BOGTOA (AlertNet) - Guatemala is stepping up its efforts to address climate change impacts and implement disaster prevention plans following a series of natural disasters that have hit Central American, experts say.
Throughout this year, Guatemala has had to deal with the wettest rainy season of the last 60 years, the eruption of the Pacaya volcano and a battering by tropical storm Agatha.
These events have claimed 235 lives, uprooted 208,000 Guatemalans from their homes, destroyed nearly 15,000 homes and worsened existing food shortages.
In response, Guatemala, with the help of a $250 million loan from the Inter-American Development Bank (IDB), is pushing ahead with greater urgency to implement a new national policy on climate change, to factor climate change into disaster prevention plans, and to improve climate change adaptation.
A new interagency commission led by the Guatemalan vice-president will oversee the country's climate change policy.
"Since 2000, Agatha and other tropical storms have had a major impact on Guatemala and droughts have caused hunger, which has raised the importance of climate change issues in Guatemala," Hilen Meirovich, a senior climate change specialist for Central America with the Inter-American Development Bank, told AlertNet in a telephone interview.
"There is growing awareness (among Guatemalan government officials) about the effects of climate change and natural disasters and the links between them, and that climate change-related disasters will increase tremendously," she added.
Guatemala is one of the 10 countries judged most vulnerable to climate change, and the fourth most vulnerable to natural disasters, according to the United Nations.
The country is one of Latin America's poorest and least-developed and lies on the edge of the hurricane belt, making it particularly susceptible to natural disasters.
Guatemala is also Central America's most densely populated country and is struggling to cope with the aftermath of decades of civil war and with rising drug-fuelled violence.
"Poor infrastructure and development levels and its position exposes Guatemala to tropical storms. The combination of these factors means Guatemala has a high level of exposureÂ? to climate change-related natural disasters," said IDB's Meirovich.
In recent years, extreme weather and more frequent and intense tropical cyclones linked to climate change have brought both more flooding and more droughts across Central America.
Experts predict the changes will cause increasing damage in the region.
"There are two main trends happening in Central America as a result of climate change. We're seeing more rainfall and less rainfall leading to more droughts and flooding across the region and within the same country," Meirovich said.
HUNGER THREAT
In Guatemala, recent severe droughts and floods have ruined crops, exacerbating food shortages in a country where hunger is an ever-looming threat, experts say.
Guatemala has the world's fourth highest rate of chronic malnutrition, which affects almost half of children under five, according to the United Nations. Over half of its population of 14 million lives below the poverty line.
"Climate change is impacting on food security in Guatemala," Meirovich said.
One main focus of Guatemala's emerging climate change policy, which began to be implemented last year, is to identify and map the areas and communities most vulnerable to climate change impacts like flooding and drought.
"There's a big focus on looking at vulnerability and identifying those most at risk," Meirovich said.
Guatemala's so-called "dry corridor," which runs through its central and eastern regions, is one of the areas most at risk of drought. Here Guatemala's most impoverished people, who survive mainly from subsistence maize farming, regularly teeter on the brink of hunger.
Getting different government entities to work together to implement a national policy on climate change is a challenge, Meirovich said.
Raising awareness at the local government level and getting mayors involved in climate change adaptation plans, like building shelters against cyclones, can also be a challenge, she said.
One of the aims of Guatemala's climate change policy is to boost participation of the country's indigenous groups, who make up around 80 percent of its population.
"They (government officials) recognise that indigenous people have a source of ancestral knowledge that needs to be embraced and that indigenous people have adapted to changing weather over the years," Meirovich said.
WAYS TO ADAPT
Adapting to changing rainfall patterns requires a greater focus on rainwater harvesting and better management of scarce water supplies in drought-prone areas, experts say.
It also means getting farming communities who grow maize, Guatemala's staple food, to plant the crop at different times and to consider planting other crops as well.
"They often say my grandfather told me to plant in May but with changes to the rainy season, planting and harvest times have to change. Part of adapting requires teaching people when they should plant according to changing rainy seasons," Meirovich said.
Guatemala's indigenous communities are open to change and want to adapt to ensure their families have enough to eat, she said.
"We need to give them solutions," Meirovich said.
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