Climate Change Impacts Border Crisis—In Guatemala the Question Is Not Whether But When Someone Will Leave for U.S.

In denying the damaging and catastrophic effects of climate change, U.S. Administration policy is overlooking a significant factor that is driving migration to the southern border. In a report that focuses on the impact of climate change on subsistence farming in Guatemala, there is discussion of the motivation for those migrating to the U.S. from this region.  Past U.S. efforts, now terminated, in pilot programs designed to help villages respond to climate change, are highlighted. Extreme poverty might be the primary reason people leave Guatemala for the U.S., and climate change is “intensifying all the existing factors.”

By Jonathan Blitzer, The New Yorker, April 3, 2019

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