A girl holding a puppy and a scythe while smiling for a photo in Peru.
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Peru is already one of the countries most affected by climate–related disasters. The El Niño Phenomenon has had a devastating impact, impeding the growth of the fishery and farming sectors and adversely affecting the lives, health and livelihoods of the most poverty-stricken people, particularly in the north of the country. Peru is also the only country in America likely to suffer from a lack of water in forthcoming years. Droughts have seriously affected the living conditions of peasants in the Southern Andes, giving rise to extensive country-to-city migration, thus further aggravating housing and service problems. In addition, earthquakes in Peru have unleashed the most lethal and destructive disasters in Latin America. To try and cope with these circumstances, people have been using whatever water and soil management techniques are available to them, to protect their homes and livelihoods. However, these technologies are not widely accessible or even certain to be beneficial. What is more, the expertise of specialists and the experience of other countries have not generally been considered in Peru’s policies, which have concentrated on responding to emergencies rather than to climate change. The Project Practical Action is at the forefront of helping people in developing countries to adjust to the increasing threat from climate change. In Peru, we are implementing an innovative project (partly funded by the European Community) that is helping communities in the seven poorest rural areas of the country to deal with the most frequent disaster risks and hazards. The regions selected are Piura, Lambayeque, Puno, Cusco, Ancash, Ucayali and Apurímac. The project is working with poor sectors of the population in these regions as well as with native Quechua, Aymara and Shipibo-Konibo communities. These groups not only experience the highest rates of poverty, as a result, they are also socially and culturally marginalised. Our aims are to capture practical lessons about the poor rural people’s capabilities of adjusting to climate changes and to design and propose policies that reduce the risks they face on a daily basis. Various approaches are being applied to reduce people’s vulnerability. These include: - strengthening the ability of poor women and men to use simple technologies, adjusted to their skills and resources, to make them more resilient to disasters and to deal with climate changes. - helping to build secure livelihoods of small-scale producers and the most vulnerable social groups. - identifying and testing potential opportunities for poverty reduction. Efforts are also being made to combine this type of response with the design of development projects. Such projects will relate to: - floods, mudflows and drought where we are developing the capacity of local organisations to adapt to and prepare for such hazards. - frost, drought and deforestation where we are working with native communities in highland and jungle areas to improve their ability to manage available resources in the midst of adverse conditions. Strategies are being designed to increase their income and improve their standard of living. - information and influence where we are helping to develop conflict management skills and publicise information on hazards and emergencies. We are also improving the capacity of local bodies to influence decision-makers in order to promote effective policies to deal with the risks and hazards faced by the poor and improve their standard of living. All of the above will contribute towards guaranteeing the sustainability of the environment in the face of both natural and man-made disasters. The projects will develop the capacity of government and community organisations to work in a co-ordinated manner so that, whilst they prepare to prevent potential disasters, they can develop the skills required to manage their own overall development. Likewise, all the proposed projects will try to demonstrate, in the most practical way, various ways of combining relief, rehabilitation and development activities in selected areas. Jequetepeque The Jequetepeque river basin has been constantly affected by weather hazards that have caused severe human and economic losses, particularly among the people in the middle and higher part of the basin who have limited resources. Since farming is their main source of income, they are adversely affected when these hazards turn into disasters. In view of the above, the ‘Jequetepeque Climate Change Project’ is improving the risk management capabilities of local farmers as well as of the local governments of the Jequetepeque river basin, in order to reduce their vulnerability to weather hazards through the use of adequate Information Systems. Below is the testimony of a local small-scale farmer who has been improving his weather-related risk management skills with the help of the project. “My name is Octavio Correo Tejada. I am 60 years old and am the President of the Irrigation Committee of the Lic Lic settlement in the Union Agua Blanca district, San Miguel province, Cajamarca Region. Lic Lic is a settlement situated in the sub-basin of the Payac river and farming is our main activity. In particular, we grow mangoes of the ‘hade’ variety, a large, sweet red and yellow mango in great demand in local, national and even international markets. Even so, we do not produce as much as we would like to, in order to improve our standard of living. For the past few years, several institutions have come to work in our area, with the objective of improving the quality of our mangoes. To this end, we have received training and become organised as the Association of Ecological Producers of Payac, better known as APEPAYAC; here we have learnt to manage our mango crops adequately and to market them as an association in order to improve sales. We have even exported to the United States and Canada. We know now how to manage our crops and have improved the sales of our fruit. Nevertheless, when it rains too much and landslides occur, as they do every year, it is as though everything we have learnt is of no use, because we lose all our mango plants and our irrigation canals. In fact, we cannot even take our produce to the market because the roads are blocked. That really does seriously affect us. However, in July last year (2006), the engineers of the Jequetepeque Climate Change Project of Practical Action arrived and they have been teaching us all about our sub-basin, the weather hazards we are subjected to and our limitations for preventing them from turning into disasters. A short while ago, the project invited me to form part of the Network of Local Communicators. We were taught to use the computer, create and use our electronic mail and many other things that I thought would be difficult to learn due to my age. At the training sessions, we met farmers from other sub-basins of the Jequetepeque whose problems are similar to those of the people of Payac. We have discussed our problems and shared our experiences regarding how climate changes have affected each of our areas and I think that is why we are all so enthusiastic about continuing to participate in the project’s activities, because only by learning will we be capable of dealing with changing weather conditions”.
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