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Central America
The land and people of Central America are extremely susceptible to the effects of climate change and severe weather. A large portion of this region lies along the “Dry Corridor”, an arid region that includes areas of Panama, Honduras, Nicaragua, El Salvador and the Dominican Republic. Natural weather patterns such as the El Niño Southern Oscillation, or simply “El Niño”, can make dry conditions in this region more extreme. The Dry Corridor is very susceptible to drought, which has led to food insecurity, which has led to migration from the region through Mexico to the United States. Wet periods following an El Niño weather event can bring torrential rain that results in major flooding and catastrophic landslides. Multiple studies have shown that climate change could result in more frequent extreme El Niños.

Several weather events in the 21st century have displayed the devastating effects of the El Niño weather pattern and have led to mass displacement and hunger crises. In 2009, extreme drought hit the Dry Corridor, followed by Hurricane Ida. The storm affected forty thousand people in Nicaragua and left thirteen thousand homeless. El Salvador received up to seventeen inches of rain in two days, causing massive landslides which killed 190 people and displaced ten thousand more. In 2015, due to the strongest El Niño in recorded history, hundreds of thousands of Central American subsistence farmers lost a portion or the entirety of their crops. Throughout 2014 and 2015, El Salvador alone saw over $100 million in damage to crops. In Guatemala, the drought caused a food shortage that left 3 million people struggling to feed themselves, according to a 2015 report authored by the International Organization for Migration (IOM) and the United Nations’ World Food Programme (WFP). The Guatemalan government declared a state of emergency as the drought and high food prices led to a hunger crisis during which chronic malnutrition was common among children. By the end of June 2016, it was estimated by the United Nations’ Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) that 3.5 million people required humanitarian assistance across El Salvador, Guatemala and Honduras.

The IOM/WFP report also showed the ways in which food insecurity led to migration from El Salvador, Guatemala, and Honduras. Pointing out that there are millions of Central Americans living abroad, with over 80% in the United States, the report stated there is a positive correlation between food insecurity and migration from these countries. It also confirmed that crises related to hunger and violence are exacerbated when the region heads into the second consecutive year of an extreme drought. In their conclusions, the authors definitively found that food insecurity has led to migration in these countries. Despite this evidence, the ramifications of extreme weather and climate change have rarely been discussed in relation to Central American migrants and it requires more research to prove their direct link.