D On the school playground in Los Tomes a lone child, Jose plays a ball-and-cup . The eight-year-old is the school’s only pupil. His teacher, Nilda, herself a former pupil, says that enrolment (注册入学) has dropped from 65 when she started teaching 43 years ago. Drought has driven families away, she says, “Only the old remain.” Los Tomes is an agricultural cooperative, one of 178 in Chile’s Coquimbo region. Nine communities try to grow wheat and raise sheep and goats on 2,800 hectares. A decade-long drought has made that harder. Hilltop springs where the animals once drank have dried up. As the number of herds (畜群) decrease, farmers’ children moved away to take jobs in cities or at copper mines. 1 . Hope for Los Tomes comes in the form of three 60-square-metre nets stretched between poles on a ridge (山脊) above the community. These nets capture (捕捉) droplets (水珠) from the fog that rolls in from the sea 4 kilometers away. They flow down to two troughs (槽) , from which animals drink. The nets can harvest 650 litres of water a day. 2 . Chile has been investigating fog capture since the 1950s. The fog can be harvested with the help of a coastal mountain range and strong winds. Earlier attempts to turn the mist into usable water failed. In 1990 fog nets at a fishing village captured 8,000 litres a day. Villagers argued about how to share responsibility for maintaining the nets. Climate change, which is expected to decrease rainfall in the region, has inspired a new search for sources of water. The project at Los Tomes is part of an attempt to capture fog. "The question is not whether the fog collectors work but who’s going to provide and maintain them, "says Daniela. At a community north of Los Tomes, three 150-square-metre fog catchers feed a plantation of young olive trees. When the trees mature, they will produce 750 litres of organic olive oil a year. The water source will be a big selling point. A privately owned brewery (啤酒厂) in Pena Blanca was quick to spot fog water’s marketing appeal. 3 . The development fund paid 5.6 million pesos each piece to put up the structures in Los Tomes; when the nets wear out, the villagers will have to replace them at a cost of 100,000 pesos each. Coquimbo has more than 40,000 hectares of land with the right conditions for putting up fog catchers. If it were fully employed, the region could harvest 1,400 litres a second, enough to supply all its drinking water. 4 . That might attract back educated young people from the cities. A chance to develop tourism near the Fray Jorge national park, a rainforest which has survived thanks to its own natural fog-collection mechanism, brought Salvador to his birthplace. “Roots, the Land and the desire to start this brought me back,” says Salvador.