Rural Women's Constant Struggle for Water in Central America

[Judi Lynn]

By Edgardo Ayala



A rainwater harvesting system was installed in the home of Marlene Carballo, in the town of Jocote Dulce in eastern El Salvador, in the Central American Dry Corridor, in November 2022. The system, with pipes and gutters running from the roof to a polyethylene bag, will start operating in May of this year, at the beginning of Central America’s rainy season. CREDIT: Edgardo Ayala/IPS


CHINAMECA, El Salvador, May 2 2023 (IPS) - “This is a very difficult place to live, because of the lack of water,” said Salvadoran farmer Marlene Carballo, as she cooked corn tortillas for lunch for her family, on a scorching day.

Carballo, 23, lives in the Jocote Dulce canton, a remote rural settlement in the municipality of Chinameca, in the eastern Salvadoran department of San Miguel, a region located in what is known as the Central American Dry Corridor.

Acute water crisis

This municipality is one of the 144 in the country that is located in the Dry Corridor, which covers 35 percent of Central America and is home to more than 10.5 million people and where over 73 percent of the rural population lives in poverty and 7.1 million people suffer from severe food insecurity, according to the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO).

Food security is particularly threatened because the rains are not always constant, which creates major difficulties for agriculture.

More:
https://www.ipsnews.net/2023/05/rural-womens-constant-struggle-water-central-america/

[Tetrachloride]

1. Rain systems are essential for some.

my particular city has had precipitation 4x in 800 days.

[GreenWave]

2. Water catchment systems may become the savior (In Spanish El Salvador)

We have water shortages in many places. We also have oceans rising, around 300+ feet since the last Ice Age with humans accelerating the melting.

The smart thing to do is catch water as it pours off your structures and store it for other uses. I do however envision a problem for rivers etc. if they do not get the water they need, but flooding can be better controlled.

I think I read that 1 inch of rainfall in an hour can produce 1,000 gallons of water from a 1,000 square foot roof, so catchment systems should hold several thousand gallons if planned well.