Climate Variability, Water, and Security in El Salvador

Sep 10, 2017 | Herman Rosa, Chelsea Spangler
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Water-related challenges in El Salvador have acquired far greater significance over the past decade as they have intersected with other social problems including migration, criminal violence, and drug trafficking. When combined, these factors pose threats to domestic and regional stability. Damaging heavy rains, droughts, and rising temperatures are exacerbated by steadily intensifying El Niño oscillations and threaten the production of staple and export crops.  The declining viability of rural livelihoods is driving many farming families to migrate to urban centers or across borders. Food security is a constant concern across the region, and millions already rely on humanitarian assistance. Infrastructure has been damaged repeatedly by floods and raging rivers. El Salvador can mitigate many of these risks by employing ecological landscape restoration.  Improving the soil’s capacity to retain and regulate water will help maintain both agricultural and ecological viability. 

Ecological Challenges

For the past decade, El Salvador has regularly experienced record-breaking extreme weather events on both ends of the rainfall spectrum. Two years of unprecedented precipitation from 2009 to 2011 were followed by a drought that lasted from 2012 through 2015. Rainfall patterns are also becoming more unpredictable, leaving parts of the country flooded and others parched. This decade of extreme weather is representative of a longer-term trend. Between the 1960s and 1980, El Salvador saw only one extreme precipitation event, but this number increased to four in the 1990s and to eight in the 2000s. Until the mid-1980s, the annual rainy season generally spanned September to December. But since the mid-1990s, the length of the rainy season has nearly doubled to extend from May through November.