Central America: Global warming will cause illegal migration

By Pat Reber Dec 8, 2011, 11:36 GMT

Durban, South Africa - Extreme weather like droughts and tropical storms caused by global warming could in the future lead to an influx of illegal migrants from Central America into the United States, Central American countries said on Wednesday.

'If we do not address the problem, the only way to solve it is migration,' said Herman Rosa Chavez, a minister from El Salavador.

Chavez spoke to reporters during difficult climate change talks in the South African port city of Durban, underlining the urgency for resolution of gridlock in the negotiations.

'We've made clear to our friends to the north (that there will be) a large wave of illegal immigration. There will be no barrier high enough to stop them,' Chavez said.

Chavez and other ministers are demanding that a 100-billion-dollar Green Climate Fund be agreed upon in Durban, and that industrialized countries commit to an extension of the Kyoto Protocol, which expires in December 2012 after five years in operation.

The fund aims to help countries most exposed to the impact of climate change.

The damage from just one tropical storm that swept through the region just before the Durban talks caused 2 billion dollars in damage, Chavez said.

Paul Oquist, a delegate from Nicaragua, described how his country's average mean temperature had risen 3 degrees celsius in the past 50 years, and as much as 4 degrees in the ever-more-arid northern region that borders on Honduras.

He said 9 per cent of crops have been lost since 2005, causing annual losses of 200 million dollars, or 3.5 points of Nicaragua's gross domestic product.

The weather phenomena La Nina and El Nino used to alternate through the region on a four-to-seven year cycle, Oquist said. But since 2005, they have been occurring on an annual basis, and sometimes within one year without any gap between them, he said.

Javier Diaz, the Costa Rican delegate, underlined the human suffering caused by extreme weather, which cause thousands of deaths across Central and South America every year from mudslides, hurricanes and tropical depressions.

'The most vulnerable are suffering the most,' he said. 'This issue of human rights is as important as other issues.'