Ecuador on red alert for El Niño, facing the familiar question: Have we learned anything?

Ecuador has moved to a red alert for El Niño, meaning the climate event is already under way. The country is no longer only preparing for what might happen. It is preparing to endure what comes next.

There is little time for grand infrastructure projects. Building large-scale flood-control works within weeks is impossible, and no red alert can reverse a risk-management system that has historically reacted to disasters instead of preventing them. But authorities can still activate protocols, coordinate resources and identify the places where damage is known to recur.

Projects including Bulubulu, Cañar, Naranjal and other multipurpose schemes have contained major flooding in Guayas, El Oro, Cañar and Manabí. Other coastal areas remain vulnerable. Babahoyo spent 15 days under water in 2026, and the question for central and local governments is not whether the pattern will return, but what they will do differently this time.

The Sierra faces a different threat and often receives less public attention: drought, forest-fire risk and pressure on food production because of insufficient rain. Focusing only on coastal floods would leave that risk poorly addressed. Authorities still need to explain which alternative roads will operate if main routes flood, how food will reach markets and what will happen to producers who lose their crops. The final quarter of 2026 will show how prepared Ecuador is for what projections describe as a “Super El Niño.”