**5.1. Seasonal Climate outlooks applications for food security decision-making in Central America**

In Central America, seasonal climate outlooks turn into risk scenarios used by food-related sectors to help support their decisions and prevent food insecurity. This is a coordinated effort with specialized entities of the Central American Integration System.

The Central American Climate Outlook Forum (CA-COF), coordinated by the Comité Regional de Recursos Hidráulicos (CRRH-SICA)5 (Regional Water Resources Committee), has consolidated a process to issue three seasonal outlooks per year, bringing together the capacities of all seven weather services in the region. The CA-COF takes advantage of international and global sources of information, which it analyzes along with its own sources and historical data to produce Climate Outlooks for the Central American region. Over the last decade the Forum has issued 38 regional climate outlooks.

To facilitate the use of climate risk information for decision-making with the aim of reducing food insecurity risks, CRRH-SICA has fostered a mechanism over the past few years that turns the Outlook into risk scenarios for those sectors related to nutrition and food security, particularly agriculture, fisheries, potable water and public health, as well as cross-cutting areas like risk management and emergency response. These scenarios are used when deciding preventive measures to mitigate the impact of climate variability on food security.

In a joint effort between the specialized agencies of the Central American Integration System (SICA) and the Regional Food Security Program (PRESANCA II) funded by the European Union, immediately after an Outlook is issued, a group of regional experts is convened to enhance the Outlook with information from the different sectors mentioned above, turning the product into sectoral climate risk scenarios that could guide early warnings of actual and potential hazards to food security.

The working group, composed of CA-COF members and the experts, uses these scenarios to identify sector-specific preventive measures. The food security risk scenarios and the suggested measures are circulated among government entities and other organizations involved in addressing food and nutritional security through their own networks to ensure all this information reaches the most appropriate decision makers.

<sup>5</sup> CRRH is the technical Secretariat of the Central America Integration System, responsible for the coordination of activities related to weather forecast, climate, water resources and climate change assessments with Belize, Costa Rica, El Salvador, Guatemala, Honduras, Nicaragua and Panamá.

This same method is used at the national level to produce specific recommendations for diverse sectors in each individual country. Those are then distributed among national authorities and stakeholders in private sector with the seasonal outlook map and lists of suggested prevention measures. An example of the matrix of climate risk for agriculture is presented in Table 2.

Risk Management at the Latin American Observatory 543

**5.2. A flood early warning system for Vargas, Venezuela** 

on December 15 1999.

can benefit from the experience described here.

making the area highly vulnerable to floods and debris flows [10].

In Venezuela, heavy rains represent a significant problem for human populations, not only in rural areas where farms and crops are affected, but also in some urban settings where many inhabitants reside in poorly-constructed houses that are highly vulnerable to floods

**Figure 4.** Aerial view of Caraballeda, Vargas state (Venezuela), after mudslides and debris flows event

On December 15, 1999, on the northern coast of Venezuela, torrential rains led to flash floods and debris flows that killed tens of thousands of people, destroyed thousands of households, and meant the complete collapse of the area's infrastructure (see Figure 4). The "Vargas disaster", as it has been known ever since,, is considered the worst natural disaster in Venezuela's last half century (Table 1). Even though flood prediction is an essential piece of Climate Risk Management, Venezuela did not have, at the time, a consolidated early warning system that could alert decision-makers and stakeholders about this extreme event. In this section, the implementation of an early warning flood system for Vargas state is described in some detail. It is a completely general methodology, so other regions in LAC

The Vargas disaster is also an important case study on flood prediction, not only because of its unusual rainfall amounts, but also for the nature of the terrain where it took place. The basin is located in a mountainous region of metamorphic rock, coarse soils and steep slopes,

The early warning system involves the estimation of vulnerabilities and probabilities related to heavy precipitations and mudslides. Guenni *et al.* [11] has computed the vulnerabilities using the total affected and exposed people, considering both the spatial and temporal variability, as discussed in section 4. As an example, Figure 5 presents a zoom-in for most parts of Venezuela showing months of rainfall exposure in colors and the population density as black pixels (for details see [11]). Regions near the Venezuelan coast are in general

and landslides, or that are sometimes located on steep terrains and floodplains.

As part of the same, routine-specific measures are identified at a national level by similar working groups of climatologists and national experts, and suggested to authorities.

A process is now underway to evaluate the use of outlooks and climate risk information directly with the beneficiaries, both for the private and the public sectors, to strengthen decision-making efforts.


**Table 2.** Central American Climate Outlook Forum risk assessment for two crops (maize and beans), for December 2011-February 2012.
