Oaxaca’s Low-Tech Climate Solutions

“The weather changes a lot here during the year due to the high altitude,” says Leoncio Espana Lopez, a local farmer, as he guides us across his land. Like most people who live here, he uses the surnames of both his parents. In winter, he says, high villages like this one
suffer freezing cold weather, and in March and April, drought is a challenge.

Since most of its people make a living from agriculture, in 2012 Santa María Yucuhiti authorities identified climate change as a challenge that needed to be addressed. Today, Llano del Triunfo is one of the villages where people implement low-tech solutions to address the problem.

To help identify and implement these solutions, the municipality approached Espacio de Encuentro de las Culturas Originarias (A Space for Meeting of Original Cultures, or EECO), an Oaxaca-based organization that has been supporting Indigenous and rural communities for the past 15 years. Subsequently, EECO members visited all the communities in the municipality, which is part of Oaxaca’s La Mixteca region and is home to about two-thirds of Mexico’s Indigenous Mixtecs.

“We held meetings and workshops, and based on what we saw and heard, we put together a plan on how to combat climate change,” says Tzinnia Carranza Lopez, a director of EECO. Through this process, the organization learned that one of main issues communities wanted to solve was water scarcity. According to Conagua, Mexico’s water agency, in March 2024 more than half of Oaxaca municipalities were experiencing drought, creating the need for more water storage.

Espana Lopez shows us various projects that emerged from working with EECO. Right by his house, for example, is a concrete rainwater collection tank. “These 10,000-liter water tanks were built in the first phase of cooperation,” says Viviana Ibeth Lopez Jimenez, who lives here and has been working with EECO as a field technician in the municipality for the last seven years. These water tanks are now part of the scenery in Santa María Yucuhiti communities. One can find them by houses, on coffee plantations, and close to gardens, where locals can use the stored water for irrigation.

“It is very helpful because there are no water sources here, and this way we collect rainwater from the roof,” says Fernando Alvaro Lopez Lopez, another farmer, who lives close to Espana Lopez. The water his family collected last year was enough to see him, his wife, and daughter through this year, but they need to be careful about how much they use, he says.