It is coordinated with the arrangement of doors and windows, to avoid any heat leakage. The improved kitchen, as mentioned before, is implemented to reduce health related effects. Another project in the region, using the same technology described in the K’ONICHUYAWASI project, is named Mi Abrigo . This is a national project sponsored by the Ministry of Development and Social Inclusion through their national program named the Cooperation Fund for Social Development . As a prevention effort for winter 2017, Mi Abrigo started building houses in December 2016 in three Peruvian departments: Apurimac, Cusco, and Puno. A total of 1,146 houses were modified in 33 communities from 12 districts. The program modified 400 houses in seven communities from four districts of Puno. However, the program is a national one, and the subsequent home modifications for the 2018 winter do not include Puno. The second stage of the program will modify 1,100 houses in 17 districts from four departments outside of Puno. Furthermore, the plans for the third stage that will modify houses for the 2019 winter does not include Puno either. This third stage will modify 980 homes in 14 districts of four departments outside of Puno. The problem with regulating indoor heating is not only a concern for private housing. Education and health facilities also present poor levels of indoor thermal comfort. Many people in the area express concern for the indoor thermal comfort inside hospitals. Their indoor thermal comfort is of greatest concern to the population experiencing childbirth. Education facilities also possess infrastructure and thermal insulation problems. These problems lead to an environment uncomfortable for learning, especially in the morning. Public education comprises 93% of Puno’s educational facilities, and 65% of them are in rural areas. According to regional agencies, 75% of these facilities are mainly constructed with adobe and are considered to possess environments too cold for pedagogy. About 50% have very old-style constructions. The Ministry of Education has proposed to delay the time classes start every morning to aid in dealing with indoor thermal comfort. Furthermore,plant growing stand the national government has campaigned to educate teachers on how to properly close these facilities when they leave in order to maximize the indoor thermal comfort in the mornings. So it is clearly imperative to prevent temperature-related deaths, but focusing only on heatwaves is not sufficient.
Every year, farmers in the Peruvian Altiplano suffer and die due to cold temperatures in the region. Focusing only on heatwaves due to their increasing frequency and intensity around the world is similar to stakeholders forgetting about farmers in specific locations because the world is urbanizing. And temperature-related events do not result only in deaths, but in negative impacts on livelihoods, health, and comfort. People should not have to merely survive cold temperatures, and stakeholders should pay attention to improving indoor thermal comfort. Farmers with low human agency and low access to assets struggle to survive every cold night. Distributing blankets and food should not be the central response to such impacts. Long-term solutions are needed to avoid the repeated return of the harmful effects of cold temperatures in the region. Drought conditions entail a slow onset and combine multiple factors which make its prediction difficult. Some droughts are easy to predict and can be foreseen a month in advance, while others catch decision-makers by surprise. The prediction, report, and quantification of drought-related impacts remain a significant challenge. Unlike other weather phenomena, droughts are not a single distinct event; just a lack of rain does not equate to drought conditions. During my fieldwork campaign, both austral summers reported drought conditions. However, they had different spatial coverage—as seen in Figure 12—regarding the emergencies reported. The first drought had a more widespread spatial coverage and presented a more significant challenge to both farmers and decision-makers. On the other hand, the second drought was more localized, and the difficulties experienced in many aspects of the emergency cycle were at a smaller scale than in the first drought. The prediction of the drought in Summer 2015–2016, including the report of emergencies, was confusing and inconsistent. The national weather service agency provides monthly agrometeorological reports summarizing meteorology characteristics and providing information related to precipitation’s probabilities for the next trimester. Three factors are essential to understand droughts in Puno and their impacts: the agricultural calendar starts in August, the rainy season covers from October to April, and the beginning of the austral summer presents a crucial stage for crop survival. Agrometeorological reports for the three months before the beginning of the fieldwork campaign in January 2016 aid in understanding the complexity of the drought in the region. Predictions in October for the November to January trimester had two scenarios that contradicted each other. Figure 13 presents a prediction with most of Puno experiencing normal precipitation and certain areas experiencing above normal precipitation conditions.
However, the International Research Institute for Climate and Society at Columbia University in New York had different probabilities for the region . These probabilities expressed areas with more than a 50% decrease in precipitation for Puno. Local meteorology reports for November 2015 and December 2015 presented a rainfall deficit of -17% and -19% respectively for the entire department. Moreover, most of the stations were indicating between -20% and -100% of rainfall deficit. Station analysis performed by the regional SENAMHI office in Puno presented similar percentages of rainfall deficit from the start of the rainfall season in October. However, 2015 had only one report related to drought received toward the last week of December. This emergency report mentioned the lack of rainfall in the entire area of the municipality but reported only four hectares of crops affected by the drought. Also, it could be noted that the reported impacts during both austral summers were different from the areas identified to have a higher level of drought risk. Let’s consider the difficulties of predicting the droughts, the conflicting information provided to farmers,the discrepancies in ground experiences in reports, and the farmers’ perceptions. Aside from the discrepancy of the reports predicting normal precipitation conditions versus stations reporting deficits, the region was not expecting extreme drought conditions. The title of a local news article published on December 17 stated that the “drought would be mild in the Peruvian highlands.” The article affirmed that the precipitation would be slightly less than in other years but “according to the experts it will not result disastrously for farmers in the region.” An expert working for INDECI emphasized that if “it is true, according to the forecast of the climate entity, there would not be a drought scenario, the prevention of possible flooding of the rivers should be a priority.” In the same article,plant grow table other experts mentioned the changes in precipitation of -10% to -20% for individual municipalities. Towards the end of December, the Laguna Colorada in Lampa utterly dried up. The Lagoon had been drying for three years due to high daily temperatures and lower precipitation in the area . The representative of the Lagoon area mentioned that on multiple occasions, he presented projects to the provincial government to create a passage from the nearby river into the Lagoon. The provincial authorities emphasized that in November 2015, they brought the case to the Ministry of Agriculture and were expecting a response. As the fieldwork campaign started, available information indicated that drought conditions were expected to be light, and the condition in the Lagoon resulted from a more extended timescale problem. However, the regional ministry of agriculture stated in early January that the drought conditions had affected up to 40% of the crops in the region. Furthermore, farmers pointed out that natural pastures were drying, and farming organizations were asking for oat bales for the animals. Toward the border with Bolivia, in the province of Chucuito, farmers told me stories about current drought conditions and their concerns that it was beyond “abnormal” drought.
They showed dead birds and dead livestock. An elderly farmer cried as he explained to me what was happening: “We are all sad, it makes us want to cry, in June and July there will be nothing; then, this will be dry, and there will be no food for the animals.” The display of farmers crying and showing me dead animals was repeated in various locations in the region. Farmers expressed concern with the availability of natural grassland. The grass available is not tall enough for their animals, and they recounted how it was supposed to be taller this time of the year. Many farmers were alarmed and often revisited stories from 1983. Many farmers did not mention a specific date, but those who did never mentioned anything other than the 1983 drought. Even the regional director of SENAMHI indicated the 1983 drought as a reference while talking about the drought in the area. Everyone admitted that conditions were getting drier every year. But how severe was the 1983 drought for farmers remembering its impacts more than 30 years after? Maps produced by SENAMHI show the Standardized Precipitation Index for a severe drought during the El Niño of 1982–1983 and a more localized drought during the El Niño of 1997– 1998. One of the strongest El Niño events worldwide was experienced during 1997–1998, but the extent of the drought was not severe in Puno. Furthermore, other years with El Niño conditions do not present drought conditions for the region. There is no doubt that the 1983 drought was real and caused numerous problems for the region. However, were the farmers correct in comparing the recent El Niño year with the 1983 drought conditions? During my fieldwork in mid-January 2016, the National Water Authority declared a state of emergency for Lake Titicaca for 90 days. The imminent danger of water deficit in four of the Lake sources of water prompted the decision, a decision praised by the director of the local meteorology agency. Furthermore, smaller towns in the provinces of Chucuito and Azángaro canceled activities that are usually celebrated all over the region. These cancellations, according to local officials, were due to the lack of water in their municipalities. Towards the end of January, Puno’s agricultural sector was declared an emergency zone by the regional agrarian authorities. This decision was necessary due to the loss of up to 60% of the essential crops in the region. The declaration was not only for droughts but included the out-of-season frost and hail that occurred in the region.The month of January ended with a deficit of – 45% of the total monthly accumulated rainfall for the region. Figure 18 presents the anomalies in precipitation per weather station. One can see in yellow the stations reporting from -20% to -60% in precipitation for January 2016. While many stations, in orange, presented from – 60% to -99% in precipitation. SENAMHI also provided a map with SPI to show the depth of the drought for January . Such SPI map patterns and water deficits do not completely explain the occurrence of reported emergencies, as seen in Figure 12. The second drought experienced in the region during my fieldwork campaign had a smaller spatial coverage in terms of emergencies, but below normal precipitation happened in many municipalities outside that area.The level of emergency from the farmers and local authorities was lower than the previous season. The government did not declare a state of emergency, and farmers’ still suffered losses but to a lower degree. The government created and started to work on plans for water management and improvement of water wells in the region. The emergency reports related to drought still do not possess a standardized methodology for explaining impacts experienced on the ground. Many lacks crucial information, making it difficult to use those data for comparison with other social vulnerability indicators. When talking about impacts related to low temperatures, the primary concern is social vulnerability and a lack of resources. But drought impacts are complex and go beyond social vulnerability indicators. Governance, access to water, and good quality wells and other methods of collecting water are of great importance. Furthermore, the information provided by different agencies can be contradicting and confusing at times. Access to information does not necessarily allow leaders to understand what is happening on the ground nor farmers to adequately prepare for drought.