Environmental perils spur organization

As regular readers of this blog know, climate change and other environmental challenges regularly confront El Salvador. Those challenges have spawned a growing network of grass roots environmental organizations. A recent article titled Climate: Putting people over money from Al Jazeera English interviews the participants in this growing movement:

A 2007 climate change study conducted by El Salvador's National Ministry of the Environment and Natural Resources focused on the Lower Lempa River and Bay of Jiquilisco areas of the central Pacific coast.

The study found that this area can expect more of what it is already experiencing: increasing minimum and maximum temperatures, a shift in observed seasons, more frequent observations of extremely wet and extremely dry years, and intensified extreme event activity, including tropical storms and hurricanes.

Against the backdrop of these dire predictions, the people are, however, forming a movement that is learning to protect and sustain itself in the increasingly chaotic world of global climate change and its severe ramifications on people, the environment, and local economies.

The article goes on to talk about communities fighting to avoid health threats from pesticide use and the practice of maassive burns of sugar cane fields. These environmental groups are small, and often focused primarily on local issues, but they are learning to network and work together on issues of common concern. You can read the entire article here.