Yesterday, representatives of the National Roundtable of Dialogue for Disaster Risk Reduction Management, participated in a fieldtrip, where they shared experiences about disaster risk management, visited the ICC, the Naranjo Plots in Santa Lucia Cotzumalguapa and the dykes of the Coyolate River at the Canoguitas Village in Nueva Concepcion, Escuintla.
The tour started at the ICC facilities, where they had the opportunity to become familiar with the work that is performed by the Private Institute for Climate Change Research, its contributions in disaster risk management and the research made about community resilience in the lower basin of the Coyolate River.
After the presentations, participants traveled to El Naranjo Plots, where they met Mr. Antonio Palomino, volunteer of Conred since 1998 and person-in-charge of the Early Alert System base (SAT -Spanish) Coyolate Delta 3, who has monitored the Coyolate in the last 18 years and reports about the river water level to the communities in the lower areas of the Coyolate.
Later on, they visited the dykes built at the Canoguitas Village, where Mr. Nelson Yanes, president of ASOBORDAS, explained the process that they followed to build the dykes, which “has been effective for 4 years”.
As Yanes explained to visitors, building the dykes was thanks to an integral work between the private and public sectors, where first they performed hydrological studies and one hydraulic model for then, to broaden the riverbed when building the dykes. Thanks to those efforts, the community has not had flood issues and even safety and investment has been attracted to the village. Even though they are aware that the flood threat has not been eliminated, they have reduced the impact of those events.
Participants also visited the Coyolate biological corridor and were satisfied with the experience-exchange trip, since “they cannot reduce risk if they do not know the risk”.
In this experience-exchange trip, representatives from the Ministry of Energy and Mines, Institute of Anthropology, Ministry of Culture and Sports, Executive Secretariat of the Presidency, Ministry of Governorship, Ministry of Health and Social Assistance, Secretariat for Social Wellness of the Presidency, International Cooperation Japan, CONRED and the ICC joined.
WATCH the video filmed by CONRED about the visit here (video in Spanish).
