Oxfam intends to ensure that the people who were most severely affected by the earthquake have clean water and basic sanitation services. The agency will prioritize this support by serving cities and new camps to be set up outside Port-au-Prince, as well as medical facilities.
Working with community members and local authorities, Oxfam will provide support and equipment to help clean up solid waste and develop a long-term approach for solid waste management.
International standards for emergency shelter require 17.5 square meters of shelter space for a family of five; most families in Port-au-Prince are living in one-third that area. Oxfam will work with local partners to provide safe temporary shelter materials such as plastic sheeting, and help construct temporary housing. Initial plans are to distribute plastic sheeting to about 4,000 families (about 20,000 people) in February and March. In addition, Oxfam will distribute roughly 1,000 tents, and home repair kits to owners of damaged buildings that can be repaired.
Food is becoming increasingly available in affected areas. But survivors don’t always have any money to purchase the food. Oxfam is starting a cash-for-work program that will target particularly vulnerable survivors including women, support alternatives to food aid, and promote purchase of food produced in Haiti.
To promote availability of local food, Oxfam is working with farmers affected by the earthquake to stimulate local agricultural production.
To encourage involvement of civil society organizations in decisions about the initial relief and recovery process, Oxfam will help Haitian organizations recover from the earthquake and assert some control over how the government and international donors design and carry out the rebuilding of Haiti. This will help ensure that the billions that will be spent in Haiti will actually help the poorest communities recover from the earthquake. This will help build a Haiti that is stronger than it was before the quake.
Every project to rebuild homes, rehabilitate water systems, and help people get back to work will also include measures to reduce vulnerability to floods and earthquakes. This will help communities become more resilient in future calamities.
Ongoing assessments by staff working in earthquake-affected areas will help Oxfam refine this initial strategy for the reconstruction and long-term development phases of Oxfam’s post- earthquake assistance to Haiti.
]]>" All people who are professionals in our area, in our organizations…the country has lost a group of key people that could help for development and of course thousands of children, women, men…but mainly women and children are the worst affected. Our people are now sleeping in the street. The government, even people from the international community in Haiti and of course poor people, we are all living outdoors in the streets.
“We are not just talking about the disaster affecting the country’s institutions…it affects the government, civil society and the international community.
"Our coordination with the international community is still working. Our concern now is not the size of aid coming to Haiti, it’s how to get adequate people and resources to manage it. How to get the aid in place and to manage it. It needs to be done quickly.
“My colleague [incoming country director, Claude St Pierre] was coming to Haiti to replace me and we were trying to ensure a smooth transition. He had just arrived in Haiti that afternoon and came to our office to say hello and to be introduced to staff. Unfortunately, we were in the door of my office saying hello when the earthquake started. We stayed hugging each other for that entire minute. Of course, since I have worked in emergencies, I understood it was an earthquake, but I have never experienced an earthquake of this magnitude.”
]]>Water
During earthquakes, like the one that rocked the Haitian capital of Port-au-Prince, water systems, with their extensive network of pipes and pumps, often collapse. Repairs can take time—time that people who depend on that water to stay alive don’t have.
Without water, people can’t last much beyond three days. That’s why Oxfam focuses much of its emergency response on rushing to provide survivors with a safe supply.
With years of experience responding to emergencies around the world, Oxfam’s water engineers know how to build temporary systems with speed and efficiency so that people can get the water they need. Oxfam trucks water into remote regions, drills for it through desert floors regions, erects massive storage tanks, hauls in generators, repairs pumps, lays temporary water lines, and hands out plastic buckets so people can tote water back to their homes.
And there’s an internationally accepted standard of delivery Oxfam strives to maintain in every crisis. It calls for providing survivors with about four gallons of water per person per day—an amount intended to cover just essential needs.
Here are some of the critical components of an effective emergency water system:
Sanitation
Ensuring that disaster survivors living in camp conditions have safe ways to dispose of waste is crucial to helping them live in a healthy and dignified environment, so creating latrines is a key element of Oxfam’s humanitarian programming.
As quickly as possible after an emergency, we begin constructing simple latrines consisting of holes or trenches in the ground surrounded by light structures of poles and plastic sheeting to provide privacy. As soon as we have the time and resources to do it, we add concrete slabs to stand on to make the latrines cleaner and easier to use.
Oxfam also builds bathing facilities that are designed to be safe and private.
Oxfam makes sure that the displaced communities themselves are involved in the construction and maintenance of their sanitation structures, and in order to help ensure that women and girls feel safe using these communal facilities, we take care that women in particular are involved in decision-making about their location, design, and construction.
]]>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.
]]>We have been hearing a lot about the mangroves on this trip to the Pacific coast where countless families are struggling against a poverty that forces them to live where no one else will: in low-lying areas prone to flooding and along the sides of dirt roads that become hard to negotiate during heavy rains.
South of here, in a town called Metalío, we have just met with Francisco Calzadilla, a member of the technical team for Caritas, which, together with Oxfam America and three other donor groups, as well as six local non-governmental organizations, has joined a consortium called PRVAS—or Programa Reducción de Vulnerabilidades Ahuachapán-Sonsonate. One of its goals is to help communities carry out mitigation projects to reduce their risk in disasters. And that's where the mangroves come in.
"They serve as a natural barrier—to the waves and the wind off the ocean," says Calzadilla. "They also provide a food source. They serve as an ecosystem for shellfish."
The strip of mangroves Calzadilla is particularly concerned with, stretches for about 20 kilometers around Metalío. He estimates that about 50 percent of that stretch has been deforested as people cut down the trees for both construction material and firewood.
But in August, with support from PRVAS, community members took steps to recover some of those losses, said Calzadilla. They collected, sorted, and planted 20,000 mangrove seeds—they look like long, slender pods—along a two-kilometer deforested strip.
It will be a while—10 years predicted Calzadilla—before the seedlings mature enough to serve as a barrier against the onslaught of Mother Nature. In areas where the mangroves have disappeared and there is nothing to break the force of winds, small houses have blown away, Calzadilla said.
In some neighborhoods around Acajutla, El Salvador's largest port, mangrove forests have been severely reduced—replaced by fill and the simple homes of some of the country's poorest residents.
Further east in the department of Usulután, preservation efforts are underway for some of the mangrove forests in Jiquilisco Bay, where Oxfam America is helping local fishermen organize themselves to improve their production and protect their livelihoods. They depend on the resources that flourish in the dense tangle of roots, mud, and tidal water.
Deep in the pre-dawn gloom of one protected area in the bay, we can just make out a platform where watchmen keep round-the-clock guard over this watery haven supported by funds from the United Nations. Here, mollusks can get a solid start and help to increase the catch that local fishermen need to feed their families.
Later, after the sun is up and the tide has receded, the mangrove forests in Jiquilisco Bay come alive with the chirping and scrambling of wildlife. Herons pick their way over the mud flats. A raccoon darts through the exposed roots. A vulture studies us from his perch on a branch.
Juan Larín Rojas, a 54-year-old fisherman, eyes each one of them with delight. He knows many of their scientific names. This is his turf, and despite the challenges of making a living from these mangroves and the sea around them, he wouldn't give up this life for anything.
"I love fishing. I love the sea. I love feeling free," he says.
]]>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."
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.
"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.
"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.
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."
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.
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."
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."
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."
]]>It is hard to reconcile the beauty of the lake with the violence along its shores. Mejía's work to defend the environment, and propose sustainable ways of living and working, has angered some who would prefer to rely on industrial mining for economic development in the region. A local citizen's organization has written a threatening letter to the Interior Ministry in Guatemala City, saying her work to educate community leaders about the risks of mining is unacceptable. She continues working, with international observers with her at all times to protect her.
Mejía first came here 10 years ago. She and her three children settled in the lakeside town of El Estor, promoting ecotourism and waging a series of campaigns to protect Lake Izabal from oil and mining projects that she says threaten the natural resources of the region—and won—t do much to benefit the local farming and fishing communities.
In 2002, Mejía and a handful of teachers, fisherman, environmentalists, a local physician and other citizens took on Shell Oil, which had a concession to drill right through the bottom of the lake. The small band of opponents founded the Association of Friends of Lake Izabal (ASALI) and succeeded in blocking the licenses for this project. ASALI then turned its attention to nickel mines along the sides of the lake.
There has been industrial mining in Izabal since the 1950s, but it has been in fits and starts as the prices of commodities have spiked and crashed over the years. But mining is now booming everywhere, so the Canadian company Skye Resources, which bought the mine in 2004, is now preparing to work a 100-square-mile concession it acquired in 2005. The area is home to 30 indigenous Q'eq'chi communities. None were properly consulted about the concession. This constitutes a violation of Guatemala's 1996 Peace Accords and international laws that protect indigenous people. The company is now engaged in talks with communities to convince them to go along with the plan to mine.
Skye Resources is now operating at a loss as it seeks financing so it can start mining in 2009. The company estimates it could get as much as 673,000 tons of nickel out of the mine. As part of its effort to clear people out of the concession area, the company and police forcefully evicted a number of Q'eq'chi communities in January of 2007, burning their humble shelters to the ground.
"We need a strong defense of the environment here," Mejía says at her home in El Estor. She has just finished a meal of traditionally prepared fish from Lake Izabal, and dines with visitors and two members of Peace Brigades International, who accompany her to ensure her safety.
ASALI is working in 29 communities to teach their leaders about mining: how much water is used, the chemicals, the transportation, and the rights of indigenous communities to be consulted. "We want every community leader to attend one of these workshops, and share their ideas and problems and work on them together," Mejía says. With help from Oxfam America, ASALI also arranges for these leaders to visit other mining areas in Honduras and in Guatemala's western highlands to see the effects of mining on indigenous people. "This is so they can see the consequences and talk to affected people," she says.
With the laws around land rights so unclear in Guatemala, indigenous people lack the required title and other official documents they need to defend their territory. Mejía says this needs to be addressed. "Through our contacts we have put the issue of land on the national agenda; it's been discussed in congress, so people are aware of the problems of land in mining concession areas."
Much of Mejía's motivation comes from her commitment to the people, all those who fish and grow corn on the fields near the lake. "When you come here and see the needs of the poor communities, you can see that people are not asking for much in life. But when you see the injustices and the way things are taken from them, it is so unfair that they are so poor and have so few opportunities despite the richness and national treasure here," she says. "This leads you to fall in love with this place. It makes you want to do something to contribute to changes here—and to denounce the injustice."
It is just this commitment that puts her at risk. Her Peace Brigade guardians are with her and several of her colleagues from ASALI, all of whom are working under threat. Mejía says they are not radicals."We want people to understand that there is another healthy and just way to develop this area, through rational use of the national treasures we have here."
"If at some time we no longer exist, we hope that we have sowed some seeds of awareness, solidarity, and respect to the environment. In this threatening climate for our work, our vulnerability makes us do what little we can—with all our hearts."
]]>From flooding in Haiti to drought in Ethiopia, water has long been central to Oxfam's work. Our emergency water systems are a hallmark of our agency. And our efforts to help communities access water for farming and fishing enable people to realize security.
But in recent decades, some extraordinary water pressures have emerged, as water resources are being swallowed up by dams, mining, and other commercial projects. The result is that, for the villages along the rivers, in the watersheds, and on the floodplains of East Asia being swamped or dried up by dams…for the indigenous people and farmers of South America whose rivers, lakes, and wells have been destroyed by mining…water is quickly becoming a major issue—and a major issue for Oxfam.
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