What I'm about to say works on many levels while comparing Guatemalan society to American society; life here runs much closer to the edge. People don't have health insurance, car insurance, property insurance, or any real savings to speak of. If you get injured, you go to the doctor and pay to get fixed. If you can't pay, you don't get fixed. If you crash your car, you pay to repair it or junk it. For these same reasons, the effects of climate change are much more salient here because there's less of a cushion separating the people from the consequences. When less rain falls, less crops grow, farmer's can't sell as many crops, and those with limited resources (= great majority) get hungrier and more desperate.
Guatemala saw one of the more severe droughts in recent history, hence the smaller crop yields and nytimes.com front page photo. So what does this mean at a real, tangible level? The production of staple foods in the Guatemalan diet, principally black beans and maize, has reduced by 50% this year due to the prolonged drought. This caused an increased in price due to diminishing supply. Higher prices on basic foods mean the poorest of society can't afford even the cheapest of foods. Alvaro Colom, President of Guatemala, declared a "state of calamity" in Guatemala due to the dire food supply situation. Enter more begging, more desperation, increased movement into industries with more profitability and an inelastic demand (read: drug trade), and more gang participation. It's no coincidence that as poverty has increased over the past ten years, gang-related violence has risen drastically and narco-trafficking has gone viral in Guatemala.
Another tangible consequence: less water. Even in the harshest of droughts in the USA, it's a rare occurrence when we turn the faucet at our sinks and nothing comes out. Here, now, it's not that uncommon. It has happened to me a few times and I'll say, it's pretty haunting when you turn the faucet and....nothing. You wait, wait, don't shower, sleep, wait, buy water jugs, wait, and hope that it will come on soon. Without enough resources to build huge reservoirs or other forms of storage, when water runs out, water runs out.
As far as more intense weather patterns, Guatemala has experienced two crippling storms in the last decade: Hurricane Stan and Tropical Storm Mitch. Stan (2005), the stronger of the two, took out the two main water treatment facilities on Lake Atitlan, and the government couldn't pay (or didn't want to pay) to replace them. Now, as a result, a new strand of cyanobacteria has flowered and taken over the lake, marking one of the biggest ecological disasters ever in the country. The lake usually generates about $200 million of tourism a year, but with its new brown tint and unswimmable waters, that number is expected to fall drastically this year.
Where once found around 3,000 feet above sea level, Dengue has moved to about 4,000 feet in Central America. San Rafael Pie de la Cuesta is around 3,600 feet above sea level.
The sum total of this strand of free association is that it is true, third world countries will feel climate change much more than first world countries because they can't afford the insurance against it that we can. I feel more anxious about climate change than I did before I came down here because we're already starting to see its early results down here. Its no longer a theory among scholars, its fewer crop yields, less water, and ecologic disasters.
Field of corn in Baja Verapaz stands ruined after prolonged drought