5 challenges to face climatic extremes

Growers, agribusiness and the region have in their hands the possibility of promoting initiatives in the medium and long term.

1Topographic plans and risk maps. The topographic plans of each property allow to identify the vulnerable points to the entrance of flood waters, their permanence sites and points where obstacles can be presented for their evacuation. Therefore, they offer key information for taking effective action in a timely manner.
It is urgent to have updated topographic plans at the property level and generate risk maps, with which the impact of the actions carried out from the property, social, economic and environmental points of view can be analyzed.

2Protection strips. The protection strips comprise the area near the edges of the channels. Among them are the madreviejas, which are defined as relics of old river channels that in times of large flows serve as storage space. That means that by nature they will always be floodable.
Therefore, maintaining the protection strips is essential to avoid the impact of floods on crops close to rivers and to guarantee the stability of the channels and surrounding land.

3Dykes, in order. The dikes or 'jarillones' are essential to avoid the overflow of the rivers when the flow exceeds the hydraulic capacity of the channel during the floods. However, since they are engineering works that can impact an entire region, they must comply with all engineering specifications to offer an effective solution, otherwise they can cause greater damage.
In this sense, it is necessary that the design and construction of levees comply with the regulations and the permission of the environmental authority. As for the dykes already built, there must be a program of periodic inspections, in order to detect possible causes of failure (anthills, trees, cracks) to correct them in time.

4Regional drainage projects. Drainage systems are important to avoid the impact of excess water on the land, but these projects must first of all be regional in nature, since they require planning at the level of basins or micro-basins so as not to generate impacts between properties and guarantee their sustainability.

5 Multipurpose regulation reservoirs. The Regional Autonomous Corporation of Valle del Cauca (CVC), through project 1789 on flow regulation options to face climate change, proposes the construction of four reservoirs in the sectors of the La Leona and Vilela streams - Mediacanoa river; the Claro and Jamundí rivers; the El Buey and Chambimbal streams; and the Timba River.
These options already have feasibility studies, which is an advance to promote their construction before the National Government; but it is required to unite capacities on the part of the political, union, academic and public sectors of the region to make them a reality.