Africa’s wetland areas are experiencing immense pressure from commercial development and agriculture, settlements, excessive exploitation by local communities and improperly-planned development activities. Credit: Creative Commons CC0

By Tonderayi Mukeredzi
HARARE, Mar 12 2015 (IPS)

African wetlands are among the most biologically diverse ecosystems on the continent, covering more than 131 million hectares, according to the Senegalese-based Wetlands International Africa (WIA).

Yet, despite their importance and value, wetland areas are experiencing immense pressure across the continent. Commercial development ranks as the major threat for the draining of wetlands, including for tourism facilities and agriculture, where hundreds of thousands of hectares of wetlands have been drained.

Other threats to Africa’s wetlands are commercial agriculture, settlements, excessive exploitation by local communities and improperly-planned development activities. The prospect of immense profits from recently discovered oil, coal and gas deposits has also led to an increase in on-and offshore exploration and mining in sensitive ecological areas.Commercial development ranks as the major threat for the draining of [Africa’s] wetlands, including for tourism facilities and agriculture … Other threats are commercial agriculture, settlements, excessive exploitation by local communities and improperly-planned development activities

In Nigeria, Guinea-Bissau and Mozambique, for example, wetlands and estuaries coincide with fossil fuel deposits and related infrastructure developments.

In northern Kenya, port developments in Lamu are set to take place in the West Indian Ocean Rim’s most important mangrove area and fisheries breeding ground.

In KwaZulu-Natal and the Eastern Cape of South Africa, heavy mineral sands are located in important dune forest ecosystems, and gas is being prospected for in the water-scarce and ecologically unique Karoo.

In East Africa, oil discoveries have been made in the tropical Congo Basin rain forest and the Virunga National Park – a world heritage site and a wetland recognised under the Ramsar Convention.

The Okavango Delta in Botswana, one of Africa’s most important wetlands and designated as the 1,000th world heritage site by UNESCO, has been home to many threatened species and the main water source of regional wildlife in Southern Africa. Yet it is shrinking due to drier climate, increased grazing and growing pressure from tourism.

“This delta is a true oasis in the middle of the bone-dry Kalahari Sand Basin, a rare untouched wilderness that’s been preserved by decades of border and civil wars in the Angolan catchment,” said National Geographic explorer Steve Boyes in an interview. “Many people along the Okavango River live like communities did some 400 years ago – and from them I think we can learn a lot about how to be better stewards of the natural world.”

Boyes calculated the abundance of life in the delta: more than 530 bird species, thousands of plant species, 160 different mammals, 155 reptiles, scores of frogs and countless insects.

“Everywhere you look you find life. We surveyed bats and we found 17 species in three days. We started looking for praying mantises and found 90 different species,” he said.

A recent survey by the Botswana Department of Wildlife and National Parks and the environmentalist group BirdLife Botswana concluded that that the wetland’s historical zones of dense reed beds and water fig islands were largely destroyed by hydrological changes and fire. Bush fires and a high grazing pressure further reduced the natural shores of the Okavango Delta.

Studies by BirdLife Botswana also showed that the slaty egret, a vulnerable water bird living only in Southern Africa, with its main breeding grounds in the wetlands of Zambia, Mozambique and Botswana’s Okavango Delta, is now estimated to have a total population of only about 4,000 birds.

The egret, which is listed on the IUCN Red List of Threatened Species as vulnerable, seems to be losing its main breeding sites in the Okavango.

Environmentalists hope that they can still save the wetland, and pin their hopes on a “Slaty Egret Action Plan” which will be used by the Botswana’s Department of Wildlife and National Parks, BirdLife and other environment stakeholders to guarantee the survival of the Okavango Delta as a safe haven for the birds.

In a further step to save the wetlands, the Botswana government announced this month that from now on, seekers of mobile safari licences would be prohibited from operating in the Okavango Delta because the area in now congested.

The Botswana Guides Association, which represents many of the mobile safaris, is threatening to appeal.

Another example of the devastation of major wetlands occurred in Nigeria with pollution of farmlands linked to the Shell oil company.  The Niger Delta Natural Resource Damage Assessment and Restoration Project, an independent team of scientists from Nigeria, the United Kingdom and the United States, has characterised the Niger Delta as “one of the world’s most severely petroleum-impacted ecosystems.”

In 2013, a Dutch court found the Nigerian subsidiary of Shell culpable for the pollution of farmlands at Ikot Ada Udo in Akwa Ibom state in the coastal south of the country.

The Niger Delta is Africa’s largest delta, covering some 7,000 square kilometres – one-third of which is made up of wetlands. It contains the largest mangrove forest in the world.

Assisted by environmental organisation Friends of the Earth, the court ruling was a victory for the communities in the Niger Delta after years of struggle against the oil company dating back 40 years, although the clean-up still has far to go.

“Destruction of wetlands is prevalent in almost all countries in Africa because the driving factor is the same – population pressure – many mouths to feed, ignorance about the role wetlands in playing in the ecosystem, lack of policies, laws and institutional framework to protect wetlands and in cases where these exist, they are hardly enforced,” John Owino, Programme Officer for Water and Wetlands with the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN)  told IPS from his base in Nairobi, Kenya.

Owino said that the future of African wetlands lies in stronger political will to protect them, based on sound wetland policies and encouragement for community participation in their management, which is lacking in many African countries.

But very few African governments have specific national policies on wetlands and are influenced by policies from different sectors such as agriculture, national resources and energy.

Edited by Lisa Vives/Phil Harris   

Lesser Flamingos in flight, Credit: ©Mark Anderson

By Jacques Trouvilliez
BONN, Jan 31 2015 (IPS)

The first global treaty dealing with biodiversity was the Ramsar Convention – predating the Rio processes by 20 years.

Ramsar aims to conserve wetlands, the usefulness of which has been undervalued – even the eminent French naturalist of the 18^th century, the Comte de Buffon, advocated their destruction – and which have suffered large losses in recent decades.Wetlands are vital for birds – and especially waterbirds – but it is also the case that the birds are vital to the wetlands, playing a major role in maintaining nature’s balance.

Far from being wastelands, wetlands provide invaluable services, replenishing aquifers that supply drinking water and filtering out harmful pollutants. By maintaining a healthy environment, wetlands help ensure human well-being.

While the Ramsar Convention has had to deal with a broader spectrum of wetland issues over the years, it should be remembered that its full title includes “especially as waterfowl habitat”, and in AEWA, Ramsar has a strong ally with a clear focus on waterbird conservation in the African-Eurasian Flyway.

The areas designated as Ramsar Sites form an important part of the network of breeding, feeding and stopover grounds that are indispensable to the survival of the 255 bird populations of listed under AEWA.

Ramsar Sites are vital “hubs” in the network of habitats that constitute the African-Eurasian flyway along which millions of birds migrate in the course of the annual cycle. They include habitats as diverse as the Wadden Sea in Europe and the Banc d’Arguin in Mauritania, both also designated as UNESCO World Heritage Sites and important staging posts for birds migrating between Arctic breeding grounds and wintering sites deep in Africa.

Despite being often far apart geographically and different morphologically, these sites are inextricably linked by the birds that frequent them.

The definition of “wetland” extends to fish ponds, rice paddies, saltpans and some shallow marine waters, so Ramsar has sites of significance to other species covered by the Convention of Migratory Species, under which AEWA was concluded.

Examples are the Franciscana dolphin (the only dolphin species to inhabit wetlands) found in the estuary of the River Plate and along the coast of South America; and the European eel – a recent addition to the CMS listings – which spends most of its life in rivers but spawns and then dies in the Sargasso Sea.

But it is waterbirds that have the strongest links to wetlands and the future of many species is in doubt as a result of the continuing reduction in area of these most productive of habitats. Of great concern is the fate of the mudflats of the Yellow Sea which are under increasing pressure from human developments because tied to them is the fate of a number of threatened shorebirds.

Lake Natron in the United Republic of Tanzania is the only regular breeding site of over two million Lesser flamingoes. Applications have been made to exploit the area’s deposits of soda ash leading to fears that irrevocable damage would be done to the site resulting in the species’ extinction.

The habitats of Andean flamingoes – the Puna and Andean Flamingoes – are facing similar problems as illegal mining activities have eroded the nesting sites and contaminated the water, exacerbating other threats such as egg collection.

Fragile wetland ecosystems also fall victim to man-made accidents – the explosion of the Deepwater Horizon oil platform in the Gulf of Mexico and the Sandoz chemical works fire in Basel, Switzerland in 1986 being just two examples of countless incidents, both leading to the death of thousands of birds and fish.

Wetlands are vital for birds – and especially waterbirds – but it is also the case that the birds are vital to the wetlands, playing a major role in maintaining nature’s balance.

Government representatives will gather in Paris later this year in the latest effort to seek agreement on the steps necessary to arrest the causes of climate change. Wildlife is already feeling the effects and one of the best ways to ensure that animals can adapt is to ensure that there are enough robust sites providing the habitat and food sources at the right time and in the right place.

The theme chosen by the Ramsar Convention for this year’s campaign is Wetlands for Our Future and there is a particular emphasis being placed on the role of young people. While wetlands are of course vital for humans, they are no less important for the survival of wildlife and to a great extent also depend on the birds that live in them.

It is the role of AEWA to provide a forum where the countries of Europe, West Asia and Africa can work together to maintain the network of sites making up the African-Eurasian flyway.

Edited by Kitty Stapp

Excerpt:

The El Bosque children’s theatre group singing a song about protecting the wetlands, for which Cuba is seeking World Heritage Site status. Credit: Jorge Luis Baños/IPS

By Ivet González
CIÉNAGA DE ZAPATA, Cuba , Nov 28 2013 (IPS)

The 18 communities in Cuba’s Ciénaga de Zapata, the largest wetlands in the Caribbean, have long survived on the abundant local hunting and fishing and by producing charcoal. But that is no longer possible, due to climate change.

Years ago it was inconceivable that the people living in the Zapata Swamp, a UNESCO-recognised biosphere reserve in western Cuba, would one day stop using the forest here to make charcoal, extract precious wood, or hunt crocodile and deer.

“We used to pillage the flora and fauna,” said one local resident, Mario Roque, who lives on the small secluded bay of Batey Caletón, 200 km southeast of Havana. “I even poached as a fisherman. But I learned how to make a better living while causing less damage to nature,” he told IPS.

Enterprising residents of the wetlands like Roque have been spontaneously exploring green-friendly ecotourism initiatives, small animal production and small gardens, none of which were common in this area, where people have always been hunters, gatherers and fishers.

Roque, or “Mayito”, as he is known to everyone, started renting out four rooms in his house to tourists after Cuba’s communist government expanded the scope of private initiative in 2010.

Like him, many local residents in Playa Girón, Playa Larga, Caletón and other coastal communities in the wetlands have hung up “Rooms for rent” signs on the front of their homes.

Just 9,300 people live in the 4,322-sq-km Ciénaga de Zapata, the most sparsely populated municipality in this country of 11.2 million people.

The area’s wealth lies in its vast forests, swamps that cover 1,670 sq km, and more than 165 migratory and autochthonous species, like the Cuban crocodile (Crocodylus rhombifer).

In 2000, UNESCO – the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organisation – declared the wetlands, which occupy the entire Zapata peninsula and surrounding areas, a biosphere reserve. A year later, the Ramsar Convention included it on its list of wetlands of international importance.

“The tourists who come here are nature lovers, and they feel happy when they see we love nature too,” said Roque, who serves his guests lionfish (Pterois antennata), an exotic invasive species that is damaging the peninsula’s marine ecosystem.

“Every day I have to dive deeper to find a lionfish,” he said proudly.

He feeds his guests eggs and rabbit meat from his own small livestock, as well as herbs, spices and vegetables that he grows in his ecological garden. On the rooftop terrace he has a solar water heater made out of recycled plastic bottles and cans. “I’ve been saving 500 pesos [20 dollars] a month since I installed it,” he said.

Almost without realising it, Roque has adopted adaptation measures to global warming, a phenomenon that could raise the water level in the sea here 85 cm by 2050, which would affect between 60 and 80 percent of the swamp, said geographer Ángel Alfonso.

The wetlands cover 9.3 percent of Cuba’s land surface, and are extremely vulnerable and at the same time crucial for mitigating the predicted rise in temperature, intrusion by the sea and increase in extreme weather events, he explained to IPS.

“They protect life inland,” he stressed, because they filter and purify contaminated water while serving as coastal barriers against high tides, hurricanes and the salinisation of fresh water. A full 25 percent of the net productivity of Cuba’s ecosystems and more than 40 percent of its environmental services depend on the wetlands.

The Ciénaga de Zapata, in the province of Matanzas, has weak points when it comes to weathering future threats, even though it is the best-preserved wetlands system in the Caribbean islands, Alfonso said.

Its surface and underwater water have been salinised, the swamp system has been fragmented, and there are imbalances in its ecological functioning, he said.

Nor have the felling of trees and poaching of protected or endangered species like the Cuban crocodile been completely eliminated, just as there are still illegal charcoal kilns that use wood from off-limits species such as mangroves.

“When you take a boat along the coast, you see crocodile hunters and charcoal ovens in the forest,” a biologist who spoke on condition of anonymity told IPS.

Leyaní Caballero with the science, technology and environment ministry’s delegation in the swamp said “there are laws and regulations that protect these resources, but they are not always enforced. Some people violate them out of ignorance or because it is the only way they know how to meet their needs.

“A management mechanism should be created so that people living in the reserve benefit from the forest, without being driven by the profit motive,” she said. “Nor is there an integral sustainable development plan, in line with the country’s general strategies.”

That and other problems were raised in the workshops organised by the project “Transformation for local development in small community groups in the Ciénaga de Zapata”, dedicated to training local leaders – 20 last year and 27 this year – most of whom were already running nature-friendly enterprises.

“We try to guide people a little towards a better kind of development,” one of the local leaders, Antonio Gutiérrez, told IPS. He combines his carpentry work with raising birds like cockatoos.

Gutiérrez is taking part in the project to get more people involved in his economic activity, “which creates awareness about taking care of birds.”

Once a month the project holds meetings with local craftspersons, people who raise livestock for family consumption, ecotourism promoters, and farmers who use agroecological techniques or grow ornamental plants, who have all come together with the hope of improving their own lives and those of their communities.

Together they assess the problems and learn about issues like leadership and marketing, to seek solutions.

“We don’t have to wait for all the food to be brought in from other parts of the country,” said Aliuska Labrada, a homemaker who rounds out her family’s diet with cassava, squash, guava, mango and other food grown in the rocky, saline soil of her garden, in Cayo Ramona (Ramona Key).

One of the most significant results of the project so far has been helping to create the first agricultural cooperative in the municipality, Caballero stressed. It joined the ranks of the 5,688 cooperatives operating in Cuba today.

The initiative was supported by the government’s local environmental delegation, with support from the Fundación Nicolás Guillén and the Swiss NGO Zunzún.

To strengthen the protection of the wetlands, the Cuban government made a submission to UNESCO in 2003 for the Ciénaga de Zapata to be declared a World Heritage Site.

Eurasian Spoonbill wintering at the Okhla sanctuary in the heart of New Delhi city. Credit: T.K. Roy/IPS

By Ranjit Devraj
NEW DELHI, Aug 22 2013 (IPS)

Every winter the Okhla wetlands, a charmed haven in the heart of India’s bustling capital city, play host to Greater Flamingoes, Greylag Geese, Tufted Pochards, Northern Shovelers and other exotic, feathered visitors winging in from colder climes as far away as Siberia.

These avian migrants join hundreds of local water birds to breed in the Okhla Bird Sanctuary and Wildlife Park – a four square kilometres patch of wetland on the Jamuna river. The river is struggling to survive amidst costly real estate and development projects in the state of Delhi on the west bank of the river and Uttar Pradesh state on the east.

Conservationists now warn that unless there is a halt to construction activity on the banks of the Jamuna and to the pumping of raw sewage and effluents into the river, the annual spectacle of colours and shapes winging into the Okhla sanctuary will soon be nothing more than a cherished memory.

According to Tarun Kumar Roy, coordinator of the Asian waterbird census of Wetlands International (WI), some 10,000 birds could be counted at the Okhla sanctuary a decade ago. “That number has now been reduced by half, to around 5,000 birds,” Roy told IPS.

Wetlands International, a Netherlands-based not-for-profit organisation, works to conserve wetlands and their resources for people and for the cause of biodiversity.

Roy, who has been working to get the Okhla sanctuary recognition as a site protected under the 1971 Ramsar Convention, says the dwindling bird numbers have dashed his hopes.

Other experts believe that it is still possible to gain recognition for the Okhla sanctuary as a Ramsar site so that it can benefit from international support through the treaty designed to stop encroachments on wetlands with ecological, economic, cultural, scientific and recreational significance.

“The fact that a good number of transcontinental migratory birds visit the Okhla sanctuary makes it an outstanding candidate for designation as a Ramsar site,” Faizi S. Faizi, who is a member of the expert committee on biodiversity and development at the United Nations Convention on Biological Diversity, told IPS.

Faizi says it is helpful that the Okhla sanctuary has been certified as an ‘Important Bird Area’ by Birdlife International for its ornithological importance.

Gopal Krishna, coordinator of Toxics Watch, a major environment group based in the capital, said it is up to the ministry of environment and forests to get the Okhla sanctuary rated as a Ramsar site. “If the ministry has failed in this regard it is only due to pressure from the powerful construction and real estate lobbies,” Krishna told IPS.

“It is hard to believe that the officials of the ministry are unaware of encroachments into a national sanctuary located barely five kilometres away from its offices,” said Krishna.

“How could, for example, a heavily polluting waste-to-energy incinerator come up on the edge of the park without ministry clearance?”

Krishna said the future of the Okhla sanctuary now rests greatly on a series of cases filed by environmentalists and local residents at the National Green Tribunal, a special fast-track court that handles contentious cases relating to environmental issues.

“The most important of these cases relates to the waste-to-energy incinerator that has been functioning since January 2012 within the eco-sensitive zone of the Okhla sanctuary,” said Krishna. “A judicial commission of the tribunal has established that the emissions from the plant are 25 times above the permitted limit.”

In July, the school of environmental sciences at New Delhi’s Jawaharalal Nehru University released the results of a study that found the air around Okhla to be severely polluted with lead, nickel, cadmium and cobalt that could only have come from the incinerator.

“The high chimneys of the Okhla incinerator are a serious threat to migratory birds since they emit a range of toxic gases into their flight path,” said Roy.

On Aug. 14, the tribunal suspended further unauthorised construction in a 10-km wide eco-sensitive zone around the Okhla sanctuary, and ordered a fresh survey of the area by central and provincial authorities with a view to protecting it.

Faizi said the tribunal order has come not a moment too soon. “The Okhla waste-to-energy incinerator is absolutely unacceptable in this critical bird area and must be removed without further delay,” he said.

According to Roy, although the total number of visiting birds has declined, the range of bird species represented at the Okhla sanctuary appears to be increasing. “A total of 330 bird species has been recorded at the Okhla sanctuary, although some species are no longer being sighted.”

Feathered visitors to the Okhla sanctuary that figure on the ‘red-list’ of endangered bird species of the International Union for Conservation of Nature include the Ferruginous Duck, Black-tailed Godwit, River Lapwing, Egyptian Vulture, Oriental Darter, Painted Stork, Black-bellied Tern and Black-headed Ibis.

The tribunal is currently hearing multiple petitions asking for intervention against property developers, builders and a ‘sand mining mafia’ that defy existing rules that can help protect the Okhla sanctuary.

After it was discovered that illegal sand mining had caused the Jamuna to shift its course eastward, a crackdown involving seizures and arrests was carried out by Durga Shakthi Nagpal, administrator of Uttar Pradesh’s Gautam Budh Nagar district in which much of the Okhla sanctuary falls.

But on Jul. 28, three months after the crackdown was launched, Nagpal was controversially suspended by her political bosses in what was widely seen as a backlash from the construction industry that uses large quantities of river sand for its cement and concrete mixes.

Faizi said that only a people’s movement could save the sanctuary, which acts as a ‘green lung’ for congested and polluted Delhi that is home to 20 million people. “Recognising the Okhla sanctuary as a Ramsar site would be the best way to generate public interest in protecting one of the world’s truly unique wetlands.”

Mauricio Cruz points to an area where he says tourism infrastructure will be built, in Cuche del Monte on the edge of the mangrove forest on Jiquilisco Bay. Credit: Edgardo Ayala/IPS

By Edgardo Ayala
JIQUILISCO, El Salvador , Apr 29 2013 (IPS)

Community leaders in El Salvador are opposed to the government’s plans to use U.S. aid funds to develop the country’s Pacific coastline, on the grounds that it would threaten the environment in a vast area.

“The natural areas we have protected for so long will be seriously affected if tourism investments are made in these coastal zones,” as the government intends, within the framework of the United States Millennium Challenge Fund (FOMILENIO) programme, activist Amílcar Cruz García, secretary of the Asociación Mangle (Mangrove Association), a community organisation in the Lower Lempa area in the southeastern department or province of Usulután, told IPS.

The Millennium Challenge Corporation (MCC), the U.S. government foreign aid agency funding FOMILENIO, offered El Salvador a second package of 277 million dollars of non-refundable aid in December 2011, to develop the coastal region. Final approval could occur late this year.

The first FOMILENIO programme in El Salvador was rolled out in 2007-2012, injecting 460 million dollars in investment in the northern region of the country.

The MCC was created in 2004 by the U.S. Congress to help poor countries overcome poverty. Since then it has devoted 8.4 billion dollars in aid worldwide, according to its web page.

“We are in favour of the good things that FOMILENIO could bring, such as schools, roads and health clinics, but we are worried about private tourism investment,” said Cruz García.

The Asociación Mangle and other NGOs have been working in the area known as the Lower Lempa ever since these lands in the south of Usulután were distributed to former army soldiers and former guerrillas demobilised after a peace agreement put an end to the country’s bloody 12-year civil war in 1992.

The parcelled out farm land borders on the nature reserve of Jiquilisco Bay, where these organisations have carried out major environmental and social projects.

Jiquilisco Bay and the Jaltepeque estuary together form the most important ecological corridor in the country, with an area of over 112,000 hectares.

Because of the fragility of the ecosystem and its status as a nesting area for endangered species, the bay was declared a protected site by the Convention on Wetlands of International Importance Especially as Waterfowl Habitat (Ramsar Convention) in October 2005, and the estuary was similarly protected in February 2011.

Some 300 female hawksbill turtles (Eretmochelys imbricata) continue to nest on the beaches of the Pacific coast between Mexico and Peru, and half of them lay their eggs on the 37 kilometres of beach in Jiquilisco Bay, according to studies by the Eastern Pacific Hawksbill Initiative and the Southwest Fisheries Science Centre, abranch of the U.S. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.

Jiquilisco Bay was declared a biosphere reserve by the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organisation (UNESCO) in 2007.

However, the declaration of protected status still allows for fishing and the harvesting of marine products in the area, as well as the construction of infrastructure, in line with local zoning regulations, said Álvaro Moisés, the head of Salvanatura, a conservation organisation.

This could be the legal loophole that tourism investments could take advantage of.

Under FOMILENIO II, the leftwing government of President Mauricio Funes aims at increasing education and training for young people in the area so that they can take up jobs created by private investors, while basic infrastructure like roads, piped water and electricity is put in.

But “frankly, we see this as a threat,” said Mauricio Cruz, the president of the Sara y Ana aquaculture cooperative, in the small town of Salinas El Potrero in the municipality of Jiquilisco.

The community leader told IPS that the members of seven local cooperatives fear that tourism projects will pollute the estuary, whose waters fill their shrimp farming tanks.

“We are very well organised and we won’t let a huge hotel be built next to our tanks,” he said.

So far, the government has received 62 proposals from investors, pending MCC approval, for a total of 450 million dollars.

Interest has been expressed, for example, by the Association of Coastal Marine Tourism Developers (PROMAR). Their proposals total 208 million dollars, including luxury hotels and even a regional airport in the nearby province of La Unión.

The head of PROMAR, Marco Guirola, told IPS that it is understandable that there is mistrust among the people living in the coastal communities, because they have historically been marginalised.

But the former approach of doing business in ways that violate the environment and the rights of local residents “is no longer sustainable, or even possible, even if one wanted to, because the level of organisation in the area is enough to exert the necessary pressure,” Guirola said. He added that it is possible to reconcile large tourism investments even with areas as fragile as a nature reserve.

“We should give up opposing (investments) just for fun,” he said.

For his part, Tourism Minister José Napoleón Duarte told IPS that he would not back any tourist project that did not meet minimum environmental requirements.

But a third party should audit the investments, experts say. Salvanatura’s Moisés regretted that neither the government nor the MCC have explicitly established that investment projects should be certified by external institutions.

These external assessments, Moisés said, are much more thorough than the environmental impact studies required by Salvadoran law, and would enable projects to be evaluated comprehensively in environmental and social terms, according to international standards.

“The FOMILENIO project should be an opportunity for El Salvador, which is one of the countries in the region most vulnerable to extreme meteorological events, to adapt to the impacts already being caused by climate change,” the activist said.

The Lower Lempa is particularly susceptible to these effects, suffering from floods during the rainy season that cost many lives and cause heavy damages to crops and infrastructure.

“What guarantees that investments will respect the environment and the social fabric of the area is not the government nor the business sector, but people organising themselves,” Emilio Espín, a manager at the Association for Cooperation and Community Development (CORDES), an NGO with 25 years’ standing in the area, told IPS.