On 1 March 2025, a new government will take office in Uruguay. Should the projections of some forecasts come to fruition, the new administration will face its first hurdle in a drought, potentially as severe as the one the country suffered in winter 2023. During one of the country’s worst ever water crises, more than 1.6 million citizens had to resort to using fresh water mixed with salt water, due to a decline in the Santa Lucia River basin, the sole supplier of water to capital city Montevideo and its metropolitan area.
Water and access to sanitation, recognised as human rights in Uruguay’s constitution, have been among the most important issues for the two campaigns that will contest the ballot this Sunday 24 November. Other environmental topics that have featured in their agendas include waste, green hydrogen and sustainable agriculture.
The candidates are Yamandú Orsi of the Frente Amplio (Broad Front) coaltion, a former mayor of the city of Canelones, and Álvaro Delgado, the former advisor to current President Lacalle Pou, and the candidate for the National Party and governing coalition. In the first round in October, Orsi obtained 44% of the vote to Delgado’s 26.7%.
In conversation with Dialogue Earth, the environmental coordinators of both teams, Leonardo Herou of the Frente Amplio, and the current Undersecretary of Environment, Gerardo Amarilla, spoke of Uruguay’s environmental future.
“From minute one, Yamandú will have to make many decisions in the environmental area and on the issue of water,” said Herou, recalling Orsi’s proposal to convene “a great dialogue for water”, involving civil society, social organisations, business figures and producers.
Amarilla, meanwhile, sought to emphasise achievements as the first-ever term for Uruguay’s environmental ministry draws to a close. The ministry, he added, was created by the Lacalle Pou government in 2020 because “it was necessary to give the environmental issue a place in the hierarchy”. But Amarilla also recognised that there are still many challenges ahead – above all, with water.
Water management
Amarilla claims that, faced with the possibility of a new period of drought, Uruguay is better prepared than before, because, among other reasons, of the proposed Neptuno project. This facility plans to draw and treat water from the brackish Río de la Plata and boost supply to the Montevideo metropolitan area, but has encountered complaints from nearby communities and the country’s judiciary.
Herou is more cautious about the future, recalling a past disagreement over water infrastructure between the current administration and the last Frente Amplio government, led by former president Tabaré Vázquez (2005-2010 and 2015-2020). Before leaving office, Vázquez promoted a dam project in Casupá, in the central department of Florida, which Lacalle Pou later dismissed.
Debates over the solutions to water supply in southern Uruguay have become politicised, with positions largely split between preferences towards Casupá or Neptuno. At the same time, alternative proposals are emerging from researchers, who are promoting departmental solutions to guarantee Montevideo’s supply, so that it no longer relies exclusively on the Santa Lucía basin, but with the assistance of other watercourses.
“It is not an unthinkable idea,” said Amarilla, who himself proposes a third source: groundwater, although only “with a good prior study” that would allow for a much better understanding of the aquifer systems. It is an idea that has also been shared by the Frente Amplio.
The candidates both agree on restructuring and reassessing of budgeting for OSE, the public water company and an entity with a presence in all departments, but whose administration is based in Montevideo, and whose primary water intakes are located and managed from a plant in the department of Canelones.
The road to 2030
Uruguay’s five-year terms mean that the next government will also be the one to reach 2030 – the date by which the country has pledged to have met the United Nations’ Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), as well as the targets of its climate change plan, or Nationally Determined Contribution (NDC) to the Paris Agreement.
Statements suggest that both parties agree that the challenge in this regard will be to advance sustainable agricultural practices, in a sector dominated by extensive wheat, soy and rice production. They also appear to be aligned on the country continuing its energy transition with a focus on green hydrogen.
“Agriculture is a great challenge, among this is how to certify all this production environmentally in order to give it a better value and an entry into markets that it might not be possible to enter,” Amarilla said, likely referring to new standards such as the European Union’s anti-deforestation regulations.
In its proposals for its government programme, the Frente Amplio pledged to promote and strengthen agroecology as a starting point towards a “just ecological transition”.
The coalition’s Herou said that it is necessary to “advance in an alternative to fossil fuels” with the different existing alternatives, and that the Frente Amplio would particularly target green hydrogen, a sector whose development has generated concerns due to the potential water consumption of its production. Herou said this would be promoted with guarantees, controls and, above all, transparency, “so that the population is also aware of the things that are being decided and that have an impact in the short, medium and long term.”
Amarilla similarly expressed support for green hydrogen and hopes for a potential industry: “Perhaps we still don’t envisage the impact that Uruguay will have in the future if, from the generation of green hydrogen, it generates green fertilisers. And that these fertilisers will give us the very important economic impact of being able to export instead of importing.”
In 2023, Uruguay signed a memorandum of understanding with the European Union with a focus on the advancement of green hydrogen and its derivatives, and on energy efficiency.
In October, Uruguay presented plans for what will be its first green hydrogen production plant. The facility in the department of Fray Bentos is set to begin operating in 2025, powered by 8,000 solar panels. Two other projects have also been presented, in Paysandú and Tacuarembó.
In addition to concerns over the water usage of these facilities from both surface and subterranean sources, proposed green hydrogen projects have also faced questions from surrounding communities over a lack of prior consultation.
Climate impacts and adaptation
Key sectors of the Uruguayan economy remain vulnerable to the negative impacts of extreme weather events, as was evident during the drought of 2023.
According to the Ministry of Economy, the total losses in the agricultural sector between 2022 and 2023 as a consequence of the drought were estimated at more than USD 1.8 billion, representing approximately 3% of the country’s gross domestic product.
In the longer term, periodic drought is not the only challenge facing the country: serious damage to communities could be caused by rising water levels, which could seriously affect coastal areas in the south and east of the country. By the end of the century, between 10,500 and 12,000 hectares of coastal area could be flooded, according to government studies.
According to Herou, the challenge is to be able to “make the right decisions to generate that resilience to prepare, in times that are tight , which are times of government.”
“We have been working with some global funds, because we already know that the coast will be very affected and that the medium-term scenarios – when I say medium-term, in this century – for the coastal zone should concern us and occupy us,” Herou adds.
Amarilla hopes that the next government will include focus “on financial forecasting for climate events, whether security [of water supply] or flooding, because it is an issue that any country in the world already faces.”
Waste management
The Frente Amplio’s waste strategy is to boost recycling by repeating the experience of Canelones, which will close the year with 120,000 families sorting just over 40% of the materials placed on the market.
“We started with [proposing] an ‘upside-down pyramid’ waste policy, with strategies to reduce the waste generated, from production to the consumer. Then we could generate circular economy chains to add value,” said Herou.
It also proposes a census across all the country’s departments in order to generate strategies for boosting access and inclusion to waste management – something that still falls short in much of Uruguay.
Amarilla highlighted progress during the current government’s term, in this regard. “During this period, we have managed to reduce open-air dumps by 50%, in order to move towards sanitary landfills with acceptable environmental conditions in each of the departmental capitals,” he claimed. The government had planned to close all open-air landfills by the end of 2024. “We cannot bury more waste. What we have to see is what percentage we can manage to recycle and what percentage we can recover,” Amarilla added.
Environmental crime and social awareness
Another area of common ground for both campaigns has been controls and penalties for environmental crimes.
Herou said that the authorities became aware of many environmental crimes when it was already too late, and only due to complaints from residents. “We have to rethink control by involving the people, adding technology, adding artificial intelligence and having a much stronger presence in the territory,” he added.
For Amarilla, although Uruguay is a unitary state, a stronger link with departmental governments is needed: “Instead of having 19 environmental ministry offices throughout the country, we need to use the departmental governments as our own offices, almost, or shared offices in terms of environmental control.”
The Undersecretary for the Environment believes that social awareness around environmental issues is growing on the public agenda, and reported that the number of complaints to his portfolio is increasing. But he said that care for the environment does not appear among the most important issues when it comes to voting.
We are all linked to environmental issues, but maybe it’s hard to connect certain events with the environmentNatalia Bajsa, microbiologist at the Clemente Estable Biological Research Institute
According to a Factum poll in April, when the primary election campaign began, 49% of the population indicated that security is their main concern, followed by employment with 12% and education with 11%; environment did not even make the list of issues to be addressed.
Consequently, the issue was also absent from the discussion during last Sunday’s televised presidential debate.
The Frente Amplio’s proposals have reportedly received support from academics, psychologists, teachers and professionals in environmental sciences, architecture, urban planning and engineering, according to a recent press release.
Natalia Bajsa, one of the signatories, is a microbiologist at the Clemente Estable Biological Research Institute. Bajsa told Dialogue Earth she was surprised by the lack of mention of environmental issues by the presidential candidates in Uruguay.
“People went to the beach and couldn’t swim [because of algal blooms], or didn’t have water to drink [because of the drought] or suffered flooding,” Bajsa said. “We are all linked to environmental issues, but maybe it’s hard to connect certain events with the environment.”
