Climate change makes life harder for central America's Miskito people

Climate change has intensified all the phenomena of nature, and that includes natural disasters.

Something the Miskito people of central America have experienced first hand: suffering stronger and more frequent hurricanes.  

Toward the end of 2020 the Miskito coast, extending from Honduras to Nicaragua, endured the landfall of two major hurricanes within two weeks — Hurricane Eta and Hurricane Iota.

“If they lose their forest, they lose their traditional way of producing food. This impacts on their food security,” said Myrna Cunningham, a Miskito feminist and indigenous rights activist from Nicaragua.

What this did, according to her, is opened the link between the lagoon and the ocean. And this in turn “harms the way in which they survive – fishing."  

“In areas where there's massive deforestation, people are unable to keep hunting in the same areas where they used to, or even fish in areas where the rivers have also been impacted," Juan Pablo Sarmiento, a Peruvian anthropologist and scientist with the Center for International Forestry Research and World Agroforestry, pointed out.  

Read more about indigenous people affected by climate change in our article Arctic lifestyle melts away as world becomes hotter. 

Cunningham also noted the hurricanes enable settlers from Nicaragua and Honduras to forcefully seize Miskito lands.

"In 2007 we had another hurricane that destroyed almost 350,000 acres of forest. This opens the possibilities for migrant colonizers to come into these territories, and try to take out of the forest that was taken down by them."  

For the Miskito people, climate change is not only about hurricanes, but also about accumulating challenges to their daily routine.

"We have also seen that climate change affects the way in which indigenous peoples read nature and prepare for different activities. They know, by the birds, by the ants, by the different animals what type of weather should be expected. But these cultural indicators that they have used traditionally have changed," Cunningham noted.  

The special connection the Miskito people have with nature is also, according to both Cunningham and Sarmiento, the key to preserving the environment.

Customary Miskito law is how they have been able to preserve nature, biodiversity, plants and animals. “That is why we can find areas in different parts of the world where there are still a lot of forests, of marine ecosystems that have biodiversity," Cunningham said.   

The rights activist believes that diplomacy is the best way to save her people and our planet. She is part of the ELATIA organization, which has been lobbying and advocating on a global level to ensure that international standards related to the environment, climate change and sustainable development will respect indigenous knowledge and practices.

"I think that indigenous people have to be brought into how the global response to climate change is being designed and implemented,” scientist Sarmiento added.  

“And they have to be treated as people who have their own amazing ideas to sort of help what's happening. They're not beneficiaries. They're change-makers. They're partners," he underlined.