03/06/2021 El Guarumal, a community in the department of Morazán, east of El Salvador, faces a serious problem of access to water for consumption and food production.
In just a couple of years, its inhabitants went from having three natural sources of water to having only one. This put at risk the food and nutritional security of its inhabitants, in particular that of children under five years of age, pregnant women and newborns.
The community of El Guarumal is located in the middle of the Dry Corridor, an area characterized by increasingly intense and frequent droughts, and which comprises more than 80 percent of the Salvadoran territory. Some 2.2 million people live there, and more than half of them depend on the production of basic grains.
Access to water, management of natural resources, the progressive deterioration of forests and increasingly irregular and intense climatic cycles are some of the great challenges facing El Salvador, one of the most vulnerable countries to climate risks in the world.
Faced with this reality, the local government of the municipality to which El Guarumal belongs –Sensembra – and the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO), hand in hand with the Mexican Agency for International Development Cooperation (AMEXCID in Spanish), with the Mesoamerica Hunger Free Programme, have implemented a pilot project to harvest and purify water, called the Rainwater Harvesting System (SCALL in Spanish).
The SCALL consists of a harvest system - a tank with a capacity of 110 cubic metres - and a rainwater purification plant, which makes it suitable for human consumption. It is located in the El Guarumal school centre, and benefits a total of 650 people equivalent to 150 families in the area.
The system has the capacity to produce between 30 to 45 litres per minute. Due to their technical characteristics, the tanks can store up to 105 000 litres and allow the school centre and community homes to be supplied for five months with an average consumption of two litres per person per day.
It is the school centre parents board that is responsible for the operation, maintenance and administration of the SCALL. Drinking water is given free to families according to their needs, each of which withdraws it into a 20-litre pitcher (clean container).
The installation of SCALL was the result of a joint effort between FAO, territorial actors, municipal governments and institutions of the Central Government. The SCALL guarantees the availability of safe and good quality water, and improves food and nutrition security, reducing the probability of gastrointestinal diseases that reduce the use of food and incur medical expenses, thereby compromising access to other basic products that complement the daily diet.
Together with SCALL, the community built 12 reservoirs that allow 25 families to water their home gardens in the dry season, which also serve to raise fish, which helps diversify the families' diet.
The project helps the people of the community save time and effort in the collection and transport of water for domestic and productive use. Community leaders have also been trained to develop their competencies and take good managerial decisions.
Water has been particularly important to the school community as it has made food and drink preparation easier for students.
A successful programme replicated on a large scale
After the successful implementation of the pilot project, this best practice was replicated on a larger scale by an initiative financed by the Green Climate Fund (GCF): the project “Increasing climate resilience measures in the agroecosystems of the dry corridor of El Salvador”, known as RECLIMA, includes the installation of community SCALLs for the harvesting and purification of rainwater.
Thanks to RECLIMA, approximately 4 000 families will have access to drinking water, as a result of the construction of community rainwater harvesting systems with purification systems.
RECLIMA is working with 50 000 producers to improve their production systems, contributing to the recovery of agroecosystems and increasing their resilience to the impacts of climate change.
In addition, it works on the improvement of soils and water resources through the application of sustainable agriculture practices to promote responsible management of the environment, and comprehensive economic development.
