One in seven Latin American children threatened by El Niño: ‘This crisis can be mitigated’

This is the driest year on record in Tegucigalpa. Eighty percent of Honduran territory is on red alert, and the capital has had a potable water rationing system every 12 days for a month. The lack of rain is making maize and bean crops in Guatemala — the main food source in a country with the region’s highest rate of chronic child malnutrition — even more vulnerable. The Panama Canal has begun restricting vessel traffic because of water stress in the basin, and the parched Amazon rivers are isolating dozens of riverside communities in Brazil and hampering fishermen’s work.

This dystopia has a name: the El Niño phenomenon, a climate event that will last until March 2027 and has put the Americas on edge. Children are a particularly vulnerable group. According to UNICEF, 25.8 million children are exposed to risks linked to the severe droughts and floods this climate anomaly causes. That is practically one in seven minors.

Drought-stricken rivers make it difficult for schoolboat routes to operate, affect the basic food basket of the most vulnerable families, and turn fetching water into a herculean task. That is why at least nine million children will need humanitarian assistance. These are UNICEF’s initial estimates based on a database of the most affected municipalities. Lenay Alexandra Blason, the agency’s regional emergency adviser for the area, is especially worried about Central America and the Caribbean. “We are very concerned about the impact it could have on already vulnerable areas such as the Dry Corridor or on Cuba and Haiti. This greatly exacerbates the precarious conditions in these countries,” she said.

El Niño is part of the Pacific climate system. Paleoclimatology research — based on studies of ancient corals, marine sediments, and tree rings — confirms that episodes like this occurred in similar ways thousands of years ago. Scientists therefore stress that the problem is not its existence but its unusually high frequency and intensity, driven by global warming. Rodney Martínez, representative of the World Meteorological Organization (WMO) for North America, Central America and the Caribbean, describes an “especially critical” scenario that manifests in opposite ways across the continent.

Across Central America (with the exception of Costa Rica), El Niño has produced overwhelming droughts, while Ecuador, Peru, Uruguay and Paraguay are experiencing atypical flooding and torrential rains. By this time of year, the Atlantic would normally have seen about seven hurricanes, but so far there have been none. While that might sound like good news, Martínez warns: “Having none at all is very negative from a meteorological perspective because they are responsible for distributing moisture to the Caribbean islands. That is why we are now facing large water deficits and temperatures far above normal for this time of year.”

The expert also reminds us that “we still have a lot of El Niño story to tell,” since the phenomenon’s peaks are expected in the next three months. “What we do know is that, as it stands today, we can classify it as the strongest climate event in the last 80 years.”

Both Martínez and Blason emphasize the same point: the key is prevention. “Unlike hurricanes or earthquakes, this is something that can be mitigated,” the UNICEF official explains. According to the organization’s studies, every dollar invested in prevention can save up to 15 dollars in recovery after an adverse climate event. “Mitigation means working with governments, paying attention to what the scientific community reports, sitting down with the private sector and with communities so they can organize themselves,” Blason adds. “You have to work at all levels and allocate funds before events occur. Not only afterward.”

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