CENTRAL AMERICAN COFFEE FARMERS´ MIGRATION TO THE USA: AN ANALYSIS OF THE MULTICAUSAL NATURE OF CLIMATE-DRIVEN MIGRATION
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.17501/2513258X.2023.7101Keywords:
climate change, migration, central america, coffee, USAAbstract
Unauthorized migration from Honduras, Guatemala, and El Salvador to the United States has become a major worldwide problem in the last 10 years. To disentangle the causes of recent Central American migration, this paper's research on the multi-causal nature of population migrations takes into account economic development, political instability, violence, and crime’s impacts, and quickly changing gender roles. Drought has lately been researched as a major driver of migration in Central America's Dry Corridor by researchers and politicians, notably among coffee farmers in the region who have been badly impacted by extreme heat and lack of rain. Climate change intensifies the effects of natural disasters, thus acting as a force multiplier. Using secondary sources, including government reports, non-governmental organizations’ briefs, and academic papers to analyze Salvadoran, Guatemalan, and Honduran coffee production, the purpose of this paper is to look into the influence of climate change as a stimulus for migration. Thousands of individuals who rely on coffee cultivation have already had their livelihoods destroyed and have been forced to migrate. With rising temperatures in the region, which is one of the most sensitive to the effects of climate change, the future is unknown. The study begins with an examination of the climate change-migration nexus, which is followed by an examination of the impacts of climate change on coffee production in this region. This paper will discuss how climatic factors along with political instability and the impact of violence explain recent Central American migration behavior to progress toward a comprehensive explanation of climate-driven migration
Downloads
References
Adhikari, M., Isaac, E. L., Paterson, R. R. M., & Maslin, M. A. (2020). A review of potential impacts of climate change on coffee cultivation and mycotoxigenic fungi. Microorganisms, 8(10), 1625.
Audebert, C. (2017). The recent geodynamics of Haitian migration in the Americas: refugees or economic migrants?. Revista brasileira de estudos de população, 34, 55-71.
Baca, M., Läderach, P., Haggar, J., Schroth, G., & Ovalle, O. (2014). An integrated framework for assessing vulnerability to climate change and developing adaptation strategies for coffee growing families in Mesoamerica. PloS one, 9(2), e88463.
Barrios R (2017) Governing affect: neoliberalism and disaster reconstruction. University of Nebraska Press, Lincoln.
Bergholt, D., & Lujala, P. (2012). Climate-related natural disasters, economic growth, and armed civil conflict. Journal of peace research, 49(1), 147-162.
Biden Jr, J. R. (2021, February). Executive Order 14010: Creating a Comprehensive Regional Framework to Address the Causes of Migration, to Manage Migration Throughout North and Central America, and to Provide Safe and Orderly Processing of Asylum Seekers at the United States Border. In United States. Office of the Federal Register. United States. Office of the Federal Register.
Birpinar, M. E., & Tuğaç, Ç. (2022). Climate Security and Migration. Insight Turkey, 24(1), 105-134.
Bhutia, T. K., Lotha, G., & Petruzzello, M. (2018, march 19). Coffee Rust Disease. Retrieved from Encyclopedia Britannica: https://www.britannica.com/science/coffee-rust
Briones, F. (2022). Central America: Lessons and Challenges from El Niño 2015–16 in Central America. In El Niño Ready Nations and Disaster Risk Reduction: 19 Countries in Perspective (pp. 309-322). Cham: Springer International Publishing.
Carlarne, C. P., Gray, K. R., & Tarasofsky, R. (Eds.). (2016). The Oxford handbook of international climate change law. Oxford University Press.
Clemens M (2021b) Violence, development, and migration waves: evidence from Central American child migrant apprehensions. Journal of Urban Economics, Vol. 124, July 2021b, https:// doi. org/ 10. 1016/j. jue.2021.103355
De Clercq, M., Vats, A., & Biel, A. (2018). Agriculture 4.0: The future of farming technology. Proceedings of the World Government Summit, Dubai, UAE, 11-13.
Eakin, H., Tucker, C., & Castellanos E. (2005). Market Shocks and Climate Variability: The Coffee Crisis in Mexico, Guatemala, and Honduras. Mountain Research and Development, 25(4), 304.
Eklund, L., Romankiewicz, C., Brandt, M., Doevenspeck, M., & Samimi, C. (2016). Data and methods in the environment-migration nexus: a scale perspective. DIE ERDE–Journal of the Geographical Society of Berlin, 147(2), 139-152.
Frank-Vitale, A., Heidbrink, L. (2021). The real root cause of Central American migration. In These Times. https://inthesetimes.com/article/border-crisis-imperialismroot causes-central-america.
Gotlieb, Y., Pérez-Briceño, P. M., Hidalgo, H. G., & Alfaro, E. J. (2019). The Central American Dry Corridor: a consensus statement and its background. Revista Yu’am, 3(5), 42-51.
Green, F., & Healy, N. (2022). How inequality fuels climate change: The climate case for a Green New Deal. One Earth.
Haggar, J., & Schepp, K. (2012). Coffee and Climate Change: Impacts and options for adaptation in Brazil, Guatemala, Tanzania, and Vietnam. London, England: University of Greenwich Natural Resource Institute
Harvey, C. A., Saborio-Rodríguez, M., Martinez-Rodríguez, M. R., Viguera, B., Chain-Guadarrama, A., Vignola, R., & Alpizar, F. (2018). Climate change impacts and adaptation among smallholder farmers in Central America. Agriculture & Food Security, 7(1), 1-20.
International Coffee Organization . (2018). Total Exports by all Exporting Countries . London, England: International Coffee Organization.
Klepp, S. (2017). Climate change and migration. In Oxford research encyclopedia of climate science.
Knox, V. (2018). An Atomised Crisis: Reframing displacement caused by crime and violence in El Salvador. Geneva, Switzerland: Internal Displacement Monitoring Center.
Knox, V. (2019). A Web of Violence: Crime, Corruption, and displacement in Honduras. Geneva, Switzerland: Internal Displacement Monitoring Center.
Lashermes, P., Andrade, A. C., & Etienne, H. (2008). Genomics of coffee one of the world’s largest traded commodities. Genomics of tropical crop plants, 203-226.
Lingle, T. R., & Menon, S. N. (2017). Cupping and grading—Discovering character and quality. In The craft and science of coffee (pp. 181-203). Academic Press.
Lynch, C. (2019). The Impacts of Warming Coffee: The Climate Change-Coffee-Migration Nexus in the Northern Triangle of Central America.
Lynch, C. J. (2020). Millions Displaced Tomorrow: A New Framework for Climate Migrants.
Malhi, Y., Franklin, J., Seddon, N., Solan, M., Turner, M. G., Field, C. B., & Knowlton, N. (2020). Climate change and ecosystems: Threats, opportunities and solutions. Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B, 375(1794), 20190104.
Ogundeji, B. A., Olalekan-Adeniran, M. A., Orimogunje, O. A., Awoyemi, S. O., Yekini, B. A., Adewoye, G. A., & Bankole, I. A. (2019). Climate hazards and the changing world of coffee pests and diseases in Sub-Saharan Africa. Journal of Experimental Agriculture International, 41(6), 1-12.
National Security Council (2021) U.S. Strategy for Addressing the Root Causes of Migration from Central America. U.S. Government Report. https://www.whitehouse.gov/wp-content/uploads/ 2021/07/Root-Causes-Strategy.pdf.
Panebianco, S. (2022). Climate Change Migration enters the Agenda of the Wider Mediterranean: the Long Way towards Global Governance. Border Crises and Human Mobility in the Mediterranean Global South: Challenges to Expanding Borders, 145-175.
Parks, B. C., & Roberts, J. T. (2006). Globalization, vulnerability to climate change, and perceived injustice. Society and Natural Resources, 19(4), 337-355.
Piguet, E. (2022). Linking climate change, environmental degradation, and migration: An update after 10 years. Wiley Interdisciplinary Reviews: Climate Change, 13(1), e746.
Pörtner, H. O., Roberts, D. C., Poloczanska, E. S., Mintenbeck, K., Tignor, M., Alegría, A., ... & Okem, A. (2022). IPCC, 2022: Summary for policymakers.
Pușcaș, I. S. (2018). Central and North America: Migration and displacement in the context of disasters and environmental change. IOM, Migration, Environment and Climate Change: Policy Brief Series, 4, 14.
Reichman D. R. (2011). The broken village: coffee, migration, and globalization in Honduras. Cornell U.P, Ithaca
Reichman, D. R. (2022). Putting climate-induced migration in context: the case of Honduran migration to the USA. Regional Environmental Change, 22(3), 91.
Ruiz-de-Oña, C., Rivera-Castañeda, P., & Merlín-Uribe, Y. (2019). Coffee, migration and climatic changes: challenging adaptation of dichotomic narratives in a transborder region. Social sciences, 8(12), 323.
Schiller, N. G., & Faist, T. (2009). Introduction: Migration, development, and social transformation. Social Analysis, 53(3), 1-13.
Spring, U. O. (2022). Climate-induced migrations in Mesoamerica with a gender perspective. Revista Mexicana de Economía y Finanzas Nueva Época REMEF, 17(4), 786.
Tay, K. (2018). Guatemala: Coffee Annual: 2018. USDA Foreign Agricultural Service. United States Department of Agriculture.
Vergara, W., Rios, A. R., Paliza, L. M. G., Gutman, P., Isbell, P., Suding, P. H., & Samaniego, J. (2013). The climate and development challenge for Latin America and the Caribbean: options for climate-resilient, low-carbon development. Inter-American Development Bank.
Ward, R., Gonthier, D., & Nicholls, C. (2017). Ecological resilience to coffee rust: Varietal adaptations of coffee farmers in Copán, Honduras. Agroecology & Sustainable Food Systems, 41(9/10), 1081–1098. https://doiorg. libproxy.udayton.edu/10.1080/21683565.2017.1345033
Zittis, G., Almazroui, M., Alpert, P., Ciais, P., Cramer, W., Dahdal, Y., ... & Lelieveld, J. (2022). Climate change and weather extremes in the Eastern Mediterranean and Middle East. Reviews of geophysics, 60(3), e2021RG000762.
Downloads
Published
How to Cite
Issue
Section
License
Copyright (c) 2023 The Proceedings of The International Conference on Climate Change
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.
