Seasonal droughts put Colombia at risk of an energy crisis. And how crime numbers compared in 2025 across Latin American countries.
Ignacio Portes & Jorge C. Carrasco
ENVIRONMENT
Seasonal El Niño droughts threaten Colombia’s electric grid
Climate researchers warn that the equatorial Pacific Ocean is rapidly transitioning from a neutral state to El Niño, a cyclical warming phase of sea surface temperatures in the region, in contrast to the cooling La Niña phase that took place between 2024 and 2025.
Fishermen off the Pacific coast have followed the El Niño-La Niña pattern for centuries, and climate scientists now study it in more detail, so its effects are well known. During the El Niño phase, countries like Peru face heavier rainfall and flooding risks, while others like Colombia and Venezuela face increased risks of drought and fires.
Even if this year’s El Niño might not be as strong as the destructive 2015-2016 cycle, alarms are already ringing in Bogota, as Colombia’s hydroelectric reservoirs are the backbone of its power system — the generating capacity of which is already under strain due to delayed investment.
Government authorities are already activating emergency protocols, as reservoir levels have fallen drastically, from 80% to 63% in a single quarter, following months of below‑average rainfall — particularly in the central and northern basins that supply the country’s largest dams.
Roughly two‑thirds of Colombia’s electricity comes from hydropower. This is an advantage in terms of clean energy, but it can also become a vulnerability when the country is unprepared for drought.
Emergency measures include accelerating thermal generation and asking the public to curb electricity and water consumption. While blackouts are not imminent, the margin for error is narrowing.
👉 Why it matters. Colombia’s situation highlights the challenges of energy transition. Systems heavily dependent on hydropower could become more vulnerable to prolonged droughts in some areas, while thermal backups rely on expensive fossil fuels that are also environmentally costly.
But problems could extend beyond electricity generation, as access to water is also vital for agriculture in a country where food prices are already rising due to persistent inflation. Experts in the sector say that coffee, corn, rice, potatoes, tomato, onions, bananas, avocados, barley, cassava and even milk production are at risk of seeing their yearly yields go down due to climate instability.
Similar patterns of reduced rainfall should also be expected in Venezuela and parts of Central America, while Ecuador is already monitoring its hydroelectric plants following the crisis it faced in 2024.
While Ecuador and Colombia are closely linked in energy, selling each other their excess capacity during times of crisis, the current bilateral tension between presidents Gustavo Petro and Daniel Noboa — which has led to steep import tariffs on both sides of the border — could complicate matters further.
For now, Colombia is pushing its thermal plants to operate at higher levels despite rising energy costs, while water releases from reservoirs are beginning to be rationed. While El Niño is nothing new — even if climate change can make it more intense — state capacity continues to prove limited in planning for such crises.
CRIME AND SECURITY
Homicides drop by 5% across Latin America in 2025
The most recent annual figures compiled by Insight Crime show that homicides per capita declined by 5% across Latin America in 2025, driven by declines in large countries like Brazil and Mexico, although unprecedented spikes continue to be seen in smaller nations.
Brazil saw an 8.5% decline in per capita murders in 2025, part of a larger trend of improving figures since 2017, while Mexico’s numbers also dropped by 19.8%, the report said — a milder reduction than in the disputed official data, which has big question marks due to ignoring disappearances, yet remains significant.
Brazil and Mexico remain among the most dangerous countries in the world, with 19.2 and 15.4 murders per 100,000 inhabitants, respectively — rates that quadruple the global average and are 20 times as strong as in Europe. Their current rates are not far from the regional average, which stood at 17.6 in 2025, with 108,838 murder cases recorded last year.
The opposite trend was seen in Ecuador and Haiti, where homicide rates continue to skyrocket. Not only did they register the worst homicide records in Latin America, but they were also the two that deteriorated at the sharpest pace in 2025.
Ecuador logged 31.2% more homicides last year, reaching a new historic high of 50.9 per 100,000, as President Daniel Noboa failed to show results in his war on drug cartels. Meanwhile, in Haiti, the gang takeover of the country continued unabated, with a 9.7% jump in murders that kept its rates the highest in the region, totaling 68 deaths per 100,000.
Stable countries included Colombia, Uruguay and Costa Rica, which barely moved up or down when compared to the year prior, although all of them could still fairly be characterized as navigating a security crisis.
At 25.8 murders per 100,000 (+1.8%), Colombia had the third-highest rate in an already violent region, while Costa Rica (-1.3%) and Uruguay (-3.7%) have not really recovered from their respective tripling and doubling in homicides over the past two decades.
👉 Why it matters. Latin America remains the most violent region in the world, and crime has become the central political issue in many of its countries. This has been particularly noticeable since Nayib Bukele’s controversial iron fist policies in El Salvador propelled the country’s dramatic drop in homicide figures, inspiring other right-wing wannabes to promise a similar approach.
El Salvador continued to post the best figures in the continent, with 1.3 murders per 100,000, a new country low, although real numbers are likely to be higher given that bodies found in unmarked graves, police crimes and prison murders are often excluded from official stats, the report says.
Other than El Salvador, the best-performing country in the region was Argentina, which has shown quiet but steady improvement since 2014, clocking in at 3.7 per 100,000 this year after another 5% boost. Most of this progress, however, has gone unnoticed as the country’s ongoing economic crises have dominated the headlines.
QUESTION OF THE WEEK
Which Latin American country posted the highest temperature averages in the region for 2025, according to data from the Copernicus Climate Change Service?
- Colombia
- Cuba
- Haiti
- El Salvador
QUICK CATCH-UP
🗳️ The chief of Peru’s electoral authority, Piero Corvetto, resigned from his position this week after a chaotic presidential vote where hundreds of polling stations did not open on time. But contrary to third-placed candidate Rafael López Aliaga’s hopes, a supplementary day of voting for those unable to take part is unlikely, meaning that right-winger Keiko Fujimori and left-winger Roberto Sánchez are strongly favored to face each other in the June 7 runoff.
🇵🇪 As if electoral chaos wasn’t enough, Peru could be facing another political crisis after interim President José María Balcázar sparred with his cabinet and armed forces over the purchase of F-16 planes from the US. Balcázar publicly resisted the acquisition, which was agreed to in previous administrations, but key figures in his cabinet accused him of lying and secretly signed the purchase.
💸 Nine years after the country defaulted on its debts, investors in Venezuelan bonds are hoping to recoup part of their losses amid changing political winds in the country. Total external debt could rise to USD 160 billion if PDVSA obligations, bilateral loans and arbitration awards are included, although local economists believe that strong cuts will be inevitable.
🗞️ The owners of two influential Ecuador newspapers, Extra and Expreso, are denouncing that President Daniel Noboa’s government is trying to censor them by using state regulators to block the transfer of company shares. The papers, which had already clashed with opposition leader Rafael Correa during his presidency, published a blank front page last week as a form of protest.
⚖️ A Salvadoran court on Tuesday began trying 486 alleged MS-13 members in one of the largest mass prosecutions under President Nayib Bukele’s emergency crackdown on gang violence.
Prosecutors allege the defendants committed more than 47,000 crimes between 2012 and 2022, including a single weekend that ranked as the country’s deadliest since its civil war. Charges include homicide, femicide, extortion and arms trafficking.