| Formation | 1980[1] |
|---|---|
| Headquarters | Adjuntas, Puerto Rico |
Executive Director | Alexis Massol González[2] |
| Website | www |
Casa Pueblo is a non-profit environmental watchdog community-based organization in Adjuntas, Puerto Rico, headed by Alexis Massol-González, a civil engineer and winner of the 2002 Goldman Environmental Prize.[3][4][5][6] His son, Arturo Massol Deyá, a professor of Microbiology and Ecology at the University of Puerto Rico at Mayagüez, is the assistant executive director of Casa Pueblo.[7][8]
The organization was established in 1980 as a cultural center named Taller de Arte y Cultura (Art and Culture Workshop). In 1985, the organization acquired a house that was converted into a headquarters for the group and as a non-governmental, independent, self-supporting, community cultural center. The house was used as a cultural center, with a meeting and expositions hall, library, carts shop, butterfly garden and museum hall, running on solar energy. The cultural center was named Casa Pueblo, a name eventually adopted by the environmental organization itself.[9][third-party source needed] The organization has a radio station, with environmental and cultural programming; it opened an environmental school in August 2013.[10]
Casa Pueblo is a community-based organization that promotes, through voluntary participation of individuals and groups, protection of the environment.[11] Its mission is to explore, enjoy, and protect the wild places in Puerto Rico; to practice and promote the responsible use of the land's ecosystems and resources; to educate and enlist others to protect and restore the quality of the natural and human environment; and to use all lawful means to carry out these objectives, especially in line with principles of participatory democracy, community self-management, and anti-colonialism.[12][3][5][6]
Casa Pueblo has official policies on many conservation issues. They group these into 17 categories: agriculture, biotechnology, energy, environmental justice, forest and wilderness management, global issues, government and political issues, land management, military issues, nuclear issues, oceans, pollution and waste management, precautionary principle, transportation, urban and land use policies, water resources, and wildlife conservation.
Casa Pueblo advocates investment in wind, solar, and other renewable energy ; and restructuring energy markets to favor innovation, creation of green jobs, and efficient energy use.[13][14]
Some of the achievements of Casa Pueblo are:
After Hurricane Maria hit the area on 20 September 2017, the island was left without power. Casa Pueblo became the sole energy provider of the community where people came to connect their life-saving equipment. Casa Pueblo became an "energy oasis" and it also distributed 10,000 solar lamps.[20]
After Hurricane Ian in 2022, Casa Pueblo and its radio station, Radio Casa Pueblo, operational since 1999, continued to advocate on the importance of solar energy for Puerto Rican communities, especially those in the Cordillera Central.[21]
The organization has been involved in the following campaigns:[22]
