NPR CLAIMS WARMING IS TURNING HONDURAN COFFEE GROWERS INTO CLIMATE REFUGEES, BUT PRODUCTION HAS DOUBLED IN THE LAST DOZEN YEARS, DESPITE BACK-TO BACK HURRICANES IN 2020 AND 2021:
LAGUNAS LA IGUALA, Honduras — To reach the Pérez family's farm, you have to drive on miles of narrow dirt roads in the mountains of western Honduras, up and down steep slopes lined with row after row of dark green coffee plants.
Not all of those plants are thriving, and neither are the farmers who tend them.
"When it comes to coffee, it needs water to flower," says Francis Pérez, who grew up picking coffee on his family's farm here. "Often, it flowers but it doesn't grow berries — that's a big loss."
Pérez is… worried that he won't be able to support himself in farming like his parents did. So he's thinking about following hundreds of thousands of other Hondurans and migrating to the U.S.
"I feel that I'm stuck," he says in Spanish. "I don't feel like I can build the future I want here."
More people around the world are on the move than ever before, and the changing climate is one reason why. In Honduras, climate change is making it harder to live off the land...
Some of the reasons are familiar: violence, corruption and a lack of economic opportunity, exacerbated by the pandemic.
Now climate change is adding one more pressure to the list. Experts told us that climate disruptions are making younger Hondurans, and particularly young women, more likely to migrate to the U.S. in search of a better life.
