A Hidden Crisis: Climate Change is Ravaging Central America

While the world watched in horror as Hurricane Fiona ravaged Puerto Rico and Bermuda this week, it was easy to miss another climate-related emergency. This one is not due to a single massive event, like a hurricane. Instead, it is an ongoing, worsening crisis, one which is devastating Central America.

Heavy rains are worsening, says the International Rescue Committee, and along with them comes a deepening humanitarian catastrophe that hits on many fronts.

“Climate change contributed directly to the crisis of 1.5 million internally displaced people in Central America in 2020 and it is a direct cause of economic decline and food insecurity,” said Meg Galas, IRC’s director for northern Central America. “In 2021, more than 15 million Central Americans experienced hunger.”

In Central America, an already impoverished part of the world, climate change-induced disasters are making people even poorer. Honduras has a poverty rate of 73 percent, according to government data, and 60 percent of Guatemalans live below the poverty line. Heavy rains and floods are decimating livelihoods, like those that rely on farming, fishing, and forestry.

There have also been many droughts in the region since 2014, says the United States Institute for Peace. These have also contributed to agricultural destruction, with crop losses totaled at 70 percent or more during a number of harvests.

All of this results in people needing to move to survive, contributing to the migrant crisis at the U.S. border. Instead of moving within their own countries, many Central Americans are fleeing to other countries to distance themselves from hunger, as well as gang violence and government corruption.

“Droughts were likely a key driver of large increases in family migration from Honduras and Guatemala to the United States in 2018 and 2019,” Sarah Bermeo, a professor of public policy and political science at Duke University, told USIP. “Many of those arriving in the United States during this time came from rural areas, including the highlands of Guatemala, where indigenous communities make up a large portion of the population. They left their farms because they could no longer feed their families if they remained.”

Also during climate disasters, a need for emergency and health services go up — but so does a lack of access to such services. Women are unable to get maternal and reproductive health care, as in Pakistan during this month’s massive flooding. A week after the floods began, one-third of the country was under water. At the same time, the United Nations Population fund said that 73,000 women in the affected areas were estimated to give birth in September, and that 650,000 pregnant women needed health services.

Sexualized violence and domestic abuse are also consequences of natural disasters. Cramped conditions in shelters, a constant search for food and firewood, as well as a generalized kind of chaos all cause backlash against the most vulnerable people, such as women and children.

There are, however, solutions to these nightmares. For instance, Bermeo points to the Water Smart Agriculture project, run by the Catholic Relief Services. The project collaborates with Central Americans to manage water and soil to maximize crops. Bermeo says that the initiative “is showing impressive early results. Farmers are being supplied with information about soil quality and farming techniques so that they can make decisions about their own farms that make them more resilient to climate change. The project encourages farmers to participate in all stages of the program and to train other farmers.”

IRC has three major goals to help Central Americans as climate change intensifies. The group recommends: “regional harmonization of migration and protection policies,” a greater engagement of non-U.S. donors to humanitarian response plans, and “utilizing lessons learned from regional initiatives responding to humanitarian concerns in other parts of the world.”

“As the needs of families in Honduras, Guatemala and El Salvador continue to grow due to climate change, increased support from the international community is essential to sustain an expanded humanitarian response that helps people survive, recover and rebuild their lives at home,” IRC’s Gala said.