Hurricane Eta made landfall on November 3rd, 2020, hitting Nicaragua as a Category 4 storm before moving across into eastern Honduras and north-eastern Guatemala, and travelling around Panama, Mexico, Cuba and Florida. It has affected 3.6 million people in Central America and left over 200 dead or missing. This BBC news report describes how the hurricane has wreaked havoc on homes and livelihoods.
The strongest storm ever to hit the Nicaragua, Hurricane Iota, made landfall 2 days ago and has already killed six people. Iota is predicted to have even worse effects on the countries hardest hit by Eta after strengthening to Category 5 on Monday.
Indigenous communities in Central America have been disproportionately impacted by widespread flooding and mass displacement brought about by the two hurricanes. This is not an isolated incident where Indigenous communities have beared the brunt of the impacts of extreme weather events. Therefore, it seems fitting to ask: what is the relationship between the increasing threat of extreme weather events as a result in climate change and their heightened risk to Indigenous communities?
The destabilization of the climate system
Let's first consider why extreme weather events are increasing in threat globally. There are currently four planetary boundaries which have been crossed, demonstrated below.
Transgression of the climate change core boundary, with more than 390 ppmv of CO2 in the atmosphere, is likely to increase the threat of "regime shifts [and] destabilized system processes" accompanied by the compounding risk of feedback mechanisms .
There is a predicted rise in the intensity and frequency of global-scale phenomena including extreme weather events like hurricanes due to warmer sea surface ocean temperatures and higher sea levels. Check out this really cool interactive map created by Carbon Brief that has mapped how 69% of 355 extreme weather events since 2017 were increased in severity by anthropogenically-induced climate change. Holland & Bruyère (2014) have demonstrated that category 4/5 hurricanes have generally increased by 25-30% per degree of climate change regionally and globally since 1975.
Hurricane Eta and Indigenous communities
Hurricane Eta first hit the largely Indigenous Miskito coast, and moved inland over more remote Indigenous Mayangna communities in Nicaragua. It has also impacted Garifuna communities in Guatemala, Belize, and Nicaragua and Honduras, and Maya towns and communities in Guatemala. Across Central America, Indigenous communities face challenges that make them more vulnerable to hurricanes. Their territories are threatened by monoculture export crop plantations, livestock farming, tourism expansion and extractive industry and energy projects that has already put livelihoods at risk and removed vegetation cover that would've buffered against the impacts of hurricanes.
The Maya Ixil community in Nebaj, Guatemala have been particularly impacted by flooding and landslides resulting from deforestation caused by logging operations, which the community opposed to. Their maize crops have also been decimated, a staple for themselves and their livelihoods. Other Indigenous communities have felt abandoned due to a lack of Guatemalan government aid, and live in areas inaccessible by roads and lacking phone signal and electricity so rescue operations have been inhibited.
This IPCC report notes that the severity of extreme weather events depends "not only on the extremes themselves but also on exposure and vulnerability". Therefore, the disproportionate impact of extreme weather events on Indigenous communities in Central America is due to their pre-existing exposure and vulnerability to environmental threats. This is linked to higher poverty rates, exclusion from decision-making processes, reliance on economic activities and livelihoods dependent on renewable natural resources, residence in geographical regions and ecosystems most at risk from extreme weather events and forced migration as a result of them.
Hurricane Iota: a double whammy?
Whilst writing this blog post, a second hurricane, Hurricane Iota, has hit Central America. In Nicaragua, 62,000 people have been moved into government shelters, many from communities already devastated by Hurricane Eta. With overcrowded and poorly ventilated conditions, the spread of Covid-19 is anticipated to rapidly increase in the country that is already on high alert for the disease; cases are reportedly rising exponentially in shelters. These powerful storms, combined with the Covid-19 pandemic demonstrate how compounded socio-ecological disasters like this will only become more common in the Anthropocene.
Iota is the 14th hurricane in 2020 which has been a record-breaking Atlantic hurricane season. With increasing frequency and intensity of hurricanes and evidence that Indigenous communities have been impacted the most severely due to their exposure and vulnerability, the threat of extreme weather events for these communities will only worsen and not just because climate change is making them more severe.
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