Honduras is a very vulnerable country. Honduran men and women suffer the impact of this vulnerability on a daily basis. Socio-economically, my country is one of the most unequal in the world. Politically, it is burdened by the burdens of the 2009 coup d'état, such as institutional fragility, corruption, drug trafficking, impunity and the illegitimate re-election of the previous government. To such an extent that the Honduran state has been described as a narco-state in the national and international media. In Honduras, we are culturally subjected to an exclusionary education system with a huge digital divide that has been so evident during the period of the COVID 19 pandemic. And the recent floods caused by the overflowing of the Ulua and Chamelecón rivers in the Sula Valley highlights the environmental vulnerability of millions of Honduran men and women living in high-risk areas. This is my beloved country in which I live and exist...

Faced with the emergency of the serious consequences of the floods, we ask ourselves, why is this happening? The original sin of these catastrophes in the Sula Valley is the latifundia and the tendency towards high land concentration, as well as the exclusion of broad social sectors that live in this area and do not have access to a plot of land free of risk. Many Hondurans live and exist where they can live, and even live where there is an abandoned place, because they have no other option, even if it is not advisable to live there due to the high risk of flooding.

Then come other serious cascading consequences. Living along rivers is a necessity in order to have access to water, to grow crops, to keep domestic animals, and to develop their survival economy. However, this life cycle becomes a constant experience of high risk in the face of natural disasters and river flooding. The life of our Honduran brothers and sisters is a constant consecration to a perpetual restart, every year that these natural catastrophes occur.

One experience that touches to the core is to see entire families in their homes completely flooded or filled with mud because of the floods, cleaning what little they have left after the passage of the rivers... What little they had has already been diminished even more, because the inclement force of the river currents has taken it away from them. How much it costs to have a bed, a chair, a bedding, a pair of trousers or a blouse, etc. All this and more is taken away from them by the flow and the current of the rivers that have burst their banks.

The sad-eyed children often play with muddy things or try to help their mothers to clean their flooded house with water or mud. Leaving their homes in the rain or against the current of the rivers has become a regular dramatic experience in these areas where they live. Families in these regions become temporary nomads or semi-nomads. They come and go and move to the rhythm of the high and low floods of the rivers. In addition, they worry that in fleeing the floods, they not only risk their lives, but also live with the sad worry that what the river did not carry away, someone else, in their absence, will take their few belongings. According to official figures, there are 742 affected communities in 135 municipalities throughout Honduras. Most of them are in the north and west of the country[1].

These floods also break the life cycle of the family economy. All crops are destroyed and backyard animals are wiped out, but the worst of the calamity is yet to come. Families have lost their crops and are not assured of food and the minimum resources for survival. Their reality is sadly vulnerable. The information provided by the Association of Farmers and Producers of Basic Grains (Prograno), as of 30 September 2022, is that 45% of maize crops had been lost nationally, 70% of beans and 80% of different types of vegetables. In the Sula Valley, 60% of bananas are reported to have been lost.[2] So goes the tally of losses in our beloved Honduras.

In the search for solutions, various alternatives have been put forward, but without touching on the issue of land tenure and distribution. Alternatives such as the construction of dams, reconstruction and maintenance of river banks, dredging, mitigation canals, etc. are presented. But there is no solution to the magnitude of the structural poverty crisis and the cycle of permanent exclusion of the inhabitants at risk. My poor people have to make do with palliatives in the face of recurrent crises caused by natural disasters in our country.

There is really no effective response to the constant ecological crises in our country. It is common knowledge that the municipal and government authorities have not pursued a preventive policy, but have opted instead for welfare-based responses in the context of overflowing rivers. Unfortunately, we will continue to witness the medium and long-term impact of natural phenomena, as no structural solutions have been put forward that go beyond the assistance provided for emergencies and natural catastrophes.

In the case of the construction of dams and their respective concessions, no informative and educational processes have been initiated, nor has the population itself been accompanied in organising to deal with the high vulnerability. According to experts, the prevention of disasters caused by river floods requires hydrological studies, which are not available in Honduras. Given this reality, a cartography is needed, as the existing one is outdated. Furthermore, it is a priority issue, but a difficult and delicate one. The Japanese cooperation agency itself has said that the hydrological system of the Sula Valley is very complex; they have only prioritised San Pedro Sula and La Lima for intervention in the Sula Valley. In this way, it is not possible to warn the population in time because it is not really possible to calculate when the volume of water and the topography of the terrain will indicate when it is appropriate to evacuate the population. The logic of assistance is imposed on the population after floods and there is no effective preventive policy.

Another point we cannot forget is that 90% of the upper basin of the Sula Valley is devastated and this speeds up the course of the water, flooding more quickly, and consequently, early warnings are not usually timely. According to experts, while the alert is reported at the Chinda station in Santa Bárbara, what used to take 7 hours for the water to recede, now recedes in 3 hours. Observers in the upper basin report the alert and then it is channelled through the Permanent Contingency Commission (COPECO).

Dams could probably be part of the solution. However, the governmental discussion oscillates on the design: whether to design a reservoir that accumulates large quantities of water and is multi-purpose (energy, tourism, flood control, irrigation), or whether the appropriate design is a dry dam, although for the quantities of water that fall it would not be sufficient. According to technical experts, the dams have a capacity of 3,800 cubic metres, that is to say, they accumulate around 280 millimetres of rainwater, but with hurricanes Eta and Iota, they exceeded 12,000 cubic metres. Furthermore, the rivers in the Sula Valley have not been flooded since the banana companies were in the region.

Given the complexity of the hydrological system of the Sula Valley, it is necessary to make decisions at the level of public policies, elaborating a NATIONAL PLAN in order to prevent the recurrence of disasters, to save lives and to avoid further losses to the family and national economy. Such a comprehensive plan includes at least 3 approaches:

1) Review the territorial planning, identifying high-risk places that cannot be inhabited or that require a housing infrastructure that takes into account possible flooding, such as the famous "barracones" that the Banana Companies used to install. Mainly those low-lying places that are systematically flooded and whose losses are considerable. Some places where the authorities should review and stop issuing housing permits are the lowlands of Choloma, some communities in the Ramal del Tigre sector and other lowlands in the Sula Valley.

2) Developing a complete study around the dams as a risk mitigation mechanism is fundamental, particularly for El Tablón and the El Jicatuyo dam, but it requires a multi-million dollar investment that the government will have the challenge of managing, and, above all, in which the communities have timely information and participation. Currently, the mitigation strategy for the dams contemplates 3 projects: El Tablón, El Jicatuyo and Los Llanitos, which are initiatives being managed from the Ministry of Energy, particularly from the Empresa Nacional de Energía Eléctrica ENEE. According to the authorities, the El Tablón dam would be built within the next few years, but the other dams would be a medium-term strategy, with the Jicatuyo dam using the waters of the Ulúa river and the El Tablón dam using the waters of the Chamelecón river. These are projects that have been in the pipeline for many years. Meanwhile, at the private level, the El Tornillito project is in process, which would be a water mirror dam, a project that is apparently at a standstill, and for which the communities of the region have expressed their disagreement.

3) Strategy for prevention and awareness-raising in the face of risk due to socio-ecological vulnerability that integrates the local, regional and national levels. At the local level, the municipalities should assume their role in the protection of the embankments as containment mechanisms, in the knowledge that they are the heritage of the municipalities. Therefore, the Local Emergency Committee (CODEL) of the municipalities should take care of them. At regional and national level, prevention involves popular education, taking the river as a means of life, and the use of it for drinking water. Awareness-raising needs to be developed in at least two ways: 1) Campaigns for the population to recognise their territory and assume their role in protecting their environment, preventing the banks from being weakened by crops. 2) Educational curricula that educate children in the knowledge of the territory, knowing that we have a vulnerable territory with a high risk of flooding. This requires the involvement of the Ministry of Education.

The preventive strategy in the short, medium and long term involves: a. Information and constant training of citizens in order to create a new culture of prevention; b. An immediate response plan to threats in order to know what to do in emergencies and to attend to the vulnerable population in a timely manner; c. A comprehensive long-term plan with public policies in accordance with the reality and the protection needs of the Honduran population, which requires the participation of all actors, including coordination with cooperation agencies that provide resources for the purchase of equipment and technical knowledge to face future catastrophes caused by the overflowing of rivers.

Finally, all these measures are important, but it should not be forgotten that they are of a preventive nature given the context of the population located in regions of high vulnerability. However, a strategy must be devised that responds in a structural manner to the reality of huge populations who live forgotten and anonymously until tragedies occur. The distribution of land and access to land for these populations living in high-risk areas is a central issue to address the problem with a broad vision that responds to its causes in order to solve it. Living in safe areas is a structural response to overcome the high vulnerability of huge population nuclei exposed to high ecological risk in Honduras, noble birthplace of Francisco Morazán.

References:

[1] Cfr. La Prensa, Friday 30 September 2022, p. 3.

[2] Cfr. La Prensa, Friday 30 September 2022, p. 2.

Source : Radio progresso