Climate Extremes, Food Insecurity, and Migration in Central America: A Complicated Nexus
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By Diego Pons
There is growing evidence that climate extremes are having a devastating impact on agriculture in Central America, affecting the livelihoods of millions of farmers and serving as a driver of migration from the region. Both droughts and floods have been shown to have serious financial impacts in many rural areas. Droughts associated with the El Niño/Southern Oscillation (ENSO) phenomenon caused agricultural losses estimated at U.S. $465 million in 2014 alone. Over the last 30 years, losses associated with drought in the Central American Dry Corridor, which extends from Panama all the way up to southern Mexico, approached U.S. $10 billion, half of which were in the agricultural sector. Financial aid to help the recovery of smallholder agriculturalists and others most affected by these catastrophic climatic events, however, has been limited. The International Fund for Agricu