Earth Day 2024 is an important reminder that the global climate crisis and migration are intrinsically intertwined. While people migrate for a variety of reasons, such as family reunification or to seek asylum from life-threatening factors like state persecution and gang violence, climate change and related environmental crises have also resulted in the forced displacement of many people.
Across the globe, millions of people have been “forced to move due to the impact of climate change,” Diana Martinez Quintana, an immigration and climate justice advocate, wrote in 2022. “An average of 21.5 million people have been displaced annually by weather emergencies since 2010.” With global temperatures continuing to rise, experts with the World Bank estimated that by 2050, as many as 216 million people could be displaced within their own countries due to the impacts of climate change.
CLIMATE CHANGE HAS BEEN A PIVOTAL FACTOR IN SPURRING MIGRATION FROM CENTRAL AMERICA
But as Martinez Quintana and others note, many will also be displaced totally out of their countries due to climate change and related environmental crises. We have seen this in recent migration from Honduras, Guatemala, Nicaragua, and El Salvador to the United States. This “dry corridor of Central America” has been devastated by “an unusual drought for the last five years,” CNN reported in 2019.
“Crops are failing. Starvation is lurking. More than two million people in the region are at risk for hunger, according to an August report from the UN Food and Agriculture Organization.” Edwin Castellanos, reported by CNN as “a global authority on climate change in Central America,” said that “in some of these dry areas, we have seen events of children actually dying out of hunger. So, it is that extreme.”
THE HUMAN COSTS OF CLIMATE CHANGE
We know the names of some of the migrants forced to uproot from their homes due to these factors. Juan de León Gutiérrez, a teen forced to leave Guatemala after a severe drought devastated his village, died while in U.S. custody in 2019. His community “had lost all of its maize and beans in 2017 and 2018 after an unusual drought,” TIME reported in 2019. “Worried about another bad year,” the teen “decided his family could no longer rely on agriculture.” Despite protests from his mother, Juan set out for the U.S. He would lose his life within a matter of weeks, dying of a brain infection at a Texas hospital.
FWD.us noted that droughts were a “pivotal factor” in driving many Central American individuals and families to the U.S. in 2018 and 2019. “Since 2020, the effects of climate change have compounded the already volatile weather conditions.” Edwin Orellano, an official with a Guatemalan agency that coordinates responses to food insecurity, told TIME that people in Central America “live [climate change], and every day we feel it more.”
THE U.S. HAS ACKNOWLEDGED THE EFFECTS OF CLIMATE CHANGE ON MIGRATION
The federal government acknowledged the effects of environmental crises on migration in a historic interagency report in 2021. This report, issued by the White House National Security Council, marked “the first time the U.S. Government is officially reporting on the link between climate change and migration.” The report said climate change “can undermine food, water, and economic security,” which oftentimes leads to “displacement, loss of livelihoods, weakened governments, and in some cases political instability and conflict.”
The federal government has also acknowledged the effects of climate change through its designation of Temporary Protected Status (TPS) for a number of nations across the globe. This humanitarian relief allows immigrants already in the U.S. to continue living and working here when conditions in their home countries make it too dangerous to return. This can include environmental disasters and other “extraordinary and temporary conditions.” In announcing the redesignation of TPS for Ethiopia earlier this month, the Biden administration cited droughts that have, in part “put millions of lives at risk.”
ADVOCATES URGE ACTION FOR MIGRANTS DISPLACED BY CLIMATE CHANGE
Lawmakers, advocates and affected individuals have urged the administration “to build on their successful use of the crucial TPS tool” and redesignate TPS for El Salvador, Honduras, Nepal and Nicaragua, as well as provide a new TPS designation for Guatemala, due to conditions including “recent climate-related events.”
FWD.us notes that climate change “has had a devastating effect on Honduras’ most vulnerable communities, forcing people to migrate to avoid starvation and water shortages. The United Nations has also warned of Honduras’ high exposure and vulnerability to climate change, a prolonged drought that has fueled displacement, and contamination of the scarce water supplies due to mining.” To be sure, there are a number of other countries in regions all over the world that should have their TPS redesignated or designated for the first time because of the impact of climate change on stability, safety and survivability.
CLIMATE CHANGE TAKES A TOLL U.S. IMMIGRANTS, TOO
As Martinez Quintana notes, extreme heat is also taking a toll on communities here at home. For farmworkers, construction workers, and other outdoor laborers – many of whom are immigrants – extreme heat can be a matter of life or death. “In the United States, a historic heatwave in the Pacific Northwest resulted in extreme temperatures and killed nearly 200 people in Oregon and Washington.” Efrain Lopez Garcia, an immigrant from Guatemala, died while working in extreme heat at a Florida farm last year. López García was harvesting a tropical fruit called longan when he told his coworkers that he wasn’t feeling well.
“The workers weren’t sure what to do,” Miami Herald reported. “Their bosses, they said, had never trained them on how to recognize the signs of heat stroke or administer first aid in an emergency.”
While the Biden administration announced “a coordinated, interagency effort to respond to extreme heat” threatening workers and communities, the rule-making process can be slow. But while a number of states have acted on their own to enact their own heat standards, Florida recently took ten steps backward in protecting outdoor workers. Dr. Carlos Martín, Project Director of the Remodeling Futures Program at Harvard’s Joint Center for Housing Studies, said that in just 2018 alone, more than 1.2 million Americans were displaced by environmental disasters.
MODERNIZATION OF OUR IMMIGRATION SYSTEM MUST ALSO TAKE CLIMATE CHANGE INTO ACCOUNT
While creating a pathway to citizenship for millions of undocumented immigrants is a critical and necessary component of updating our outdated immigration system, the U.S. must also take steps to address migration caused by climate change. Advocates like former Housing and Urban Development Secretary Julián Castro have urged “supporting vulnerable countries with investments in resilience” designed to tackle climate change, as well as a “climate refugees” category that includes displaced people excluded from current refugee rules.
“As the largest historical emitter of carbon emissions, the United States has a responsibility to address climate migration and acknowledge it as a form of adaptation,” Martinez Quintana continued. “If people are already being forcibly displaced due to climate change, ensuring their journeys are safe and dignified will improve their chances of survival—as well as those of future generations of people forced to flee their homes due to climate change.”
