The companies in PREP are: Calvert Investments, Earth Networks, Entergy, Green Mountain Coffee Roasters, Inc., Levi Strauss & Company, Starbucks, and Swiss Re. Other partners in PREP include BSR and Ceres. Oxfam America serves as PREP's secretariat. Read the PREP Mission Statement.

The goals of the Partnership are to:

• Promote practices and economic growth that help both vulnerable communities and business adapt to the impacts of climate change ; and
• Promote public policies that facilitate adaptation efforts to prepare for and respond to the consequences of a changing climate.

Managing risk

From extreme weather events to glacial melt, from water scarcity to rising sea levels—the effects of climate change on global economic stability and global security can no longer be ignored. Even with aggressive mitigation efforts to reduce emissions, the consequences of climate change on communities across the planet are significant. For many, the results are more severe weather-related disasters, increased food and water insecurity, scarce natural resources, and health problems.

Community risks are business risks. On a functional level, the impact of climate change on companies’ global supply chains is already visible. For example, changes in weather patterns affect growing conditions for crops like coffee and cotton. Climate change threatens the global operations of some businesses, such as when severe floods displace families and workers in areas where manufacturing facilities are located. Such climate-related risks, and their links to broader community needs, are just beginning to be understood by the private sector.

Businesses are also just beginning to identify adaptation growth opportunities as the demand for certain products and services increases. For example, increasing water scarcity will necessitate improved and more efficient irrigation technologies. As companies anticipate and respond to these shifts in demand they should look to partner with communities with an aim towards investing in local jobs and improving livelihoods.

PREP partners

More than 6 million farmers across the country grow teff, but it’s here, in rugged Adi Ha, where rocks litter the fields like confetti, that this new kind of insurance may take root and spread. An initiative coordinated by Oxfam America and supported by more than a dozen partners, its goal is to help some of the world’s poorest farmers bounce back when drought destroys their crops. And the payout isn’t only in cash. It’s in confidence—the kind that may help propel people out of poverty.

“Without insurance, poor farmers who experience drought might run through all their savings, fall into debt, or sell their livestock and other valuables—often to ruinous results,” says Mengesha Gebremichael, the micro-insurance officer at the Relief Society of Tigray and one of the project’s managers. “In contrast, insured farmers will be more resilient to those shocks. They’ll be in a better position to take out small loans that could help them make big improvements in their next harvest—loans for things like high-yield seeds. They’ll be more confident that they can pay the money back knowing they have insurance to support them if trouble strikes.”

June to October marks the main rainy season in Adi Ha, a critical time for local farmers who depend on the skies to water their teff fields. For poor families living close to the edge, where even a $20 or $30 loss can push them over, there is no room for mishap. Without rain, they face disaster. That’s where the weather insurance comes in. If a certain amount of rain fails to fall at a certain time, farmers who have purchased the insurance can receive a payout to help cover their losses.

The old ways may not be enough

In Ethiopia, families have always had traditional ways of coping with extraordinary expenses. If they lose their livestock in a disaster, such as drought, those who are better off will contribute an animal or two to help them rebuild their herds, for instance. Families may also share seeds for planting, or food when it’s in terribly short supply.

But with climate change—and the erratic weather that it brings—the traditional means of surviving bad times may no longer be enough.

“Climate change is dramatically increasing agricultural risk across the planet,” says Marjorie Victor Brans, a senior policy advisor at Oxfam America. “The frequency of droughts and other shocks in Adi Ha is likely to increase, and poor farmers will be among the hardest hit. It’s a hugely challenging phenomenon.”

With 85 percent of Ethiopians employed in farming, much of it rain-fed, the need for new tools to manage the risks is huge. But the market for insurance is miniscule: only about 300,000 people in a country of nearly 80 million now have it. Extending the option to rural areas is loaded with challenges, not the least of them being the concern that poor farmers simply don’t have the money to pay for premiums—even the smallest one.

Work is the answer

This new program has solved that problem with a simple solution: It has arranged for the poorest farmers to use their labor to buy insurance, tapping into a new social security initiative the Ethiopian government launched a few years ago. Called the Productive Safety Net Program, or PSNP, it helps about 8 million of the country’s most vulnerable residents by providing them with food or cash in exchange for work.  Through the PSNP, 130 Adi Ha farmers are now working extra days on community projects, such as planting trees and grasses to promote soil and water conservation, to pay for their premiums. In this pilot year, Oxfam provided funds to the PSNP to cover this part of the project.

The option to trade labor for insurance has substantially boosted the number of farmers able to participate in the program, nearly doubling the enrollment that was expected.

“It’s good for me to have the insurance as long as I can work and pay with labor,” says Medhin Reda, a single mother who will be working 24 days for her premium. “That is the only asset I have.”

For Selas Samson Biru, who is spending 192 birr on insurance, it will help address the uncertainties that have always been part of farming, especially now that global warming may be altering familiar weather patterns.

“Our season is changing. We don’t know when there will be a bad year and when there will be a good year,” she says. “I believe, after taking the training, this insurance will be helpful during the bad season. This will pay me.”

Farmers take center stage

And the insurance may be extra helpful because it was tailored specifically for farmers like Biru. In fact, she was one of five community members chosen by villagers to join the insurance design team. Twenty-one other farmers participated in a series of test workshops on climate change and financial literacy. Focus group discussions and economic risk simulations carried out in the community helped the design team understand what kind of insurance product would work best in Adi Ha. And on the day of enrollment, about 600 farmers showed up for a host of activities explaining the offerings, including musical performances, a play, peer-to-peer outreach, and financial training.

“Today is a historic day for the farmers of Adi Ha,” said Brans as the activities wound to a close that day and organizers counted the final tally of takers. Among the 200 were 75 women, which represents about 22 percent of all female-headed households in Adi Ha—one of the most vulnerable groups the project  is aiming to help. On average, farmers are paying 138 birr for their premiums—or a little more than $12 each. Some chose packages that allowed them to pay as little as 76 birr, or about $6.75. The maximum premium was 288 birr, or just over $23.

“We are experimenting,” said Gebru Kahsay a few months after investing 192 birr into an insurance package. “We started with teff. If we find the insurance is good, we’ll continue. If we fail, we will take a lesson from it.”

Next steps

Lots of learning has already taken place during the 18 months Oxfam and its partners spent in preparation for the launch of this project. And each of those partners has been contributing its own expertise. Besides the Relief Society of Tigray, or REST, one of the largest aid groups in Africa which has worked closely with the people of Adi Ha, other partners include the Nyala Insurance Company, an Ethiopian firm that is providing the insurance; Swiss Re, one of the world’s largest insurers which has helped fund the launch and is providing technical expertise; and the International Research Institute for Climate and Society at Columbia University, which is providing research on climate data. Additionally, the Dedebit Credit and Savings Institution, or DECSI, the primary provider of loans to families in Adi Ha, helped both to design the pilot and to educate farmers about the pros and cons of insurance.

“We had to work very hard to design a risk management package that was affordable and attractive to farmers, while still being potentially profitable to the insurance industry,” says Bekabil Fufa, an agricultural expert in Oxfam America’s Horn of Africa regional office. “And we had to make it compelling to government and donors who feel it will address the threat of climate change.”

With a solid model now in place, Oxfam is planning in the coming year to expand the initiative into four new villages in Tigray--the region where Adi Ha is located—and into one village in Amhara, another drought-prone region to the south. Eventually, the project partners  would like to see weather insurance offered to poor farmers throughout  Ethiopia.

It will require a leap of faith by farmers across the country as well as support from the government, donors, NGOs, and the private sector,” says Gebremichael. “But given the long lead times required to build resiliency to climate change, we can’t afford to wait until tomorrow to try.”

The house is gone now, and Canjura, her husband, and their four boys have moved to a new cinder block house—with a tile floor and a composting latrine—built by an aid group a short distance away. But for many poor people settled in this mangrove swamp, all the problems remain of living on marginal land, made more hazardous by the increased flooding climate change seems to be triggering.

And that's why Canjura, with the help of Oxfam America and a consortium of aid groups, is now rallying with other local activists to bring their problems to the attention of the Salvadoran government and push for help.

The consortium, made up of five donor groups and six local non-governmental organizations, started two years ago with a program called PRVAS—or Programa Reducción de Vulnerabilidades Ahuachapán-Sonsonate. The program helps communities in the area organize themselves to better prepare for disasters, carry out small mitigation projects, and win the ear of local governments. The idea behind the PRVAS is to help people help themselves—and find ways to make a new civil protection law, passed in 2005, work for them.

"If we just continue from an emergency response perspective, all we'll do year after year is help rescue people," says Henry Giovani Magaña the coordinator for PRVAS. "We won't help people overcome their vulnerabilities—which is what we want."

The landless settle

We are sitting in a small community center, a low-slung ocean-front structure on loan to residents in this coastal region from a Salvadoran living in the US. Other buildings—some less substantial than this one—line both sides of the street. And further back, amid pools of murky water, stretch what's left of the mangroves in this area. The construction of a railroad down to the coast in the 1930s marked the beginning of their end.

Magaña explains that when the railroad came, landless families, in search of jobs and a place to live, settled here, and slowly the swampland began to get developed. Nearby, the Sensunapan River, now reportedly one of the most polluted in this tiny country, drains into the sea, its water silted and brown. The river serves as both a source of income—shirtless diggers scoop boatloads of sand from its floor—and dread: During heavy rains, the Sensunapan spills from its channel and floods the surrounding homes.

Though fill and levees have altered the landscape in these coastal neighborhoods, the basic topography has not changed—with consequences that have proved dire in the decades since for poor people clinging to this strip of land along the Pacific.

"Nature doesn't make mistakes," says Magaña. "It wants this to be wet. There are floods here all the time."

And now, compounding the trouble, are changing weather patterns that are making life even more challenging for the families struggling here.

Changes over time

"About five years ago we started to notice that the sea is coming in further, and when there are very high tides it's slowly eroding houses along the shore," says Hilton Alcir Aguilar, a volunteer coordinator for the five coastal neighborhoods participating in the PRVAS program in Acajutla. "And the rains are heavier. Before, it would take two hours of rain for water to rise high enough to flood. Now, it happens in one hour."

Canjura has spent all of her 30 years right here in the La Playa neighborhood. And in that time she has begun to see changes that are having serious implications for her family.

"When we have these temporales—the storms that rain for several days—the water rises. But with climate change, we're seeing more flooding and we're also seeing it in areas that didn't flood before," she says. "Here most of the men are fishermen and they used to be able to haul in a lot but because of climate change, the fish seemed to have migrated away from here. It's really affected their ability to support their families. Some are looking for work as bricklayers. Some have opened bike repair shops. And some continue to fish."

Her husband is one of those—a fisherman.

"It has affected us," says Canjura. "He's getting less fish. If we used to eat two tortillas at a meal, now we're eating one." Sometimes, she says, her children go hungry.

Searching for solutions

"When you talk to people about climate change here, they're much more concerned," said Magaña. "They know storms are going to get worse, and if they're already living in vulnerable positions, it will make them more vulnerable."

What are the answers?

One solution, says Canjura, is the construction of a levee system on the Sensunapan River that would protect the densely populated community along one of its banks. But the price tag is steep, and no one has agreed to fund it, she adds. Nevertheless, other smaller projects proposed by locals and supported by PRVAS members are now moving ahead.

"We're trying to organize community councils so we can put together project proposals and seek support," says Canjura. She points to the recent construction of a seawall in La Playa as proof of what's possible when enough people get behind an idea. Designed to keep high tides from slopping onto the coastal road and into the homes of people along it, the seawall was built with help from Caritas, the mayor's office, and plenty of manual labor provided by the community.

"All of us felt very proud," says Canjura. "We were very happy we were able to achieve that."

Other projects in the works include the paving of a dirt evacuation route in the community of El Milagro. All it takes is two hours of heavy rain before the neighborhood floods with water up to people's knees, says José Vidal Aguillón, chairman of a local community council. A paved evacuation route will allow them to get out fast—without vehicles getting stuck in the mud. A broad drainage ditch, also under construction, will help the floodwaters to drain away more quickly—and prevent possible contaminants in the water from lingering.

Looking ahead

But construction projects aren't all that's needed to help poor people in coastal Acajutla weather the increasing challenges they face. They need a voice and they need influence—both of which PRVAS is slowly helping them muster.

"From the training in disaster risk reduction we've gone through with the PRVAS program, we've built our skills to advocate for greater aid from the government—and we're also getting more involved in working with the government," says Aguilar, the community coordinator. "The biggest achievement is the unity in the five communities—that we're united behind the same goal—and the influence we're starting to have in different government institutions."

With that influence, perhaps the communities will be able to lobby successfully for more opportunities for advanced schooling or vocational training in Acajutla—both critical if people are to become competitive in the job market. With fishing drying up, many of the Acajutla's breadwinners are going to have to find other means of making a living.

Canjura seems to be keenly aware of that. She has only a sixth-grade education, and her husband stopped his schooling after the third grade. But all four of their children are steadily moving up through the grades, even as finding the resources to buy the necessary school supplies is a constant worry for Canjura and her husband. Their oldest son will soon be entering eighth grade.

Would she like to see them go on to high school?

Canjura sighs deeply at the question, and is silent for a moment.

"That's my goal," she says finally. "I really want them to get ahead. But the way things are now, it's pretty hard."

That was 15 years ago. Today, clean water in the small communities of El Recuerdo and Agua Zarca is as precious as ever—and still hard to get. There's no turning on the tap over a kitchen sink and letting the gallons gush. Here, many people trudge to a communal source, fill their jugs, and lug the heavy load home again. But seasonal flooding—sometimes hugely destructive and, with climate change, possibly becoming more severe—contaminates many of the area's hand-dug wells, exposing people to waterborne illnesses.

But now, with the help of Oxfam America and its local partner, PROVIDA, the well that Cruz worked so hard to dig on the school grounds in El Recuerdo is pumping enough clean water to satisfy the drinking needs not only of the students but of about 80 families in the surrounding area. The well is one of five "healthy wells" in southern Zacatecoluca province PROVIDA lined, surrounded with a filter, capped to ensure its cleanliness, and outfitted with a pump that sends water to a large tank for chlorination and storage.

"The families in this area are living in extreme poverty, living as subsistence farmers or low paid day laborers in the nearby sugar cane plantations," says Karina Copen, an Oxfam humanitarian program officer. "They face numerous challenges in having to adapt to the increased frequency and intensity of the flooding in their area. With access to a healthy well, they can at least know that in the next flood, they will have a safe source of water for their families and the good health that comes along with it."

'Families are healthier'

Adaptations, such as these healthy wells, are essential for Salvadoran families living in the department of La Paz in the lower region of the Lempa River where seasonal rains, tropical depressions, and hurricanes, make it one of the country's most flood-prone areas.

Coupled with those natural hazards is the fact that communities in the region have significantly less access to improved water sources and sanitation than other parts of the country. The "healthy wells" along with 27 new composting latrines have been a boon to families in the area.

"Kids are getting sick less; families are healthier," says Santos Efrain Coto, one of the local leaders in El Recuerdo. "When they drank contaminated water they got diarrhea and parasites."

The improved wells are based on a model that's new to El Salvador and designed by an organization called Swiss Labour Assistance. Besides having their tops sealed with cement to prevent polluted flood waters from slopping in, the wells are lined with a type of plastic pipe, known as polyvinyl chloride, or PVC, that extends down into the aquifer. Packed around the outside of the lining is a filter of volcanic rock that prevents contamination from seeping through underground.

At the El Recuerdo school one day recently, teacher Ana Elsa Cubias describes how students used to bring their own water from home to drink during the school day. Now, the refurbished well guarantees them a clean supply right on the spot.

"They're drinking water from a protected source and the kids have water right in the classroom," says Cubias.

A short distance from the classrooms sits a large plastic tank, sky blue and able to hold 1,100 liters of water pumped fresh from the well. Chlorinated, the water from the tank flows to two taps standing just outside the gates to the school. They're accessible to whoever is driving or walking by. And to ensure the stored water stays safe for drinking, the water committee arranges to have the tank cleaned every couple of weeks—a task that falls to a child small enough to wiggle inside and scrub the interior walls with a brush and bleach.

"We make sure he bathes before he gets in the tank," adds Coto, the local leader.

Flooding in Agua Zarca

In Agua Zarca, a few communities over, Jose Luis Funes Cruze says that before PROVIDA and Oxfam installed the new well, most of the local residents depended on their own backyard wells for drinking water—and that was a problem.

"The household wells take on a lot of rain water and a lot of filthy water when there's flooding," says Cruz, pointing in the direction of the polluted San Antonio River, which spills its banks during big storms. "The things people throw in—there are pigs up river. And the cheese factory is up river."

In the past, when their drinking supply has been contaminated, families in Agua Zarca have had to rely on the government or aid groups to truck in drinking water for them.

But now, with a new communal well their supply of drinking water is much improved.

"We're very grateful—the whole community is—to have that water," says Blanca Lidia Jiménez, who lives close to the well makes about six trips a day to fetch enough water for the seven people in her house. "We don't get sick so much when we drink the water from this well. The little kids would get swollen bellies, but with the new well that problem has been solved."

The challenge of clean water

Still, the situation in Agua Zarca points to the challenges of providing clean water in this area. The community's new well was built on the only land available: next to a cow pasture—an arrangement that could be problematic during the wet season when rain sloshes manure about and allows it to seep into the groundwater.

The deep plastic lining on the well and its volcanic-rock filter help, though, says Guillermo Morán, a professor and researcher at the University of El Salvador's Earth Sciences Institute. He worked with Oxfam America and another of its partners, the Harvard Humanitarian Initiative (HHI), to evaluate the effectiveness of the wells while studying the health practices of families who use them.

The study is an important component of Oxfam's public health work: It promotes accountability and offers a different model for aid groups by linking their work with that of universities.

"We have the field experience and they have the technical expertise," says Miriam Aschkenasy, Oxfam America's public health specialist. "Together we're able to evaluate programs at a higher standard and at one that increases accountability."

What did the study find?

In its draft report, HHI said that individuals who live in communities with "healthy wells" were less likely to have diarrhea and reported fewer cases of the illness during the time of the study. But the draft report also revealed that in two of those communities, some people were still using hand-dug wells for their drinking water while other people from places without "healthy wells" were making the trek to a community that had one to fetch their water.

"The study gives us insight in a way we couldn't have anticipated," says Aschkenasy. "It gives us an idea of where to focus in the future. We now know we need to find a way to encourage people who are still relying on the hand-dug wells to use the healthy ones instead. And it gives us great incentive to build more of them."

— Padmanaban, farmer of Sengapadai

The farmers of the village of Sengapadai, India, make it their business to know what's coming. They are fortune-tellers of sorts, who look deep into history in order to forecast the future. Using methods that have evolved over thousands of years, they watch the movement of the stars, notice the feel of the wind on a given day of the month or year, and carefully observe the behavior of plants and animals. At the heart of the mysteries they set out to unravel each year is this: When will the rains come?

If they miscalculate, the consequences can be grave. In years past, it has meant families postponed not only weddings but also medical care. Sons and daughters have dropped out of school, ending their formal education. They've pawned their jewelry, which represents their savings—even the necklaces that symbolize their marriages. And, says 51-year-old Jakkammal, "In a bad year, there's only one meal a day."

We are not getting proper rain

The specter of bad harvests looms larger than ever these days because, as one farmer put it, "We are not getting proper rain."

Rains are coming when they shouldn't and not coming when they should, and the traditional forecasting methods, unable to adapt to the speed of change, are losing their power to predict.

"There's been a vast difference in rainfall patterns in the last 10 years," says Jeeva Rathinam, another farmer. "Before that, we used to plan properly and plant one kind of seed in the fields. Now we have to mix them together and see what comes up."

"The rainfall variations these farmers are seeing now are defeating their knowledge of the way nature functions," says Hari Krishna, Oxfam's research program manager in India.

Climate change, in other words, has come to Sengapadai.

Researchers and farmers collaborate

The DHAN Foundation's ACEDRR, an Oxfam partner, has set out to help communities adjust to the changing climate landscape. Researcher B. Arthirani, herself the daughter of farmers, gathered and analyzed 40 years' worth of local rainfall data, and on a sweltering day in May 2008, the farmers of Sengapadai came together to learn the results.

Rains that once fell here predictably in July, she told them, can now be expected to arrive in late August. Then she made a proposal: delay sowing peanuts until between Aug. 10 and 16.

A heated discussion followed. Shifting to accommodate the rains could make some crops more vulnerable to infestations of weeds and pests, and the farmers argued pros and cons of various plans. But an hour later, everyone had come to agreement: the best way to balance all the factors would probably be to plant corn in September.

This is not research as it's conducted at universities, where academics carry out studies at a comfortable distance from actual farmers, and where recommendations are conveyed to the villagers in top-down fashion. That day's discussion, which began with Arthirani's educated guess about what to sow when, ended with a practical plan that drew on knowledge from both inside and outside the community. The ACEDRR study, says Arthirani, "is not a one-way process."

Community members are not simply considered beneficiaries of the study, explained Hari Krishna. "Here, they are partners in the research. They know best about their soil, their sky, their water, and what crops suit their needs."

A painful irony

Outside the meeting place, a heifer nosed along the roadside looking for something to graze on, and a bullock cart passed by with a load of fodder. Women headloading firewood and water walked along the dusty main street in the fierce midday sun, and in the distance, a man stood knee-deep in a pond, splashing water on his team of bullocks after what had probably been a morning of hard labor in the fields.

Fossil fuels and all their labor-saving pleasures seem to have bypassed this village entirely. There were no cars or tractors in sight, and despite the scorching temperature, no one was heading home to air conditioning or refrigerated drinks. It is a painful irony that many of those who have done least to bring about climate change are the most vulnerable to its effects.

We are able to have three meals

DHAN is tackling that vulnerability on two fronts: the disaster-oriented research of ACEDRR is helping ensure that changing rainfall patterns don't lead to catastrophic crop losses, while DHAN's development programs are building resilience in other ways—helping those same farmers organize themselves into self-help groups that enable savings and investment; creating federations that have clout in the marketplace; and helping farmers gain access to high-quality seed, affordable insurance, and lenders that charge two percent interest instead of ten.

It is an approach that is working. By November it was clear that the shift from peanuts to corn was a big success. But there are signs everywhere of the growing security of this community—most convincingly in the confident smile of Jakkammal. The days of one bad harvest plunging the community into debt and hunger, it seems, are over. "After joining DHAN," she says, "we are able to have three meals."

"When a cyclone hits, it means you can lose everything," said Khan, Oxfam America's humanitarian response officer in East Asia. "Rich and poor alike."

The entire coastal zone is prone to violent storms and tropical cyclones between April and May—before the monsoon season starts—and again in October and November, when the monsoon has ended. Khan estimates that cyclones have killed nearly one million Bangladeshis since 1820. In 1970, one event alone took about half those lives. With a storm surge topping 30 feet, that November 12th cyclone killed 500,000 people and more than one million heads of cattle.

The disaster pushed the United Nations to ask the International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies to develop an early warning system for the country, said Khan. The result was the establishment of the Cyclone Preparedness Program, a community-based volunteer organization that provides early warning to people, and then helps with relief work and first aid after the storms hit.

But 21 years after the deadliest storm in Bangladesh's history, another devastating cyclone struck the country in late April, 1991, killing 138,000 people. It was at that point, said Khan, that Bangladesh began to look seriously at the steps it could take to help people prepare for the inevitable.

At the urging of aid groups and the donor community, the government of Bangladesh began to shift its emergency response programs to focus more heavily on preparedness. When Cyclone Sidr struck a few weeks ago in mid-November, evacuation planning, early warning systems, and the establishment of cyclone shelters helped to save about 100,000 lives.

Nevertheless, the physical devastation left in the storm's wake was stunning: Sidr damaged or destroyed 1.4 million homes, hurt more than two million acres of crops, and wiped out more than four million trees. What all of that means is that people have nowhere to live, many of them have lost their means for making a living, and food reserves have been wiped out.

While aid groups like Oxfam are responding with programs to provide clean water and sanitation to prevent the spread of waterborne disease and to supplement food in the months ahead, there is a great deal more that can be done to help people stay safe—and recover quickly—from storms like these.

Khan points to the need for more research on how to build low-cost but cyclone-tolerant housing in coastal areas. And then work needs to be done on developing programs with commercial banks to finance the construction of those homes. Additionally, aid groups need to help communities explore alternative ways for people to earn their livings, so that storms like Sidr don't wipe out all their options.

For these disaster risk reduction programs to be successful, added Khan, they need to be based at the community level—where local people will know best what the particular dangers are and what steps are needed to grapple with them. But there is an international component to this too: Donors need to support the preparedness work that local governments and aid groups are undertaking. It's a smart investment. Typically, each dollar spent on reducing a community's risk to disaster is worth about $8 in emergency relief.

It’s the kind of place Oxfam America and its partner, Asociación Proyección, are working in now—at nearly 16,000 feet above sea level in air so thin that newcomers lose their breath and no other aid agencies have the fortitude to venture.

The place is the district of Caylloma, and the people who live here are alpaca herders. Oxfam’s mission is to make sure that when trouble does come—as it has in the past and surely will again because of the changing weather patterns families in these Andean hamlets are already grappling with—they will be prepared to cope.

Three years ago, after a severe cold snap wiped out tens of thousands of llamas and alpacas across Peru’s southern highlands, Oxfam and Proyección joined forces to find a way to prevent a repeat of the suffering people experienced then. Their proposal—a form of disaster risk reduction—included a range of self-help ideas, a smattering of technology, and the most important tool of all: planning.

Today, acres of barley now grow on the slopes—a buffer against food shortages for livestock. New adobe sheds with metal roofs stand in some of the coldest mountain pockets, offering critical shelter for alpacas that had none before. Gravity-fed sprinklers irrigate enclosed pastures of rye grass, guaranteeing a steady source of nourishment for animals. And a handful of radio towers dot the district, connecting far-flung hamlets with the world at large.

Simon Ccalachua, who lives in the little village of Jachaña, put it this way. Without this project, nothing would have changed for him and his family. They had no choice but to accept what nature brought, good or bad. If the cold came, their animals died. But now, armed with new ways of growing the grasses their alpacas need and a way to shelter them, families like Ccalachua’s can overcome the troubles nature brings—on their own.

Hard lessons

For Arturo Rivera Vigil, a field coordinator for Proyección, the importance of equipping people with tools to solve their own problems was a lesson he learned the hard way, and one he vowed to share with Caylloma.

Working in another region of Peru during a different emergency, Proyección decided that the best approach would be to provide direct aid to the families in need. So the agency purchased vast quantities of dried alfalfa to help feed the livestock on which those families depended. But that commodity was in short supply because of the emergency, and instantly, its price nearly tripled. Nevertheless, Proyección moved ahead with its plan, delivering tons of alfalfa to the troubled communities. But when the supplies arrived, Proyección learned there was no place in which to store it all.

“We realized we weren’t teaching anything to the communities,” Rivera said. When the cold snap paralyzed Caylloma, Proyección and Oxfam decided to take a longer-term approach—and find sustainable solutions to the problems rather than offer a temporary fix.

But that decision required a new way of looking at the situation: Could there possibly be things communities could do to prepare for disasters at such high altitudes?

“The typical thinking was people living up so high were so remote and had their own culture and own system of raising animals,” said Rivera. “No one thought they could help them, and no one thought anything could grow up that high.”

Proyección and Oxfam proved them wrong.

“We came here because the local government asked us to come, and when we suggested planting barley, everyone said we were crazy,” Rivera told a crowd during a recent ceremony at the Caylloma town hall honoring the project’s high-altitude accomplishments for 355 families. “Three years later, here we are.”

Far away and poor

Oxfam and Proyección have helped Caylloma take solid first steps towards addressing a problem that is all too familiar to poor people living in precarious places around the world: When something goes wrong in their environment, they suffer the most.

Cataclysmic events—deep freezes, drought, floods, earthquakes, volcanic eruptions—only turn into disasters when people get caught in them and have few means for managing the consequences. That has been the case in the Caylloma district.

From the hamlet of Chinosiri, for instance, it’s an all-day walk down to the town of Caylloma for help. When the storm hit, assistance didn’t arrive for a week. In sturdy, four-wheel trucks, it’s a three-hour drive from Caylloma to Chinosiri along a rutted track that snakes in hairpin turns up the sides of ridges and back down through streams.

Even at the end of the summer the weather at this height is harsh. Thunder rolls over the mountain plains as hail ricochets off the stony ground. At higher elevations, snow blankets the thin pastures.

Far from one another stand tiny dwellings, made of stone or adobe with thatched roofs. Inside, small fires burn. There is not a tree or bush in sight for fuel, so families make do with dung and Ichu, a spiky grass that livestock will only eat when it’s young and tender.

Widespread poverty across the region means that beyond elementary school, there are few opportunities for learning. Students determined enough to attend one of only two high schools in the province wrestle with a good deal of hardship in pursuit of that dream. The son of Jose Gonzalez Condo, now in his second year of high school, walks four hours to get there in the morning, and another four to return home at the end of the day.

For Gonzalez, the effort his son is making is worth every step: An education will give the boy the tools he needs to live a better life—not necessarily far away in a city, but right here in Chinosiri, perhaps.

Uncertainty ahead

With the uncertainty that lies ahead for herding families in Caylloma, education is an important asset and it has been a component of Oxfam’s and Proyección’s disaster risk reduction program. For example, the agencies have produced a series of colorful guides on storm alert systems, the construction of livestock sheds, and improving the use of water resources.

Lately, families have begun to worry about shifting patterns of rain that are affecting the growth rate of the grasses on which their animals feed. The rains are supposed to fall in November, but for the past two or three years, they haven’t come until January, stunting the progress of the grasses. That in turn prevents them from dropping their seeds to start a new round of growth before the May ice season arrives.

Having the means to cope with the consequences of those changes—stores of barley, irrigated pastures—will go a long way toward easing the hardships people would otherwise face. And that explains the enthusiasm with which the mayor of Caylloma has embraced this disaster risk reduction project.

“A project like this can be applied to the whole province,” said Simón Quispe Chipa, the mayor. “This project has been a real motivation for the whole town.”

"Caylloma. Caylloma. Caylloma," he says into the mic, and over the airwaves, not slowed for a moment by mud or steep ridges or gushing streams, comes the scratchy answer—accompanied by a big mayoral smile.

This is Chinosiri's new radio, one of four Oxfam America and its partner, Asociación Proyección, have installed in remote mountain hamlets around Caylloma following a devastating cold snap and heavy snow three years ago. The storm lasted five days, dumping nearly three feet of snow in the highlands, paralyzing families of alpaca herders who make their living there, and killing the grasses on which their precious animals feed. In some of the remotest communities, help didn't arrive for 10 days.

Now, for the 70 families living close to 16,000 feet above sea level in Chinosiri, calls for emergency aid can be broadcast instantly. And on the receiving end, storm alerts, picked up via the new radio, may soon give residents of the hamlet and their far-flung neighbors a chance to get ready.

"We can keep communications with authorities both ways," says Jaime Condori Inca, Chinosiri's 27-year-old radio operator whose job it is to establish contact twice a day—at 7 a.m. and again at 7 p.m.—with the world far below his hamlet.

Early warning system

The radio network is part of an early warning system that is helping 355 families scattered throughout the Caylloma district prepare for future emergencies.

Training has included the compilation of a list of natural signs—much like a farmer's almanac—that could indicate a pending change in weather. What can you expect when the sky is pink in the afternoon? Frost. If you should hear a sheep bleating at night, snow is surely on its way. And about that black lizard: its color announces plentiful rain. But if the lizard is white, the rain may be in short supply.

Gleaned from generations of herders' experiences with the harsh conditions in the Andes, the list now appears in a colorful training guide published by Oxfam and Proyección and distributed widely among Caylloma residents. But as weather patterns begin to shift—during the last three years, for instance, November rains didn't come until January—mountain families need new ways of understanding their environment. And that's where the radio comes in.

With it, Condori can send details about daily changes in the local weather to a national repository that collects meteorological data as part of a long-term tracking initiative. Caylloma is working with the Meteorologist National Services and the ministry of Agriculture on the project. Environmental details are gathered with the help of a small weather station—a sturdy white box with a thermometer mounted inside—that stands just behind the radio hut. It's checked daily and the temperature, along with noticeable precipitation, is carefully recorded on a chart next to the radio.

Across the highland plains, in the hamlet of Jachaña, sits a second radio, which in turn connects with another in Chinosiri and with a fourth one in the Caylloma town hall. It's here that Proyección has a small emergency operations center equipped with a computer, a printer, first-aid supplies, and a list of all the relevant radio frequencies.

Small though the radio network may be, it represents a major step forward for Caylloma—and is testament to the commitment of the entire district. Families arranged, for instance, to carry parts of the Chinosiri weather station up the mountainsides on the backs of llamas.

"The people from every community got involved," said Danny Gibbons, Oxfam America's communications officer in Lima. "They shared the burden."

Additionally, the radio network has helped people communicate about other emergencies such as health crises and alpaca rustling as well as improved coordination among different levels of government.

We were there, together with Angel Chavez, one of Oxfam America’s humanitarian officers, to gather stories about Oxfam’s work with alpaca herders. They had suffered serious losses in 2004 when a severe winter storm killed many of the wooly creatures that are the backbone of the local economy. So vital are these camel cousins to the well-being of the families scattered across the mountains that many of the shelters they have built for the animals are superior to their own mud-brick and stone homes.

The income from alpaca wool—softer than cashmere when it’s cleaned, spun, and woven—feeds and clothes families, buys them medicine, and helps cover the occasional extraordinary expense. Without the few hundred dollars herders earn each year from the sale of the wool, life in these barren, thin-aired mountains would not be possible for them. And for many, it’s the only life they have ever known, helping to account for Peru’s position as the world’s top producer—by far—of alpaca wool.

About 80 percent of the wool now on the market comes from this South American country; Bolivia produces another 15 percent; and the rest comes from a smattering of countries including Australia, Switzerland, and England. So you would think, given Peru’s dominance in the industry, that the work of these Caylloma herders would guarantee their families a measure of security. Not so.

There, at nearly 16,000 feet above sea level, nothing is certain: The cold kills, and changing weather patterns are robbing the region of the rain it needs for mountain pastures to grow. Life is hard, and people are very poor.

Sky high—and breathless

Oxfam’s work with Proyección has been to help Caylloma herders find ways to buffer themselves against future disasters by improving pastureland; planting barley to serve as an emergency reserve for their animals; and developing an early alert system, including the installation of a simple radio network—all at an altitude that has scared off just about every other aid group.

“Nobody has worked at this height,” said Rivera. “No one wants to come up here. Only us.”

There’s a reason: To reach Caylloma’s remote communities requires a degree of energy that would exhaust a lesser field coordinator and his team. But for Rivera, that challenge—and the need that is so evident among the families of this rugged terrain—is the inspiration that repeatedly draws him up the steep slopes to Chinosiri, Jachaña, and a handful of other hamlets.

From Arequipa, a city in southern Peru where Proyección has its offices, the drive in a pair of heavy-duty pickup trucks to the town of Caylloma took us about seven hours through rain, hail, and snow on a rutted mountain road—and that was just the first half of the journey. Following a night’s rest, we left at 6 a.m. for the three-hour climb to Chinosiri, the belly of our truck scraping the ruts as we inched around hairpin turns and splashed through streams carving gullies in the dirt track.

The snow was falling in fat, wet flakes, blanketing the mountains in white, when Rivera, in the truck ahead, pulled over and jumped out, signaling that this—of all high and remote spots—was just the place for a group picture.

“Beautiful!” he said, surveying the vast emptiness around us: no trees, no bushes, no dwellings—only mountains and more mountains with sharp rocks underfoot.

It wasn’t until I scrambled up the slippery bank to where Rivera and Chavez were already standing in the snow that I realized just how hard the work in Caylloma could be: Without the sea-level amounts of oxygen I was used to, a few quick steps at 15,748 feet high left me breathless and exhausted. Puffing hard, I slipped back down the embankment and into the truck, grateful to be sitting once again, and marveling at the stamina of my colleagues. Could I do this, like them, on a regular basis? Could anybody?

Rivera had already answered that question: No.

Mountain home

The air at the end of this Andean summer was cold and damp, and all of us in the pair of trucks were bundled in just about every stitch of clothing we had brought. I had on two shirts, a sweater, a fleece vest, a fleece jacket, a down vest, a windbreaker, thick wool socks, and a wool cap—just enough to keep the chill at bay.

So I was surprised to see, beyond the steamed windows of the warm truck, two boys hiking hard and fast through the mud on a slope of pasture: They had only sandals on their feet—no shoes, no socks to keep the cold away. They’re boys, I thought, and that’s what boys do: tough things.

But as we bounced along, there were others—men, women, children—all wearing sandals in the frigid air. And as the clouds swept across the sky, occasionally unleashing a shower of cold rain, some of the mountain dwellers hardly seemed to notice, and simply wrapped themselves tight in their woolen blankets and ponchos.

Jose Gonzalez Condo, who has lived all of his 39 years in the tiny community of Chinosiri, explained that he and his fellow villagers are used to the mountain weather and its variable conditions. Chinosiri is home, he said, and he likes it.

But as weather patterns have begun to change—the rains are coming late, which in turn delays the growth of pasture grasses and threatens the health of herds—raising alpacas at this altitude has become increasingly difficult, said Gonzalez. And in the recent past, there was no way to get the word out about challenging weather conditions—be they drought or cold waves—unless someone made the 30-mile trek down to Caylloma to ask for help. The only way to get there is on foot, and the walk takes a day.

Chinosiri’s new two-way radio, installed by Proyección in February, has connected this remotest of villages to the outside world. And with that connection has come the sliver of hope that a way of life for the 70 families there—and for more than 3,400 rural residents scattered across the Caylloma district—is now more secure.