As the humanitarian community responds to the Covid-19 pandemic, other long-term pressing priorities persist and require innovative solutions. The dry zone which extends across Central America encompassing parts of Guatemala, Honduras, El Salvador, and Nicaragua and a 10-year drought has left 1.4 million people in urgent need of food assistance. The impact of climate change, which includes extreme drought, poses an ever-increasing risk across Central America and contributes not only to food insecurity but also to migration issues that have plagued the continent in recent years.

Guatemala, El Salvador, and Honduras each face secondary risks from the drought. According to the humanitarian assessment agency, ACAPS, the drought in Honduras will continue to reduce production of key staples such as maize crops and harm the production of key exports such as coffee. By June 2020, ACAPS projects that approximately 1.2 million people will suffer from severe acute food insecurity and more than 250,000 will reach the emergency level (IPC 4), which is the second most serious category within the Integrated Phase Classification famine early warning system. This means that households either are suffering from high acute malnutrition and that people are dying due to large food consumption gaps or that the only way to mitigate large food consumption gaps is by resorting to emergency livelihood strategies and liquidating assets. The worst category in the system relates to famine conditions.

The figures are also worrisome in El Salvador, where approximately 432,000 people are food insecure, without the reliable access to a sufficient quantity of food. As many as 50,000 may experience severe food insecurity because of the impact of Covid-19, according to ACAPS.  Meanwhile, in Guatemala, the situation in both the east and west of the country is increasingly tenuous because of damage to crops such as maize, beans, and grains. More than one-third of the country’s population will likely face Emergency (IPC 4) food security outcomes through 2023. 

Beyond the food crisis, a serious migration crisis is occurring across Central America. Drought, violence, and poverty have conspired to force hundreds of thousands from the region to leave their countries, and many seek asylum in the United States. Yet claiming asylum in the United States has become increasingly complicated because of the current Covid-19 outbreak and the closing of borders, along with the Trump administration’s anti-migrant policies. This inability to emigrate in turn has diminished the money that Central American countries can expect from remittances. 

During a trip earlier this year across Central America, I met with a number of local and international NGOs across Central America and learned how the loss of farmland leads to food shortages, loss of income, and often even internal or external migration. Other migration push factors include too few jobs across Central America, while many cities, including San Salvador and Guatemala City, suffer from crime, such as the extortion of businesses and comparatively high murder rates. 

The net result is that a lack of employment opportunities, fear of criminal gangs and crime, and the loss of livelihoods has contributed to a recent rise in attempts to seek asylum in the United States. Attempts to migrate can result in risky journeys, which may involve human traffickers and drug cartels. Women are particularly at risk from sexual violence.

Local Solutions Needed

Given that climate change is contributing to the severity of drought across Central America, at the policy level, globally-coordinated climate mitigation measures are needed. However, local solutions and innovation are also needed.

One likely innovation could involve giving local mayors support so that they can provide leadership and social programs for the smaller villages and towns that the nation state fails to reach. The Guatemalan Association of Mayors and Indigenous Authorities is pursuing something like this. In collaboration with USAID, it is looking for solutions to improve local development and give the young opportunities to gain new skills such as how to use technology and how to produce coffee and prosper. Given that Guatemala’s state control is significantly weaker outside the cities, this is an important development. Ideally, these mayors who are responsible for village and towns in areas impacted by the dry zone would use financing from remittances to boost such programs in these rural areas.

Better still is for NGOs to go local and provide training in specific locations that are vulnerable. For instance, World Vision in collaboration with USAID has developed a program in Centro para Jóvenes en Aguacatán, Guatemala, teaches children technical and other skills that they can use to develop the local economy, perhaps away from farming. This in turn could serve as a pull factor, giving families more opportunities for upward mobility, which can prevent the need for dangerous migration journeys. 

Meanwhile, also in Guatemala, the local NGO Pop No’j, which works with the Mayan indigenous community, provides an array of programs to help locals develop resilience, escape from violence or poverty, and ensure that they are given the agency to move forward. Such programs include fostering female leadership, independence and education.  

Other similar schemes are occurring elsewhere. For example, locals are building new schools themselves so that children no longer need to walk miles to go to school. 

But there is a desperate need to scale these programs up, establishing them across the dry zone. Only by developing these initiatives will citizens be empowered to gain new skills that help them better cope with the drought and food insecurity. Such innovative changes that help people from disadvantaged communities within Central America better support their livelihoods, may lead to more resilient populations, better education, and improved food security.