“It is never too late”
Hope in spite of Super El Niño

The Amos Climate Fellowship supports women activists and land defenders in Mexico and Central America.

“The truth is that Super El Niño is really affecting us,” Silvia Argueta from El Salvador, a participant in the Amos Climate Fellowship

During the latest Fellowship meeting in June, the conversation kept returning to the same subject: the climate is changing. Fourteen women from different countries described strikingly similar scenes — prolonged droughts, unseasonal rainfall, flooding and uncertainty.

This year, experts have warned of the arrival of a “Super El Niño”, and its consequences are already being felt across many of the territories where Fellowship participants work. El Niño is a natural climate phenomenon linked to the warming of surface waters in the Pacific Ocean — but climate change is intensifying its effects.

An intense period of drought

Litzy Picado from Nicaragua shared her fear at witnessing the extreme drought in the Jinotega region.

“I was left devastated because I saw those coffee plantations completely dried up. It looked as if someone had sprayed them with a chemical product. The truth is, I was terrified. Nothing like this has ever been seen before — Jinotega is usually one of the coolest regions in Nicaragua.” Silvia Argueta from El Salvador described her family’s struggle to keep newly planted trees alive

“We held our traditional ceremony to give thanks for the rain because winter was supposed to be starting, but suddenly the rain just vanished.”

In many Indigenous communities, ceremonies like this don’t just express local spirituality — they mark agricultural cycles and the connection to the land. Confident the rains were coming, Silvia’s family planted 300 saplings on their plot and prepared the ceremonial welcome. But when the rains didn’t come, they had to choose what to prioritise — water for their new saplings and animals, or water for their own domestic needs.

“Around eleven saplings died anyway, but only because we strictly prioritised saving water by not using the bathroom.”

Silvia Argueta from El Salvador, who is facing a severe, prolonged drought in her community

Rebeca Gomez, also from El Salvador, faced similar hardship. She’s in the process of establishing a butterfly sanctuary to serve as an ecotourism hub, and the drought forced her to dig a well to water the host plants.

“The well had only just been dug, and it was already on the verge of running completely dry,” Rebeca said.

Extreme rainfall and flooding

In Costa Rica, extreme drought was immediately followed by torrential rain.

The mangroves that Astrid Peraza and her community had been planting along the Puntarenas coast were hit hard by storms. A severe waterspout struck the site they’d chosen for a mangrove nursery, and rough seas washed vast amounts of plastic pollution and waste onto the shore, forcing the community into constant clean-ups. Tidal surges flooded parts of the town centre too.

Alma Zamora from Puebla in central Mexico described the impact of heavy rains arriving early, in April instead of June. The storms left her community without electricity for days, and homes are now suffering from severe damp. Livelihoods have been hit hard too, as the downpours washed away crops and plants. Alma’s mother, a local beekeeper, had to suspend her honey harvest in May.

“She was terrified her bees would die or be blown away by the gale-force winds,” Alma told us.

Ana Gabriela de los Santos from Tabasco, a region that faces recurring annual floods

In Tequixquiac, also in Mexico, Argelia Duarte’s community saw the rains arrive even earlier. This helped prevent wildfires on the hillsides where she and her community mobilise each year to tackle the blazes — but it also overwhelmed the drainage system, flooding streets across several neighbourhoods.

In south-eastern Mexico, in Tabasco, Ana Gabriela de los Santos explained how marginalised communities bear the brunt of the heaviest downpours.

“There is flooding every year in Tabasco. It’s just that they strategically choose to flood certain communities to protect the main city from going under.”

Because flooding can’t be avoided entirely, the government’s approach in Ana Gabriela’s region has been to create “sacrifice zones” — cutting channels to divert floodwater away from areas of high economic value, like the city of Villahermosa or the region’s oil industry hubs. As a result, the floods end up devastating the most marginalised communities instead.

Climate uncertainty

One of her biggest challenges is predicting exactly when the rains will come, or when a dry spell will hit. This uncertainty has forced her community to rely on external irrigation systems.

But what can communities do without access to irrigation?

“We can no longer rely on seasonal weather patterns. No matter how much you try to predict or calculate it, there is simply no way of knowing what it will be like.” Ana Gabriela Puc

In Ingrid Obando’s community in Nicaragua, people simply aren’t planting crops — even though agriculture is their main source of income. Their land was fully prepared for sowing, but the uncertainty forced them to hold back rather than risk losing an entire harvest.

“This has left us incredibly worried, because it’s clearly going to lead to severe food shortages,” Ingrid said.

Creating solutions in communities

Leticia Carpio is from San Marcos, in the Guerrero region of Mexico — an area highly vulnerable to hurricanes and storms. When they hit, the community is often cut off from the outside world as power and internet connections fail. The neighbouring community of Jimenez, just a twenty-minute drive away, is usually hit hardest: surrounded by three rivers that often burst their banks and block the roads.

“We decided to work with that community because it’s the most isolated,” Leticia told us.

Leticia Carpio from Mexico, whose region is highly vulnerable to hurricanes

Leticia’s project will develop an emergency communication system, led by local women, through Indigenous Community Technologies (ICT). That way, the community won’t be left cut off during emergencies. She hopes the installation will be complete by August, ready for hurricane season.

Drought solutions are becoming more and more urgent too, and Litzy Picado is running a project she hopes will offer a long-term answer.

“We’ve never seen anything like this before, and I don’t know what’s going to happen this year. But we have to find a solution, or at least try.” Litzy Picado

She’s training women and girls from her community, San Antonio de Sisle, in the use and production of mycelium, which helps soil retain water. Richer, mycelium-fed soil helps plants withstand the long droughts brought on by El Niño. The community is increasingly convinced it’s a viable way to prepare the soil and plants before drought sets in.

Women and girls in Nicaragua learning to use mycelium to improve soil quality

Climate change doesn’t need a visa

“How lucky that none of that is happening here.”

I overheard a member of the audience say this during York Climate Narratives, an event where I took part in sharing stories about climate change alongside people from other countries in the Global South. We’d spoken about disappearing rivers, deforestation, cities without water and territories caught in the crosshairs of the climate crisis — stories strikingly similar to the ones I’d heard just weeks earlier from Fellowship participants.

What that audience member said made me think of Chahim Vázquez, from the second cohort of the Climate Fellowship, who told us during our last visit to Guatemala:

“This is not only for the peoples of Guatemala but for the peoples of the world, because we live on the same Earth. The day the rivers in Guatemala disappear, the world will end.”

A few weeks later, I found myself stranded at King’s Cross. Record temperatures had buckled the train tracks near Stevenage, leading to widespread cancellations. As I waited hours for an alternative route, my mind drifted back to the audience member’s comment, and to Chahim’s warning.

Borders make us believe that crises are neatly compartmentalised — as though climate change needed a visa to enter the United Kingdom. But what happens in Nicaragua, Guatemala, Costa Rica or Mexico is by no means foreign to this land. We share the same atmosphere, the same oceans and, although the impacts look different, the same climate future.

Continuing to sustain life

Wherever we are, we face a shared challenge: sustaining life in an increasingly unpredictable climate.

The testimonies of the women in the Fellowship remind us that El Niño isn’t merely a scientific projection — it’s a reality actively disrupting daily life in local communities.

In the face of this uncertainty, Fellowship participants are already building community-led solutions. From emergency communication systems and mangrove restoration to mycelium-based soil recovery and pollinator protection, their work shows that adaptation grows from local knowledge and women’s leadership.

Their stories are a reminder that climate change knows no borders. Listening to these voices isn’t an act of distant solidarity — it’s a way of understanding the shared world we inhabit, and recognising that solutions can emerge from the territories hit hardest.

In uncertain times, continuing to create alternative futures is itself a form of resistance.

I’ll leave the last word to Litzy, just before we said goodbye:

“It is never too late.”