts of Asunción, capital of Paraguay. Frequent power cuts, due in particular to heat or storms, penalize his professional activity, so much so that he ended up buying a generator.
Like him, many Paraguayans are forced to invest in a generator, at home or in the office. An unusual situation for a country which is one of the largest exporters of electricity on the planet.
Paraguay consumes only 16% of the energy it produces. The rest is exported, at prices lower than those on the market, to Argentina or Brazil, with which it shares the hydroelectric power stations of Yacyretá (Argentina-Paraguay) and Itaipú (Brazil-Paraguay). For its domestic consumption, Paraguay is dependent on biomass. Guillermo Achucarro, an engineer specializing in climate change, explains:
“Wood from planted and natural forests provides 51% of homes, for example for cooking. The rest is used by farmers, for whom it is cheaper to use wood than to pay for electricity.”
The destruction of primary forests
The latest report from the Vice-Ministry of Mines and Energy on the production and consumption of forest biomass for energy purposes corroborates this specialist’s statement and highlights the importance of wood:
“The excessive demand for biomass in the face of an insufficient supply of sustainable biomass leads to high consumption of wood from natural forests, which has the indirect effect of degrading residual forests.”
Miguel Lovera, agricultural engineer and doctor in biodiversity and international forest policy, points out that dependence on wood has three consequences for the environment: the destruction of primary forests, excessive cutting in regenerating forests and the expansion of forest monoculture, which affects biodiversity and cy