In northwestern Honduras, increasing storm surges and flooding have eroded almost half a kilometer of coast washing homes out to sea and ruining the land for farming. Hundreds of families have moved away and the 84 that remain “will face tremendous peril” and need to leave immediately, according to the Canadian non-profit development organization CUSO International. This is a situation facing more and more in communities around the world.
Christopher Popowycz says one global study has ranked Honduras the country most affected by climate change.
Flooding worsens, storms intensify
The effects of climate change are escalating. “The area…(is) prone to flooding…The flooding season is becoming increasingly more intense every single year,” says Christopher Popowycz, a Canadian watershed engineer and volunteer with CUSO.
“The storms increase in intensity, so you have higher storm surges, you have longer, more precipitation…falling. There’s also the global sea level…rising.”
Adding to the problem was an earthquake in 2009 which sank 470 acres of arable land around the community of Las Barras to below sea level. Since then, verdant wetlands have become unusable salt marshes and people can no longer farm the rice, beans and yucca that sustained them in the past.
- Trees that were on shore are now inundated and dying. (Christopher Popowycz/CUSO)
‘More homes are going to be wrecked’
“With the coming rain this season in November, December and January, more people are going to be displaced, more homes are going to be wrecked. And we decided as an organization that we needed to bring international attention to this specific community because unfortunately there is a lack of interest. A lot of people just don’t know what’s happening,” says Popowycz.
The community has dwindling hope that the government will provide help. So, Popowycz has started a go-fund-me campaign to try to raise the $150,000 US needed to buy new properties further inland for the displaced families.
“It’s really not a lot of money to help save a community and to bring international attention to climate change and climate-displaced persons, because we’re going to be hearing about this more and more every single year.”
Adding to the misery of the people of Las Barras, flooding has brought garbage to the eroding shores. (Christopher Popowycz/CUSO)
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