In this third and final installment of a three part series on WWF’s Latin American and Caribbean Program’s coastal adaptation projects in Costa Rica, Valerie Guthrie discusses the community’s efforts to educate and actively involve Junquillal’s youngest inhabitants in WWF’s adaptation work.
Communities matter. This is the foundation for our work helping sea turtles and the people of Junquillal prepare for the increasingly severe impacts associated with climate change.
For this reason, myself and a team of others at WWF have worked with the community of Junquillal to develop an experimental program that aims to integrate children in helping our community adjust to climate change. However, while our work focuses on sea turtles, our planning did not start with them. We started by asking ourselves a simple question, “What’s the best way to teach children, young people, and adults about a global problem that has direct local effects where they live?”
Climate change has made rainfall patterns in the north Indian state of Rajasthan increasingly unpredictable and is threatening the livelihoods of local people dependent on rain-fed agriculture. Rajendra Singh, also known as ”The Rainman,” realized that indigenous water conservation was key to solving northern India’s most pressing water problems. Check-out this video from ChinaDaily.com to see a great example of how a single person can make an incredible difference for the ecosystems and people of Rajasthan.
What may be most interesting about Rajendra’s work is his innovative use of traditional irrigation technologies such as dams of earth and rock. His work reminds us that although climate change is an unprecedented challenge, we already have many of the tools at our disposal to adapt. After all, species and humands have been adjusting to less dramatic changes in the environment for… well, forever. As a result, when it comes to adapting to events such as droughts brought on by global climate change, we may be more prepared than we think. Learning about what has worked in the past, and sharing these lessons, is the first step.
In this second installment of a three part series on WWF’s Latin American and Caribbean Program’s coastal adaptation projects in Costa Rica, Ana Fonseca, the Latin America and Caribbean lead with WWF-LAC, together with Carlos Drews discusses the community’s efforts to adapt – both for the turtles and themselves.
The fortunes of coastal communities like Junquillal are intimately tied to the sea and the shoreline that sits just meters away from houses and roads, a relationship shared by species like sea turtles, for whom the beach is the sole nesting site. Coastlines are not static however, but instead shift according to storms, currents, and changing sea levels. Scientists warn that the sea-level could rise by at least one meter by the end of the century due to climate change, threatening both coastal communities as well as critically important turtle nesting sites like Junquillal.
As part of ClimatePrep.org’s continuing feature on sea turtles and adaptation, we interviewed Marianne Fish, Program Leader for Marine and Coastal Adaptation with WWF – Latin America and the Caribbean. She spoke about incorporating adaptation into existing conservation efforts, “no regrets” strategies, and how sea turtles are a focal species for adaptation projects in part because they make use of many of the same coastal and marine habitats that are critical to humans – beaches, coral reefs, and mangroves.
Junquillal Beach in the north Pacific of Costa Rica is a representative example of many places in Latin American and the Caribbean where wildlife and communities are already feeling the impacts of climate change. In 2005, with the support of the community, WWF started the project “Conservation of Pacific Leatherbacks” (in Spanish, Conservación – Baulas del Pacífico (CBP)). The CBP Program includes the monitoring and protection of sea turtle nesting sites, community education and training programs, and the development of flooding maps for the Junquillal area.
In this three part series, Gabriel Francia, Ana Fonseca, and Valerie Guthrie from WWF’s Latin American and Caribbean Program will discuss their efforts to work with communities and integrate the latest climate science and mapping technologies as part of a multi-faceted sea turtle and coastal adaptation project in Costa Rica. A previous entry on ClimatePrep featured a video from Junquillal.
In this entry, Gabriel Francia discusses the community’s efforts to adapt – both for the turtles and themselves.
Marine turtles and their nesting beaches are threatened by sea-level rise and nest overheating resulting from climate change. A WWF project in Junquillal beach, Costa Rica, joined forces with the community to lead the implementation of adaptation measures such as coastal planning in consideration of sea-level rise, flood risk reduction, restoration of coastal vegetation for shade, and educating children with a new awareness of the links among climate shifts, nature conservation, and community well-being. This video is the abridged (8 min) version of the full length (24 min) documentary “Playas Calientes – Olas Furiosas” (2009).
For more information on WWF’s Adaptation to Climate Change for Marine Turtles (ACT) project, click here and here.
Located in the lower Amazon floodplain of Brazil, the Santarém region harbors important fisheries that many people depend on for employment, food security, government tax revenues, and items to export to both domestic and foreign markets. Climate change is creating difficulties, but not without hope and new opportunities as well.
These fisheries and the services that they provide are known to be sensitive to shifts in the climate. Precipitation patterns are shifting in the Santarém region, with the amount of annual rainfall generally decreasing and floods and droughts becoming more common. Livelihoods for most people around these lakes combine farming and fishing, both of which will be negatively affected by a reduction in rainfall. Less rain will have an especially big impact on the local economy through the quantity of fish that are locally harvested. If regional climate forecasts are accurate, rural livelihoods in lakeshore regions will become increasingly precarious over time.
In 1997 I went to the western part of Java in Indonesia to perform research on agricultural water management. Java is one of the most densely populated regions and high-yielding rice paddy lands in the world. The focus of my research was how rice farmers dealt technologically and organizationally with ongoing reforms in large, engineered irrigation systems. During this research I met a farmer who had meticulously typed out his traditional cropping calendar. This cropping calendar — a titimangsa — read like a beautiful poem, describing the smell of the dew, the color of the sunset, the touch of the soil, and the observation of insect life cycles.
Based on this titimangsa, the farmer made decisions about when to start land preparation, sowing, harvesting, and other parts of the agricultural cycle in order to support the traditional rate of two to three rice harvests per year. By the late 1990s, farmers had already observed how traditional agricultural decision making was changing to more centrally planned modern irrigation systems, but each village still maintained a traditional water diversion and distribution networks as well. For village farmers, the traditional system added real flexibility to their daily water management.
The majority of Brazilian Amazon fishermen live in areas vulnerable to climate change, or depend on resources whose distribution and productivity are known to be influenced by climate variability. One of these areas is the Amazon floodplains, where WWF-Brazil has several projects coordinated by me.
Relationships between the impacts of climate change and these fishing communities’ ability to adapt have barely been investigated. This research could help to guide the development of conservation measures that can be used to help community fisheries adapt to the impacts of adverse climate change, both in Brazil and beyond.
Climate change is the most important global environmental issue at this time. Despite quantitative uncertainty in the climate models about the exact extent of impacts, predictions show that future climate will increase, among other things, the frequency of extreme weather events, like severe droughts. Resilience building is a key strategy for mankind to face future climate change.
The purpose of my postings will be to provide a synthesis of current thinking on the relations between climate change, vulnerability assessment, and adaptation projects of community fisheries in the Amazon basin. In my future entries I will present details of the case of Santarem.
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