El Salvador Perspectives

October 15 is the worldwide Blog Action Day . Thousands of blogs today are dedicated to the single global issue of climate change. Because of its exposure to the effects of tropical storms and its low-lying coast line, El Salvador is at risk from the impacts of global climate change. The primary impacts of climate change could be temperature increases, changes in rainfall patterns, and flooding from sea level increase. A " Country Note " prepared by the World Bank looks at climate change and the agricultural sector in El Salvador and noted the following: According to a study on adaptation strategies to climate change realized by the Ministry of Environment and Natural Resources in collaboration with the National Service of Territorial Studies (SNET) in the coastal plains of El Salvador, between the municipalities of Zacatecoluca, Tecoluca and Jiquilisco, the following was concluded for the year 2015; i) loss of between 10 and 19% of the territory due to sea elevation of...

The decision of US president Donald Trump to pull his country out of the Paris Climate Agreement has the potential to stymy global efforts to prevent additional increases in global average temperatures and associated climate changes. El Salvador and other countries in Central America are particularly at risk from the impact of these climate changes.  El Salvador ranks number 15 out of 180 countries on the  2017 Global Climate Risk Index  which is based on the country's exposure to extreme weather events during the twenty year period between 1996 and 2015.   The index takes into account both deaths and injuries as well as property and economic losses.   Image from 2009 flooding from Tropical Storm Ida Using a different measure, El Salvador ranked number 11 out of 171 countries on the  2016 World Risk Index .   That index ranks both a country's exposure to natural disasters as well as the capacity to respond to such disasters. El Salvador is a...

An item posted at Hispanically Speaking News describes how global climate change will compound the precarious state of El Salvador's water resources: According to recent studies like the Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean (ECLAC), El Salvador will be the most water-stressed country in Central America in the future. Population growth and climate change in the Central America region are driving this dire prediction. Water demand is expected to grow by 300 percent by 2050 in the region. To compound the problem the availability of renewable water could fall from current levels by 63 percent. The study “ The Economics of Climate Change in Central America: 2010 ” shows that El Salvador will be most negatively effected followed by Honduras and Nicaragua. El Salvador is also the most deforested country in Latin America. The Central America region contributes a small part of the world’s green house gases emission, the leading cause of climate change, but is th...

Journalist Dahr Jamail has been writing a series of articles on environmental issues in El Salvador for Al Jazeera and IPS. In today's article he writes about the impact of climate change on El Salvador: San Salvador - "We have a very clear position," El Salvador’s Minister of Environment, Herman Chavez, told Al Jazeera at his office in San Salvador, the capital. "The President of El Salvador, last year on July 20th, in an extraordinary meeting of presidents that was convened here in San Salvador, launched the intervention process. We put Climate Change as the number one issue for the region."... In January, new figures provided by NASA and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration confirmed that Earth’s global average surface temperature for 2010 tied 2005 for the hottest year on record. The two agencies' figures also showed that 2010 was the wettest year ever recorded.... "Climate change for us is not a hypothesis,” Minister Chavez...

Catholic Relief Services has released the results of a study which focuses on the impact of climate change on the production of two of El Salvador's basic foods: corn (maize) and beans. The study, titled Tortillas on the Roaster , identifies real threats to production of these crops by small farmers in Central America and calls for policies to address the risk. From the executive summary of the report: There is an urgent need for maize/bean smallholder farmers to deal with the impacts of climate change. The study finds that the impacts of climate change on maize/bean production systems are significant, and they could be felt as soon as the next decade. The TOR model projects that mean temperatures will rise by 1°C by the period 2010 to 2039 (2020s), and by 2°C by the period 2040 to 2069 (2050s). Minimum and maximum daily temperatures will rise, and water deficits will increase due to less precipitation and higher evapotranspiration rates. The modeling shows that maize pr...

An article titled  El Salvador: ‘How long until the waves reach us?   from Global Post reminds us of the vulnerability of El Salvador to the effects of global climate change: This tiny Central American nation will lose between 10 percent and 28 percent of its coastal territory in the next 100 years, according to El Salvador’s Ministry of the Environment and Natural Resources (MARN). Those two scenarios are based on whether sea level rises by 5.1 inches or 43.3 inches, two extremes predicted by some current climate change models. The UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change warns that sea level rise has already begun . It’s caused by both the thermal expansion of the oceans and flows of melt-water from the Arctic and other ice masses.... The left-wing government of President Mauricio Funes is actively seeking international funds to help El Salvador, one of the poorest nations in the Americas, cope with climate change. “The government, of course, wants money,” s...

For a significant percentage of families in El Salvador, putting food on the table continues to get more difficult.  Prices for food climbed after the COVID-19 pandemic and have remained high, and climate change and natural disasters put at risk the basic foodstuffs which can be grown locally.   Five UN agencies just released their 2023 Regional Overview of Food Security and Nutrition in Latin America and the Caribbean .   The UN report describes ranges of food insecurity countries may face: The prevalence of moderate or severe food insecurity, based on the Food Insecurity Experience Scale (FIES), is an estimate of the proportion of the population facing moderate or severe constraints on their ability to obtain sufficient food over the course of a year. People face moderate food insecurity when they are uncertain of their ability to obtain food and have been forced to reduce, at times over the year, the quality and/ or quantity of food they consume due to lack o...

As regular readers of this blog know, climate change and other environmental challenges regularly confront El Salvador. Those challenges have spawned a growing network of grass roots environmental organizations. A recent article titled Climate: Putting people over money  from Al Jazeera English interviews the participants in this growing movement: A 2007 climate change study conducted by El Salvador's National Ministry of the Environment and Natural Resources focused on the Lower Lempa River and Bay of Jiquilisco areas of the central Pacific coast. The study found that this area can expect more of what it is already experiencing: increasing minimum and maximum temperatures, a shift in observed seasons, more frequent observations of extremely wet and extremely dry years, and intensified extreme event activity, including tropical storms and hurricanes. Against the backdrop of these dire predictions, the people are, however, forming a movement that is learning to protect and ...

The archbishop of San Salvador, Mgr Jose Luis Escobar Alas spoke strongly about the dangers posed by global climate change reports Independent Catholic News : The Archbishop of San Salvador, Mgr Jose Luis Escobar Alas, has said that climate change is the most serious problem confronting humanity at the present time. He said urgent steps are needed to reduce to reduce global warming, but the causes are so directly linked to economic interests, he thinks will be very difficult to deal with the problem - not only in El Salvador but throughout the world. Mgr Escobar said El Salvador should do its part, however, it is the industrialized countries that are causing the most harm. The Archbishop welcomed a request made by President Mauricio Funes, calling for countries that most affect the climate to accept responsibility and act to prevent future catastrophes. The statements by the President were made during the summit that took place in the Central American country after a tropical ...

An article titled Losing mangrove forests in El Salvador on the website of Al Jazeera English deals with the issue of climate change and how its is affecting the mangrove forests along El Salvador's southeastern coastline. Rising sea levels endanger the mangroves: The mangrove forest is a unique ecosystem found in tropical and sub-tropical coastal regions in the Americas, Middle East, Asia and Oceania. Often found where fresh water and salt water mix, the mangrove creates specific ecological conditions that support a wide variety of flora and fauna.  The trees have a series of stilt-like supports that extend from the trunk for increased stability and resilience. The mangrove trees have evolved to be able to withstand change in water level caused by normally occurring tidal cycles and mild flooding, helping protect coastal areas from damage from extreme storms and tsunamis. In recent years, however, a rise in sea level has brought the ocean waves intruding further inland tha...

Yesterday I mentioned my friend Beth who works with a local community on reconstruction projects necessitated by weather disasters. Well worth reading is her thoughtful essay In Search of Shelter and Protection: Environmental Migration and Climate Change . Here is an excerpt: Disaster patterns in El Salvador are ever increasing, and will continue to do so in the coming years due to unpredictability of El Nino/La Nina cycles. This year, for example, unexpected downpours in August, the month that is normally a mid-summer drought, will threaten to destroy corn crops, which will further indebt farmers who already lost bean crops in Hurricane Ida last November. Increase in sea level rises could wipe out the entire Bajo Lempa region in the next 100 years, and corn may become inviable in the next 50 years depending on temperature increases. How many Salvadoran will need to migrate within or outside the country due to these changes? How will the Salvadoran government come up with money for a...

This morning, the government of El Salvador saluted Donald Trump for his election as president of the United States.  But what will a Donald Trump presidency mean for El Salvador?   Here are a few areas where his impact will be felt. Immigration .  Without a doubt, an anti-immigrant Trump administration could have serious economic and social impacts on El Salvador.   Approximately one of every four people alive who were born in El Salvador  or an estimated 2 million Salvadorans, currently live in the US. Remittances which they send home make up one sixth of El Salvador's gross national product.   Estimates vary, but perhaps between 700,000 and 1 million Salvadorans in the US are undocumented and would be a focus of Trump's immigration enforcement efforts.  If a significant percentage of them are suddenly deported, the disruption in El Salvador will be great.  Most certainly,   executive actions of the Obama administration which were int...

Cultivation of coffee has played an important role in the history of  El Salvador.  It was a source of great wealth for the country's landed elites during much of the twentieth century and the country's leading export crop.   But today the industry is falling on increasingly hard times.  A London-based coffee buyer, Mercanta, described the history of the Salvadoran coffee industry: El Salvador is the smallest of the Central American nations, but don’t let its diminutive size fool you. It produces exceptional coffees to a consistently high standard. Mercanta regularly buys selected single varietals such as Orange/Pink Bourbon, Red Bourbon and Pacamara, and has strong, long-term relationships with many producers and mills in this small, coffee powerhouse.  The history of coffee in El Salvador is inextricably linked to the development of the nation, itself. Introduced in the late 1880’s, coffee quickly displaced indigo as the country’s chief expo...

The floods of this month in El Salvador were extraordinary.   But when we look at the consequences of the floods, it is clear that calling this a "natural" disaster excuses too easily the role of humankind in contributing to the tragedy.  There are several places where the actions or inactions of human beings had a role: Global climate change .   Weather scientists asked about the flooding rains of October opined that the rains were an example of the more extreme and variable weather events produced by global climate change.   The charts I have posted in this blog showing rain totals of other weather events in El Salvador certainly seem to show that the past decade has been significantly worse than the preceding 40 years.  The carbon emissions of an industrialized world have created an imbalance producing life threatening weather events in ever-increasing frequency. Structural poverty .   In the pictures from the flooding in El Salvador and the rest ...

A recent article from IPS describes a program of El Salvador's environment ministry to change land use practices to protect biodiversity and combat effects of climate change: Local organisations and the environment ministry launched a plan aimed at tackling the problem in an integral manner.  The National Programme for the Restoration of Ecosystems and Landscapes (PREP) seeks to restore ecosystems like forests and wetlands and preserve biodiversity, as part of what its promoters describe as "an ambitious national effort to adapt to climate change," whose impacts are increasingly severe in this small Central American nation of 6.2 million....  "It's obvious that we can't keep doing things the same old way...we can't continue to carry the burden of this degradation of the environment and the impact that we are feeling from climate change," Lina Pohl, the environment minister, told correspondents who accompanied her on a tour through the area, ...

  August 6 is celebrated in El Salvador as the feast day of the Divine Savior of the World, the patron saint of El Salvador. But for the Lutheran Church in El Salvador, it is also the anniversary of the date on which Medardo Gomez was installed as the only bishop this church has ever had. Today, August 6, 2011 marks the 25th anniversary of Bishop Gomez' installation, and the church will be celebrating with its own march through the streets of San Salvador. I have had the privilege to know Bishop Gomez for almost 10 years.   He is a steadfast voice for social justice in El Salvador.   His church serves the poorest communities in the country, and his work is rooted in Latin American liberation theology which he has expanded and adapted as a "theology of life."   During the civil war, he was abducted and tortured by death squads, and on the same day the Jesuits were massacred in 1989, Bishop Gomez narrowly escaped when troops arrived at his church with orders to...

The availability of healthy water continues to be a serious challenge for El Salvador, and the Deluge of 2011 has only made it worse.   According to a story in La Prensa Grafica , the Ministry of Health reports that  10,186 wells were destroyed or contaminated by the flooding.   In addition, some 28,862 latrines were damaged in the flooding.   These damages to the water and sanitation infrastructure of the country create additional risks for disease. Meanwhile, El Salvador's legislators have failed to take up a bill which would protect the country's water resources for the benefit of all its citizens.   An article from IPS describes the inaction: A bill for protection, recovery and use of water resources in El Salvador, drafted by a platform of about 100 social, religious and academic organisations, has been bogged down in parliament for the past five years in spite of the country's water crisis. "Debate in Congress has been delayed due to lack of pol...

In September 2014, the US approved a $277 million aid program to El Salvador through the Millennium Challenge Corporation.  The program is referred to as FOMILLENIO II.    Two and a half years later, how is that money being used? According to the FOMILLENIO II website , "The aim of the program is to improve the investment climate in El Salvador for economic growth and poverty reduction."   The program has a total budget of $365.2 million, of which $277 million is an investment made by the US government through the Millennium Challenge Corporation and $88.2 million comes from the Salvadoran Government. The components of the program include: Logistical infrastructure .    This includes improvement of the southern coastal highway from the airport to the city of Zacatecoluca as well as improvements at the border crossing to Honduras at El Amatillo in eastern El Salvador. Human Capital .    This project has a $100.2 million fund availab...

El Salvador and the United States signed the Partnership for Growth development agreement on November 3.  The Partnership for Growth is a foreign policy initiative of the Obama administration which aims at poverty reduction through economic development.   The action items in the countries' agreement followed the completion of a " constraints analysis " which identified reducing crime and insecurity and increasing productivity of the tradables goods and services sector as priorities for unlocking economic growth.   The partnership has a five year plan, and you can read the Joint Country Action Plan at this link . If everything in this plan can be accomplished, it would be a good step forward for El Salvador where economic growth is lagging all of Latin America and crime takes a toll on all Salvadoran families. There is also a good post about the Partnership for Growth from our friends on Voices on the Border at this link . But US foreign poli...

Here is a round-up of a variety of this week's news stories from El Salvador. 1.   Millennium Challenge funds awarded .  The US government approved a second round of direct aid to El Salvador through the Millennium Challenge Corporation (MCC) program.  In its press release  announcing the approval, the MCC stated: Washington, D.C.—At its quarterly meeting today, the Millennium Challenge Corporation’s Board of Directors approved a five-year, $277 million compact with El Salvador to improve its competitiveness and productivity in international markets, and was briefed on MCC’s latest efforts in open data and transparency.  “I am very pleased that the Board of Directors took this step in approving the compact with El Salvador,” MCC Chief Executive Officer Daniel W. Yohannes said today. “This compact represents a tremendous opportunity to help reduce poverty in El Salvador by spurring investment and increasing economic growth.”  A thorough analysis conc...