While sea level rise poses a threat to all coastal states, and temperature rise has and will continue to contribute to changing ecosystems, in this tropical zone the major threat from climate change is in “global weirding”, the increasing frequency and severity of extreme weather events, including tropical cyclones, extreme rainfall and drought. Though the entire region is classified as having a medium-level economy, national economies vary in strength and stability, from Guatemala (largest) and Panama to Honduras and Nicaragua. In per capita annual income, after Costa Rica ($9500), Central American countries are at roughly $4000 or below.
Emigration from Central America has increased in recent decades, due to economic hardship, violence, and, in a growing trend, as a result of environmental disasters such as persistent drought. A recent survey of asylum-seeking immigrants to the US showed economic anxiety and food insecurity as the dominant concern (92%). Environmental factors were very minor–noted by only 6%, along with violence, at 5%--but it is absolutely the case that many of these concerns overlap when large-scale disruption of the environment and economy occurs.
The Northern Triangle.
Central America’s Northern Triangle (Guatemala, Honduras and El Salvador) is the source of most emigration from the region, with an estimated 407,000 coming northward between 2018 and 2021. A recent crippling drought in the region combined with two historically strong 2020 hurricanes, Eta and Iota, to drive increased numbers of refugees north. Poor nations in environmentally precarious positions–Central America being an active seismic and volcanic zone, subject to frequent tropical cyclones, and with an arid region known as the “Dry Corridor” spanning it from north to south certainly qualifies–have tended, and will continue, to produce most climate refugees as the global warming crisis intensifies.
The Dry Corridor.
This area of the world is immensely complex, both societally, environmentally and in other ways. Climate models predict the Dry Corridor to expand, though not greatly. Though statistical analysis of tropical cyclone strength and frequency has yielded only medium confidence in their increase due to global warming, it is in the combination of factors–sea level rise, plus drought, plus storm activity–that ruinous effects of climate change are already being felt in sensitive regions like Central America. Models show trends toward increasingly extreme weather events increasing in decades to come.
Tomorrow: the Panama Canal and global warming.
Be brave, and be well.
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