By Sebastian Rodriguez
YORKIN, Costa Rica, Sept 19 (Thomson Reuters Foundation) – With erratic rainfall in Costa Rica playing havoc with her harvest, Maura Lupario reorganised her farm to ensure it could keep feeding her family – including getting her husband to give up his harvesting job at a banana company 50km away.
Like millions of indigenous farmers around the world, she always relied on her traditional knowledge. But increasingly unpredictable weather, linked to climate change, has upended her usual sowing and harvesting times, leading to lower yields.
“Before, you already knew in which months you could grow beans,” she told the Thomson Reuters Foundation from her farm in Yorkin Indigenous Reserve on Costa Rica’s southern border with Panama, which is home to about 500 Bribri people.
“But there are changes now. If we sow on the dates we used to, the rain comes early and we can no longer collect on time. You can’t be sure anymore,” said Lupario, who is about 30 years old and has two children.
It is becoming riskier to plant native varieties of beans, cocoa and corn as erratic rains can make crops flower early, leading to major production losses, locals said.
Costa Rica is committed to addressing climate change, with forests covering about half of the Central American country and ambitious plans to have zero net carbon emissions by 2050.
But its 100,000 indigenous people – about 2% of the 5 million-strong population – with limited access to roads, electricity or health care, also need help to adapt to a hotter, wetter world with less predictable weather.
