This case study focuses on the Palmas del Ixcán company and the social, environmental and economic effects of its oil palm plantations on local communities in northern Guatemala. The evidence gathered reveals practices that violate people's basic rights and indicates lack of a thorough impact assessment, of effective democratic planning, and of contract transparency.
Organized by the Alliance for the Defense of Rural Women’s Rights and Oxfam’s GROW campaign, the San Salvador event was an opportunity for women like Henríquez, a mother and small farmer, to present their demands to members of the National Assembly and government officials.
What Henríquez is fighting for is good and healthy food for her and her family, and a sustainable way of producing it.
“If I have food security, I have it all: a variety of healthy food, land, physical health—my children and grandchildren won’t fall sick because they eat healthy— and education,” said Henríquez. “To me, sovereignty is the guarantee we have to food security [and to] be the owners of our land, our lives.”
Thanks to the training she has received from different institutions, Henríquez now knows how to make organic fertilizer, conserve soil, and work with bees to make honey.
She also benefits from a government program that provides the poorest families with about 100 pounds of fertilizer and two pounds corn seeds. But from Henríquez’ point of view, that doesn’t add up to food security, because when the program ends, the situation will be the same as before. What rural women need, she said, are native seeds which will guarantee sustainability by not only producing crops, but a new round of seeds for planting the following season.
Seed variety isn’t her only worry. Small farmers like Henríquez also face severe challenges from increasingly unpredictable weather.
“This year we lost our crops because of the drought. Last year we lost the whole bean crop because of Tropical Depression 12E,” said Henríquez. That storm dumped five feet of rain in nine days. “I took a loan to invest again, and when this (the drought) happened, I was crying because I didn’t know how to pay back the loan. Thank God the bank came to study my case and canceled my loan.”
Despite the hurdles she and her fellow rural farmers are confronting, Henríquez is confident that all the work they do as part of Alliance for the Defense of Rural Women’s Rights will bear fruit.
“If we go back to using native seeds, we can produce more and more permanently,” she said.” If we have irrigation systems to store water for the dry season, if we have access to information to what is happening in our country—economy, education, health—access to knowledge about soil conservation and how to conserve the environment, than we will have everything we’re all longing for: a dignified live and health.”
Henríquez speaks with the authority of an empowered and independent woman. She is convinced that by speaking out and engaging in the fight for women’s rights, change will come.
“Even if I don’t get to see the changes I’m fighting for, others will, and that gives me great satisfaction,” she said.
]]>That’s why an Oxfam America emergency response launched in La Pelota last October sought not only to meet people’s immediate needs, but to help them mitigate the risks of their community for the future.
When it rains hard, La Pelota is one of the first communities in the area to flood, in part because a vigorously growing plant called la ninfa clogs the local waterways. The plant is a sign of another problem people face: poor infrastructure for sanitation. Most families rely on pit latrines whose contaminants feed the growth of la ninfa.
In October, Tropical Depression 12-E hit. It rained for almost two weeks straight. On one side of La Pelota the lake overflowed, and on the other side its natural drain spilled its banks.
“It began to rain quite a lot. Little by little, the lake drained, but then the water level rose as it continued to rain,” said Juan Francisco Flores, a 32-year-old community member. “The lake doesn’t flow fast enough through the channel. The water backs up and that’s what floods the community… The stream was flooding on one side and the lake on the other. We were isolated.”
The response from the community to the flooding was well planned and evacuation was timely, due to preparedness work that had been done by Oxfam partner Fundación Maquilishuat (FUMA), in recent years. However, damage to crops was severe.
Together with FUMA and the World Food Programme, Oxfam America launched a food-for-work initiative that not only helped families in La Pelota survive in the first months after the emergency, but reduced the risk they would face in the future. FUMA and citizens of La Pelota decided to clean out the channel to allow the water to flow more easily and prevent flooding. Oxfam provided material to do the work, FUMA provided monitoring and technical assistance, and the families carried out the work.
The project provided people with 100 pounds of corn, 33 pounds of rice, 20 pounds of beans, and a gallon of cooking oil, in exchange for 80 hours of work a month.
“The food-for-work project has been well received. It was very effective to implement this project at this time of year, when people usually don’t have work,” says Sandra Quinteros of FUMA. “There’s been a selection process for the FFW program, with several criteria—that they lost at least 50 percent of their production; that they live on less than two dollars a day; that they have many children or older adults to care for; that they are day laborers; and that they are willing to work.”
The food-for-work project has been implemented in 99 poor communities like La Pelota, in 15 municipalities throughout El Salvador. A total of 3,800 families earned a three-month supply of corn, beans, rice, and oil for a family of five, enabling them to recover from their losses and now live in better prepared communities.
]]>A shorter commitment won't get the job done. It takes time to help people build skills and infrastructure, to get policies changed, and to ensure that governments spend their money more effectively.
Smart development demands monitoring and evaluation. Organizations should be accountable to report not only what they do, but also how they measure it. Don't believe stories that guarantee long-term impact after one or two years' investment; that's barely time to lay some groundwork.
We all crave the easy answer, the quick solution, but if eradicating poverty were simple, people living in poverty would have sorted it out long ago. They may lack resources like land, but they certainly don't lack intelligence or insight. Poverty is a global challenge—one that we can overcome together, but listening and learning from people living in poverty, and developing solutions with them, takes time and sustained effort.
This issue of OXFAMExchange includes inspiring stories, but they are just snapshots from a family album: moments in a long journey together. Each story is ultimately about perseverance and the need for long-term commitment.
The macroeconomics of the rising price of staples are complex, but its effect on the lives of three women interviewed by Oxfam America is simple: they feel it every day.
For María Antonia León, or “Toñita”, life has never been easy. She remembers a time when she earned $3 to $4 a day selling tamales, pastries and snacks from her food cart and was able to buy weekly staples to feed her family of five. With this income, she could get six pounds of beans, half a pound of cheese, half a pound of cream, four pounds of rice, eggs, a chicken, and other basics.
“Before, with $20, I was able to fill a shopping cart. Now I can’t… I spend $40 and it’s not enough. I can’t even fill a shopping basket because everything is so expensive. Beans are $2.50, and cooking oil for 15 days is $2. We just can’t manage. This current crisis is really tough,” says Toñita. She doesn’t know how she will find the money to buy shoes or clothes.
But Toñita has now found a way to provide her family with nourishing food: Inspired by Saving for Change, she has started a garden and is raising chickens for their eggs. Saving for Change is an Oxfam program that encourages women to use the capital generated through their savings groups to participate in projects that help them achieve a sustainable livelihood. One such project seeks to promote women’s production capacity, entrepreneurial, and self-reliance skills by helping them establish vegetable gardens.
With her garden, Toñita has a new means to feed her family and avoid paying the high prices at the market. The cucumbers, radishes, tomatoes, peppers, cabbage, and mustard greens she is growing are providing her family with the vitamins and proteins they weren’t getting before. And now she is teaching other women in her community how to do the same thing. The best part is she sells her extra produce at below market prices to her neighbors facing similar difficulties.
Ana Elizabeth Barrera works at a market in the city of Santa Tecla. She cooks and sells prepared foods, and therefore intimately knows the issue of rising food prices. Ana Elizabeth has seen the price of staples climb steadily over the past five years, but notes an accelerated rise of 60 to 70 percent in the past year, most notably with oil, rice, beans and sugar.
“Six to eight months ago I would invest $100 for oil, rice and other basics, and today I am spending between $150-160 which buys the same amount. Consequently, I have to raise my prices, which means that sales have gone down,” says Ana Elizabeth. She has lost 40 percent of her clientele and has had to let go one of her two employees.
Iris Madrid finds herself in a vulnerable position after losing her job a few weeks ago. Although her income was modest, it was stable and allowed her to buy basic items for her home and support her three children. Now, without a salary and facing rising food costs, she depends on her mother who sells beauty products via catalog.
“If there is detergent, then there is no soap. Or if we have soap, then we have no detergent. If we have beans, then we won’t be eating cheese. If we have cheese, we won’t be eating beans… It hurts because when you have children and they ask you for something, you can’t give it to them,” explains Iris. There are days when all they eat are the mangos from the tree outside her house.
Saving for Change is a program that is growing every day. Since its launch in 2005, it has grown to more than 488,000 members in five countries. The hope is that it will continue to grow and reach people like Ana Elizabeth and Iris, like it has reached Toñita.
]]>In the department of Baja Verapaz the situation is critical. Guatemala's so-called dry corridor runs through this department, where a severe drought precipitated a food emergency last September.
"They lost last year's harvest because of the drought" explains Gloria Gonzalez of the Association of Community Health Services (ASECSA), referring to the small-scale farmers in the communities of Cubulco, Rabinal, and Salamá. "This winter started well. They planted new crops and were confident that they would do well. But now they've lost those crops as well. We estimate that six in ten farmers have lost their harvests."
ASECSA, with the support of Oxfam, is helping those affected with free clinics and food supplies, especially in Cubulco, where the population is still cut off. The only way of reaching this community is via a 300-metre hanging bridge which collapsed in the rains. Help is arriving by motorboat, but the population is afraid to go outside because of the risks posed by the Chixoy River, which has swollen considerably.
In the municipality of Champerico in the south-east of the department of Retalhuleu, the situation is also worrying. This coastal area was flooded when the Samala River basin overflowed, destroying harvests, killing livestock, and contaminating water sources. The Community Coordinating Association for Health Services (ACCSS) has been working in this region since the flooding caused by Hurricane Mitch in 1998, and in May, just weeks before the rains began, it completed a project to train 20 water, sanitation, and hygiene-promotion leaders. They soon had an opportunity to put their newly-acquired knowledge into practice.
" The leaders were able to get to work and take immediate action,” says Lisa Donado of the ACCSS. “They performed evacuations, asked us for chlorine and aluminum sulfate to treat water, contacted the Ministry of Health about fumigation, and they dug channels to drain off the floodwater."
However, a great deal of rehabilitation work still needs to be done. ACSS estimates that just in the communities where they are working there are at least 500 contaminated wells and flooded latrines. "We're currently putting together a rehabilitation plan for the 10 worst-affected communities", she adds. "The most urgent tasks are to drain and clean the wells and latrines, repair communal water tanks, and promote hygiene."
In El Salvador, Oxfam has a warehouse holding pre-positioned supplies, which enables a rapid response. Within 24 hours of the declaration of national emergency, Oxfam and its partners were assisting the affected communities, providing water and sanitation, installing water tanks, and distributing buckets, diapers, and mattresses.
Oxfam has raised US$415,000 for the immediate response and rehabilitation work.
]]>But even Mejia was unable to put a favorable spin on his situation at harvest time in late 2009: after he’d planted his corn and beans in his field high above the languid Chixoy River, now flowing at a very low level, his crops had failed, owing to lack of rain. Most years he can grow 22 quintales (about 2,200 pounds) of corn. This year, Mejia says he got about a tenth of that.
“We could see the corn cobs, but when we opened them up, many were totally empty,” Mejia says, standing in his field. “We got almost nothing this year.”
Mejia did everything he could short of making it rain, including fertilizing his field twice at great expense. But now that the 42-year-old farmer has harvested nearly everything, the field is overgrown with bright yellow weeds. Some call them flor de muerto (flower of death).
Mejia says at this point he is done trying to grow food and must wait for the next planting season in June 2010.
“We hope there will be rain,” he says. “Otherwise, we may die.”
Guatemala has the highest rate of malnutrition among children under five in Latin America: nearly 50 percent, according to the World Food Program. For indigenous children the malnutrition rate is even higher: close to 70 percent. On a recent visit to Mejia’s area, Francisco Enriquez, a sustainable livelihood specialist for Oxfam in Guatemala, found that most of the families had lost between 80 and 100 percent of their crops.
The hills above the Chixoy River are gray and dry at harvest time, with dark rocks visible through thin soils on the exposed slopes. It’s a tough place to farm, and Mejia’s family is just one of about 350,000 families the government of Guatemala said are at risk when it declared a food emergency in September 2009. Most vulnerable are those in central Guatemela’s “dry corridor,” where Mejia lives in the department of Baja Verapaz. His village, Xinacati II, is just one of the hundreds of communities—many composed of indigenous people—that are struggling to grow enough food to survive.
This food shortage is occurring in a country of luxurious green that exports millions in sugar cane, pineapples, bananas, and coffee. Despite this abundance, poor Guatemalans, who are mostly indigenous Maya people, regularly face chronic food shortages. There is plenty of food in stores, but poor people can’t afford it.
Since the Spanish colonization of Central America, indigenous Maya people have been systematically moved off the most productive farmlands to arid areas and steep hillsides. In Mejia’s case, his community and several others were originally in the Chixoy River valley but were involuntarily relocated in the 1980s to make way for a hydroelectric dam. Most of the flattest, best land is used to grow export crops like coffee and sugar cane and, more recently, biofuel crops.
“The country is producing less and less corn and beans each year,” says Enriquez. He says the government “is not pushing for spending that will specifically benefit small farmers. … They need to invest in producing food; otherwise, when there is a drought or a flood, it becomes a dramatic crisis.”
The lack of rain in Baja Verapaz could be the type of dramatic crisis Enriquez fears.
Most of the families with significant crop losses last fall have few options. In order to earn money to buy the food they need to survive, many men from communities like Xinacati II will migrate to distant coffee and sugar cane plantations, where they will work for a few months, returning occasionally to bring money to their families.
If things are really tough, entire families may relocate temporarily. Mejia says he can pick more coffee beans with the help of his wife and five kids than he could alone.
“We would like people to have more options than just migration,” says Gonzalez. Oxfam is working with the Association of Community Health Services, known by its Spanish initials ASECSA (where Gonzalez works), as well as the Training Institute for Sustainable Development, to help farmers survive the winter. They will provide seeds and tools to help families grow vegetables to improve their nutrition and they will help families with feed and veterinary care for small livestock like chickens, pigs, and ducks. Oxfam is also helping fund ASECSA’s network of health promoters to provide nutritional counseling for families with young children to reduce child malnutrition and death.
This project will also support a range of community improvements: paying local people to work on irrigation systems and other infrastructure to help farmers when they plant next spring; producing organic fertilizer and insecticide to save money and protect the soil; and teaching farmers about native seeds to reduce costs and increase production of corn, beans, and peanuts.
“These things will help people after our project is over,” says Enriquez, who has worked with the UN and Oxfam in Guatemala for 10 years. “They will be better positioned to survive another drought.” The agriculture assistance and community service activities will help nearly a thousand families. Oxfam has committed $266,000 to the project.
“We tried asking others for the money for this but did not get a positive response,” Gonzalez says in the ASECSA office in Rabinal, two hours by walking and driving from Xinacati II. “So it is perfect that Oxfam is working with us. We are concentrating on the worst-hit area, and if it works, we will replicate it in others.”
Some of the factors contributing to the poor harvests in Guatemala in 2009:
Achieving farm resilience requires building up the resilience of vulnerable farmers by developing their skills, expertise and voice while supporting their use of agro-ecological farming practices. Building resilience depends not just on how farmers manage resources, but on how well local, national, and global institutions support farmers. Agro-ecological practices can empower vulnerable small-scale farmers, offering them both greater control over their lives and an accessible means of improving their food security, while decreasing their risk of crop failure or livestock death due to climate shocks. Vulnerable farmers can use agro-ecological practices to build resilient farms and improve their livelihoods, achieving multiple benefits: 1. improved food security; 2. adaptation to a changing climate; and 3. mitigation of climate change.
People-centred resilience consists of five principles which should guide how investments in vulnerable farming communities are designed and implemented. They are:
Following these principles ensures that investments support farmers in their efforts to become food-secure and adapt to climate change. Four institutions central to delivering people-centered resilience are: secure land rights; dynamic farmer associations; responsive agricultural advisory services; and public support for environmental services.
]]>In a survey of the area in mid-October, Oxfam staff reported that many families had lost 80 to 100 percent of their harvest this year.
“There’s no food in this community,” Francisca’s aunt Margarita Rosales, 54, says.
Lack of rain in Guatemala has reduced harvests this year, pushing up food prices in stores and creating a crisis in poor communities. The government declared a food emergency in September.
Malnutrition and chronic food shortages are not unusual in Guatemala. Lack of investment in small-scale agriculture has reduced food production over the years, and the country now has the highest rate of malnutrition among children under five in Latin America: nearly 50 percent, according to the World Food Programme. The malnutrition rate for indigenous children is higher; close to 70 percent. The Famine Early Warning System warns that 350,000 families in Guatemala are at risk this year, especially in the south, east, and central regions of Guatemala’s “dry corridor."
Many men will finish their harvest and migrate to coffee- or sugar-cane producing parts of the country to work on large plantations to earn extra money. This year such income will be more crucial than ever, for farmers in Baja Verpaz, in central Guatemala.
“We would like people to have more options than just migration,” says Gloria Gonzalez, who works with the Association of Community Health Services, known by its Spanish initials ASECSA. Oxfam is working with ASECSA and the Training Institute for Sustainable Development (IEPADES) to help farmers in Baja Verapaz survive the coming winter. Oxfam is helping these organizations in the following areas.
Oxfam is committing $269,000 to the project, which will assist nearly one thousand families in Baja Verapaz.
]]>These, and many more lives and livelihoods are at risk unless urgent action is taken to protect poor people from the triple threat of the economic crisis, rising food prices and climate change. Sub-Saharan Africa alone is expected to lose $245 billion this year as a result of the global slump but will receive only about $5 billion in additional aid.
Yet rather than delivering on his own aid promises and encouraging other countries to meet theirs, Silvio Berlusconi, G8 chair and Italian president, is attempting to wriggle out of his commitments to the world's poorest. He has cut aid and pushed the G8 to adopt a new "whole of country" approach that would use creative accounting to hide broken promises.
Max Lawson, Oxfam senior policy advisor, said: "Like a modern day Nero, Berlusconi is fiddling while Africa burns. G8 leaders must get serious and ensure this summit delivers a concrete plan to get aid promises back on track, and to protect poor people from the triple threat of the economic, food and climate crises."
According to the OECD, G8 leaders will fall short by as much as $23 billion in their 2005 promise to increase annual aid by $50 billion over five years. Oxfam calculates this money could be used to pay for HIV treatment for 500,000, services for mothers and newborns that would save a further 2.5 million, child health services that would save a further 600,000 lives.
On average, rich countries outside the G8 give more than twice as much of their national income in overseas aid (0.54 percent), as G8 members (0.23 percent).
Farida Bena, Oxfam International Italian spokesperson said: "It is time that G8 countries paid their fair share of aid to reduce poverty in Africa and elsewhere. Why can other rich countries put their hands in their pocket whilst most of the G8 refuses to do so? A G8 that refuses to keep its word, a G8 that fails to meet the unprecedented challenges facing the world's poor—that is a G8 in crisis."
Far from showing leadership in its role as G8 chair, Italy is cutting its aid to poor countries. Last year Italy cut its aid through the Foreign Affairs Ministry by a staggering 56 percent. France too has barely increased aid despite promises to do so, and other countries are not bringing the ambition needed to the table this year—when it is most needed.
The "whole of country approach" promoted by Berlusconi could allow countries to count money charities, philanthropists, companies and trade links deliver to developing countries as part of their assistance to poor countries. Adding these disparate elements to produce a large cash figure of little value would allow countries like Italy and France to deflect attention from their lamentable performance on aid.
Instead of muddying the waters with creative accounting, Oxfam is calling on the G8 to agree an emergency plan to get their aid commitments back on track ahead of the 2010 deadline. The need for increased aid is shown by the $245 billion economic black hole facing Africa as a result of a reduction in expected growth from 6.7 percent to 1 percent. By contrast, aid will only increase by $4.6 billion this year. IMF special drawing rights and other measures agreed at the G20 add only another $16 billion. This falls way short of what is needed.
Lawson said: "The world has a triple crisis on it hands. The economic crisis is destroying jobs, reducing remittances and forcing cuts in health and education services for some of the world's poorest people. Africa is set to lose $245 billion this year alone yet the response from rich countries remains pitifully small.
"The food crisis has pushed another 200 million people into hunger. More than one in six of the world's people now do not have enough to eat. The climate crisis contributes to severe weather that forces people from their homes and destroys their livelihoods every day."
Bena said: "Over the next few days, the G8 must show the leadership the world needs. There won't be any second chances to save these 3 million people later. The G8 cannot turn their back on the poorest people now. This must be a week of bold action."
]]>Climate change has huge implications for security and terrorism, for diplomatic distortions, for the viability of the global economy—and ultimately for equity. It also contains enormous opportunities for developing countries. In this issue of Exchange, Pulitzer Prize-winning writer Ross Gelbspan writes about the impacts of climate change on the world's most vulnerable people.
Also in this issue, Oxfam America's Fast for a World Harvest turns 30; we revisit communities in Central America devastated by Hurricane Mitch five years ago; and shed light on the struggles of Peru's indigenous Quechua people.
]]>Amid cheers from a throng of enthusiastic supporters and international media, Make Trade Fair won the day.
Oxfam's trade campaign was launched.
Within hours of the Hong Kong debut, events were held in 25 cities including Brussels, Dublin, Geneva, Mexico City, San Salvador, and Washington, D.C. These events ranged from press conferences and symposiums to a rock concert in London’s Trafalgar Square.
Oxfam's trade campaign seeks to unite concerned citizens around the world in calling for fair trade policies that will help move millions of people out of poverty.
Nobel Prize Professor Amartya Sen, UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan, and musician and social activist Bono were among those who endorsed the campaign. "Oxfam has got it right," said Bono. "It wouldn't cost much to change the rules of trade so that poor countries can work their way out of poverty. But the world's leaders won't act unless they hear enough people telling them."
Also in this issue of EXCHANGE, writers Frances and Anna Lappé discuss their book Hope's Edge: The Next Diet for a Small Planet, and we bring you updates on Oxfam's work with water and sanitation, drought in Ethiopia, and indigenous women in the highlands of Peru who are speaking out after decades of violence.
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