Starving and in debt, farmers whose land has been destroyed by climate-related weather events are becoming migrants.
Twenty-three years old and $30,000 in debt, he said leaving Guatemala is his only option. Years of punishing drought scorched the field he farms with his father, mother, uncle and siblings, shrinking the maize and drying out what precious few kernels grow on the tiny cobs.Unpredictable storms and back-to-back hurricanes last year brought heavy downpours to the hills of western Guatemala, triggering mudslides that buried Mendez’s crops and left pests and disease in their wake.
Experts have said climate change could displace hundreds of millions of people around the world as rising sea levels, hotter temperatures and more frequent extreme weather events From southeast Asia to Central America, the movement of people displaced by climate change could fuel political conflicts between nations, or deepen existing tensions, Depsky added.
While the models predicted a decrease in average annual precipitation, Depsky said there will likely also be an increase in extreme weather events, including severe storms and heavy downpours, due to climate change. It’s not yet clear whether global warming is making hurricanes more frequent overall, but studies have shown that warmer sea surface temperatures are increasing the chances that storms will become major hurricanes when they do form.
In Guatemala, years of severe drought interspersed with tropical storms, Hurricanes Eta and Iota last year and other heavy precipitation events have not only destroyed crops but also battered the land, said Paris Rivera, a climatologist at the Mariano Gálvez University of Guatemala. “It’s not as simple as a drought hits the Dry Corridor and all these farmers pick up their things and move north,” Depsky said. “It’s a lot more nuanced, and the people most impacted because they have the fewest resources to adapt and cope are also the ones that can’t afford to move until it’s a life-or-death situation.”
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