Award given to joint UNDP-EU program in Chile
By Catalina Shneider and Valeria Foncea
Despite the fact that two-thirds of the municipalities in Chile have been declared to be in a state of drought, UNDP and the EU have found a number of ways to combat desertification. As a result, the Universities of La Serena (Chile) and La Regina (Canada) granted an award to the organizations’ project in the Alhuemilla Agricultural Community, “Trapping mist in order to perform forestation and reduce firewood consumption.”
This initiative was presented with an award in “Good practices in the sustainable management of water in rural communities competition” organized by the International Project for Rural Community Water Conservation (TIER2) carried out by both universities. The competition aims to “promote best practices through the use of water in rural communities and giving incentives to these communities to persevere in their efforts,” said Sergio Paolini, the coordinator of the TIER2 team (Canela) and an academic at the University of La Serena.
The project has the joint support of the UNDP through the Small Grants Program (SGP), the GEF and the European Union; and it is supported by the Municipality of Canela, the National Forestry Corporation (CONAF) and the Regional Agricultural and Livestock Service (SAG).
The Alhuemilla-Las Palmas Agricultural Community is located in north Chile in an area called Coquimbo, a place that affected by drought, the degradation of land, soil erosion, overgrazing, deforestation and poverty. These factors have led to the loss of soil productivity and biodiversity, resulting in poverty and emigration.
This agricultural community, originally composed of 43 smallholders and their families, includes 4,000 hectares of land. However, existing poverty levels have forced many inhabitants to leave and, as a result, there are currently only 23 families living there, including smallholders, leaseholders and sub-leaseholders.
Therefore, the project has addressed this situation by improving living conditions for smallholders. Ten structures known as atrapanieblas trap microscopic drops of water contained in the mist. Once these drops have been extracted, they are channeled to a 12,000-litre reservoir through a drop irrigation system to 10 plots of land each comprising 1 hectare, which will later become enclosed and forested with trees. A part of the land will be reserved for crop cultivation, with those crops being consumed by those families who benefit from the program.
For Ronel Cortés, an Alhuemilla smallholder, this initiative brings hopes of a modest degree of reforestation and that the animals he and other shareholders own will not continue to die. An additional benefit of this project is that children will not have to leave their land due to geographical isolation and lack of employment.
Another aim of the project is to build ovens that can use firewood efficiently in order to reduce the number of trees that have to be felled for this purpose. In addition, training workshops will be implemented for the farmers whereby, through the organization of traditional mangacos (collaborative projects in which the whole community participates without any financial reward), members of the community will be taught how to build these ovens.
Members of the community will travel in order to learn about comparable relevant experiences and will host neighbouring communities to encourage them to replicate similar experiments. A number of educational workshops will also be held, some to combat desertification, while others are more specifically focused on the efficient use of water resources, the installation and maintenance of crops based on forage shrubs, and other activities involving the construction, upkeep and use of the atrapanieblas (devices for trapping mist).
“Working with the community, this initiative has enabled us to address the problem of water shortage. Thanks to the empowerment of all stakeholders, we are poised to embrace the challenges of the future,” said Nathan Trigo, the mayor of Canela.
