Okay, so first of all I want to remark that this is one of the blog posts that I've been looking forward to do, because I am from Latin America. Second of all I would like to focus on the main challenges that the continent faces concerning infrastructure. Brazil's geography is somehow similar to that of my native country Colombia. In both cases one of the main obstacles for developing transport, sanitation and electrical systems is the geography. We can notice that the IEA focuses a lot on the fact that rural areas in Brazil are isolated by the Amazon rainforest. This not only happens in Brazil, Colombia also has the Amazon, and the Andes, Peru has the Andes, Chile has the Atacama desert and the Andes and so on. As you can notice the geography in Latin America can be an advantage, because it provides high bio-diversity, as stated by the IEA; however, it also implies an obstacle for the development of infrastructure. Of course building electrical systems for isolated villages in the Amazon is a huge engineering challenge, as well as building roads in the Andes.
The next challenge that Latin America faces is poverty, some people in the continent are poor, specially in rural areas, this means that it is difficult for private and even public companies to develop infrastructure systems for small villages, because in some cases more money will be spent on the construction and maintenance of the infrastructure, than the money that will be earned by the enterprises that build these systems (outcome is higher than income).
Definitely these are the main two challenges, geography and poverty. According to my point of view, it is complex to overcome these barriers, my country has tried hard to find possible solutions to the problems; however, they are not simple and in some cases the governments have no disposition to spend on infrastructure systems.
This is a really interesting post, especially with your firsthand perspective on Latin America. Besides Africa, Latin America is one of the richest countries in terms of natural resources. I think we are seeing that with the economic growth of countries such as Brazil and Colombia. However, the economic growth is currently only benefiting those who live in already economically developed areas. For Latin American countries to sustain their economic growth, they must spread the benefits of economic growth not only to those places that are already developed, but even more so to those that are not. No amount of economic growth can be sustained without political stability. It will be interesting to see how Latin America tackles these problems within the coming decades. (ENGR 131)
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