“One of the challenges of responding to climate risks is that climate’s impacts and how those impacts interact with existing systems on the ground are so varied and specific to a given place,” said Lauren Risi, Director of the Wilson Center’s Environmental Change & Security Program, at a recent PeaceCon conference panel on climate change, violence, and migration in Central America. “But there is also an opportunity in how we respond to develop more agile, just, and sustaining programs and policies that go beyond a singular focus on responding to climate change and instead build the overall resilience of communities.” 

In the Northern Triangle countries of Guatemala, Honduras, and El Salvador, climate, conflict, and migration are interacting in complex ways, said Risi. The region is the second most disaster-prone in the world and features high levels of political instability, unemployment, social exclusion, and violence. Against that backdrop, said Erin Sikorsky, Director of the Center for Climate and Security, climate shocks like drought or repeated hurricanes can further destabilize communities and limit their ability to respond to socio-political challenges.  

At the same time, inequality and violence in the Northern Triangle contribute to the region’s high vulnerability to climate change, said Susan Kandel, Deputy Director at The Regional Center for Dialogue and Research on Development and Environment (Fundación PRISMA). Vulnerability is a socially-constructed condition resulting from “various social, economic, and political processes,” she said.

Climate-related displacement, in turn, can exacerbate conflict if receiving communities face preexisting challenges and are unprepared to absorb migrants in equitable and just ways.  

Confronting root causes  

“Data from UNHCR shows that over the last decade, weather-related crises have triggered over twice as much displacement as conflict and violence, and since 2010 extreme weather has forced around 21 million people a year to move,” said Sikorsky. While migration is often a positive response strategy to climate stressors, it can prompt or worsen instability and insecurity when it is combined with other factors.  

There is also a deeper, fundamental issue that needs to be acknowledged and addressed when discussing climate-migration dynamics—our current model of consumption, said Miriam Miranda, leader of the Black Fraternal Organization of Honduras. “Now the climate is telling us: there is a danger for humanity. It is not a question of changing the climate, it’s about changing the consumption model…It’s time to pay attention to how we consume, what we consume, because resources are being depleted.”  

Extractive, unsustainable models of consumption have played a key role in displacing communities in the Northern Triangle, Miranda said. “We cannot forget that natural resources are being depleted, that today more than ever there is a dispute over territories and over the control of natural resources.” 

“There is a trend in the countries to promote economic growth through extractive activities and industries,” said Kandel. Funding mechanisms in the region have historically favored conventional strategies of growth and development tied to extractive megaprojects that undermine resilience-building efforts. These activities permanently transform land use patterns in the region and have been associated with violent dispossession of land and resources as well as the criminalization of environmental defenders, said Kandel. The resulting strain on local livelihoods is contributing to the waves of outmigration in recent years.  

This reality is playing out in Miranda’s home, the Afro-Indigenous Garífuna community on the Atlantic coast of Honduras. “As a coastal community, we are very vulnerable to the climate crisis,” said Miranda. But climate vulnerability in the area is compounded by pollution from thermoelectric projects and tourist megaprojects, as well as conflict with illegal actors. “In our community,” she said, “we aren’t just confronting projects that are displacing the community; we are also confronting criminal and narcotrafficking groups who own large swaths of land for African palm production.”  

Climate mitigation efforts have also exacerbated regional injustice, conflict, and migration. “Renewable energy projects are highly contentious in the Northern Triangle,” said Kandel. In many cases, local communities cannot access the energy generated by hydroelectric projects in or adjacent to their territories, said Miranda. Biofuel initiatives involving sugarcane and African palm oil have been associated with land grabbing and consequent conflicts.   

If we don’t understand these dynamics, said Miranda, “we will continue the vicious cycle of analyzing the climate crisis without taking into account the root cause.”  

Development for whom? 

To address the underlying issues, said Miranda, governments need to shift investments away from unsustainable growth models and instead promote wellbeing. We need to critically analyze development efforts by asking who they are serving, and to what end, she said. Responding to climate-conflict-migration challenges constructively requires that Indigenous and local communities be in the driver’s seat, said Kandel. Territorial actors in the Northern Triangle have long spearheaded nature-based climate action through initiatives in food sovereignty, water rights, community forest management, and other areas. Greater access to climate financing is one way frontline defenders can scale up these effective, locally-led resilience efforts.  

Miranda also pointed to the important role of women in charting a path forward. “My community is matrilineal,” she said. “Women play a pivotal role, not just in participating in meetings but actually in making decisions. Over the past decade, women are the ones that have been at the front of the fight defending water, seeds, working to build a new model with the future humanity in mind, because we recognize that what has been built thus far is not serving us.”  

“The Indigenous peoples, the Afro communities, the local communities are here because we have been protecting and taking care of resources. And yet, even though these resources exist because we have protecting them, we are called ‘anti-development,” said Miranda. “When we are defending resources, we are defending life.”   

Read More:   

• The “push” factors facing Central American farmers. 
• It is likely that cities will be the favored destination for future internal and cross-border migration.
• A recent issue of the Wilson Quarterly, “Humanity in Motion” investigates displacement today.
• Climate change will cause more migration, but it doesn’t have to scare anyone. 
• Urban-focused strategies exist to maximize the benefits and minimize the risks posed by displacement as it trends longer-term and more urban than rural.