Damage caused by extreme weather events during 2009 and 2010 in Central America mean that climate change is now a high-level policy priority, especially for the Government of El Salvador.

In the first half of 2010, CDKN met President Mauricio Funes and El Salvador’s Minister of the Environment, to discuss the effects of climate change in the country. In late 2010, the Ministry of the Environment and Natural Resources (MARN) committed El Salvador to a National Strategy on Climate Change to jointly develop guidelines with the water, agriculture, education, health and infrastructure sectors to inform the national strategy on climate change in El Salvador.

Now several ministries whose work is particularly affected by climate change, such as Agriculture, Water, Health, Education and Infrastructure, are working together to define key elements of the National Climate Change Strategy and set sectoral policies for adaptation. The project held inter-sectoral workshops with each of the ministries and evaluated how climate change can affect each of them. MARN set guidelines for the national strategy.

CDKN supported MARN in this process by hiring five top sectoral experts, by competitive selection, to assist in:

• Determining top-priority lines of action and sectoral strategies
• Identifying information gaps and research needs
• Assessing existing information and what needed to be included in the sectoral plan
• Foreseeing investment needs and promoting fund-raising
• Outlining one or two strategic projects, to generate and/or analyse information for decision-making.

The national strategy was set up within approximately five months. This process began in the middle of September 2011 and the strategy was ready by March 2012.

To date, we have prepared a national assessment to examine the climate change situation in El Salvador and identified sectoral experts.

Download the strategy here: Winds of change for facing climate change in El Salvador: Foundations for a national strategy
Project funding: £200,000