Central America could lose as much as $314 billion dollars per year by 2100 due to the effects of climate change, according to a recently published study. The study’s authors note that the economic effects of the loss of biome stability in the jungles and forests across the region could be catastrophic.
“The forests are not able to deliver the same ecosystem services as without climate change,” co-author Marc Hanewinkel, chair of Forestry Economics and Planning at the University of Freiburg in Germany, told Mongabay. “And this is related to a high economic cost, which is what we tried to estimate.”
Central America could lose as much as $314 billion dollars per year by 2100 due to the effects of climate change, according to a recently published study.
The study, which was published by the journal Nature Communications, sought to project what the economic costs of climate change-caused shifts in forests and wildlife would be. According to the study, Belize, Honduras, and Nicaragua were among the countries that would be most economically affected by the loss of forests. But these impacts will stretch across the region, exacerbate inequalities, and increase migration.
According to the report, climate change means that flora and fauna are unable to respond to stark changes in the environment. Deforestation, too, in countries such as Guatemala and Honduras, has resulted in vast swaths of the forests being cut to make way for cattle ranching, the production of African palm oil, and mining activities, putting local species at risk.
Photograph by Mike Peel (www.mikepeel.net)., CC BY-SA 4.0
Basic food items from the Casa Museo del Campesino, 2022.
Added to that, the ever-growing region known as the dry corridor, which stretches from central Guatemala down into Honduras, has been increasingly affected by intense storms, as witnessed during the hurricane seasons between 2020 and 2022, as well as severe heat.
Costa Rica continues to lead the region in responding to the effects of climate change, in spite of concerns following the 2022 election of Rodrigo Chaves, a rightwing economist. Yet, as the study highlights, climate change could mean a shift for the flora and fauna of the country, which might dry up its majestic cloud forests.
Beyond economic impacts, the human and social impacts of climate change have already begun to manifest. It has pushed many people from rural communities to migrate in order to earn the money in order to support their families and to supplement losses due to recurring crop failures.
Tomas Castelazo, CC BY 3.0
Corm farmer in Guatemala, 2007.
Countries like Guatemala have among the highest rates of child malnutrition in the hemisphere, and small farmers have already seen their crops affected by either the excess of rains or irregularities in rain patterns. Families will often go with only one meal a day, and many farmers have seen their crops completely fail.
“As a product of climate change, precisely these cycles [of sowing and harvesting] change completely making it no longer possible to produce; a farmer risks planting, but can not really harvest,” Elvis Caballeros, a climate risk researcher at the Guatemalan Rafael Landívar University, tells The Progressive. “This affects the levels of malnutrition.”
In spite of the impacts the country faces from environmental disruption, climate change did not appear among the major campaign issues during the lead up to Guatemala’s 2023 presidential election that took place on June 25.
As the country heads into an August runoff between conservative frontrunner Sandra Torres of the National Unity of Hope (UNE) Party, and progressive social democrat Bernardo Arévalo of the Movimiento Semilla (or “seed movement”) party, only Arévalo has addressed the environment within his proposals. Torres did not address climate issues at all in this campaign, nor in her campaign promises during her previous attempt at the presidency in 2019.
“[Torres and UNE] do not have any proposals related to the topic of the environment,” Caballeros says. “[In comparison], the Movimiento Semilla Party [addresses] even economic [environmental] issues that really touch some very important topics.”
These projects will also generate much needed employment in rural communities.
Among Arévalo’s proposals is investing nearly one billion dollars into the recuperation of forests, which as the Nature Communications report suggests, could assist in mitigating the impacts of climate change.
“[They will be] reinforcing the programs that already exist,” Caballeros says. “The protection of forests, the protection of water resources, the protection of the environment—at least the Moviemiento Semilla party touches on these issues within its government plan [and] how this could impact society.”
He adds that these types of projects will also generate much needed employment in rural communities.
“Encouraging these issues generates employment in rural areas. This is very important,” Caballeros explains, “because people need these jobs.”