Coffee growers rebuilding houses and
livelihoods infrastructure in Colombia
In January 1999, a moderate earthquake
struck the coffee growing region in the west
of Colombia. The quake caused considerable
damage to houses and coffee infrastructure,
highlighting the underlying vulnerabilities of the
community. This case study demonstrates how
a reconstruction programme led by the coffee
growers themselves successfully combined
reconstruction of livelihoods and housing.
In their favour, the community were well-
organised and self-reliant through the Coffee
Growers’ Federation and its many local branches.
These already provided social, welfare, marketing
and material support to its members. The
Federation were part of the relief effort, and
later, the government’s reconstruction agency
FOREC invited them to become official partners
in rural reconstruction.
The Federation’s first step was to carry out
an assessment of damage and needs. It then
set up a reconstruction fund (FORECAFE) which
combined a contribution from the government,
savings from members, and donations from
within Colombia and abroad. The fund offered a
basic grant of US$4,000 for rebuilding a house,
and an optional loan of a further US$1,000. For
infrastructure, grants of US$2,000 and further
loans of up to US$3,000 were available.
Households themselves were given
responsibility for planning and construction
of their houses and infrastructure. A team
of engineers hired by the Federation helped
householders to draft individual house plans
and specifications. The Federation also provided
lots of information on e.g. earthquake resistant
construction and building maintenance.
Households could choose whether to build the
house themselves, hire a contractor, or combine
these two approaches. Money was paid in
instalments with engineers controlling quality.
The coffee growers were very resourceful in
salvaging components from damaged houses,
devising designs that combined traditional
building methods with modern ones, and in
using their social networks to help negotiate
down materials prices. This helped stretch the
grants, so they were not only able to fully rebuild
their houses, but also rebuild related services
and the coffee infrastructure upon which their
livelihoods depended.
For more information see: Lizerralde (2010)
who bring in their own labourers and materials.
Secondly, people may be resettled away from their
original homes which can make it more difficult
for them to restart their original livelihood. Owner-
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Rebuilding in Columbia: house with a coffee processing
plant at the back
driven reconstruction tends not to suffer so much
from these problems. In this model, home owners
are often paid cash sums to rebuild their homes
which represent a significant injection to the local
economy.
Despite these opportunities, recent
reconstruction experiences suggest that the
linkages between housing reconstruction and
livelihoods have not yet been fully explored. They
are usually limited to local building materials
production, the use of local labour and contractors,
and people’s participation in drawing up house
designs. This is the case even where owner-driven
reconstruction has been implemented extensively
for example following the Gujarat earthquake,
India (2001); the Indian Ocean tsunami (2004)
especially in Aceh, Indonesia, and in Sri Lanka;
and the earthquake in Pakistan (Azad Jammu,
Kashmir, North-West Frontier Province) in 2005.
Further measures to support livelihoods in
reconstruction that have been tried less widely
include:
House being built by local artisans trained in new construction
methods after the tsunami, Matara, Sri Lanka