In Latin America, Farmers Use Microfinance to Fight Climate Change
Sonia Gómez has spent her entire life around agriculture. She grew up on her parents’ plantation in the fertile mountains of Costa Rica before opening her own organic farm several years ago. But that experience did little to prepare her for what has become a dire threat to her business: climate change.
Increasingly severe cycles of drought and flooding – which are being driven by global warming – have wreaked havoc on her crops of chilis, tomatoes and carrots.
“We don’t know when it will rain or when it will be sunny,” says Gómez, whose farm is in the foothills of Costa Rica’s tallest volcano, Irazú. “It is difficult for us, as farmers, to work like this.”
Photo courtesy of World Bank Photo Collection.