{"id":17823,"date":"2019-09-06T02:01:15","date_gmt":"2019-09-06T02:01:15","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.lifeandnews.com\/articles\/?p=17823"},"modified":"2019-09-07T08:01:17","modified_gmt":"2019-09-07T08:01:17","slug":"how-climate-change-is-driving-emigration-from-central-america","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.lifeandnews.com\/articles\/how-climate-change-is-driving-emigration-from-central-america\/","title":{"rendered":"How climate change is driving emigration from Central America"},"content":{"rendered":"

Miranda Cady Hallett<\/a>, University of Dayton<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n

Clouds of dust rose behind the wheels of the pickup truck as we hurtled over the back road in Palo Verde, El Salvador. When we got to the stone-paved part of the road, the driver slowed as the truck heaved up and down with the uneven terrain. Riding in the back bed of the truck, Ruben (not his real name) and I talked while we held on tight, sitting on sacks of dried beans that he was taking to market.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt doesn\u2019t come out right,\u201d he said, \u201cit just doesn\u2019t pay anymore to work the land. I take out a loan for seed, and then I can\u2019t count on making it back to pay off my debt.\u201d<\/p>\n

Ruben told me then, for the first time, that he planned to save up his money to migrate out of El Salvador. His story is playing out across Central America among many migrants and would-be migrants.<\/p>\n

When I spoke with Ruben, it was 2017, nearly 20 years after I had first spent time in his community, a coffee cooperative in El Salvador\u2019s central highlands founded in the 1990s. Over those two decades, the cooperative\u2019s hopes and dreams of a sustainable livelihood producing coffee for a global market have been dashed.<\/p>\n

Rising global temperatures, the spread of crop disease and extreme weather events have made coffee harvests unreliable<\/a> in places like El Salvador. On top of that, market prices<\/a> are unpredictable.<\/p>\n

In the back of the pickup truck that day, we talked about gangs too. There was increasing criminal activity in the town nearby, and some young people in the town were being harassed and recruited. But this was a relatively new issue for the community, layered on top of the persistent problem of the ecological crisis.<\/p>\n

As a cultural anthropologist who studies factors of displacement in El Salvador, I see how Ruben\u2019s situation is reflective of a much broader global phenomenon of people leaving their homes, directly or indirectly due to climate change and the degradation of their local ecosystem. And as environmental conditions are projected to get worse under current trends, this raises unresolved legal questions on the status and security of people like Ruben and his family.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>
This man lives in the Dry Corridor on the Pacific Coast of Central America, an area that has suffered high rates of poverty and malnutrition.<\/span>
\nTodd Post\/Bread for the World Institute<\/a>, CC BY-NC-ND<\/a><\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Land and livelihood<\/h2>\n

Migration from Central America has gotten a lot of attention<\/a> these days, including the famous migrant caravans<\/a>. But much of it focuses on the way migrants from this region \u2013 especially El Salvador, Guatemala, Nicaragua and Honduras \u2013 are driven out by gang violence<\/a>, corruption<\/a> and political upheaval<\/a>.<\/p>\n

These factors are important<\/a> and require a response from the international community<\/a>. But displacement driven by climate change<\/a> is significant too.<\/p>\n