From January to July of this year, 21 659 people migrated due to natural disasters and violence, facing material losses and psychological damage.
Tens of thousands of migrants arrive each year in the Mexican city of Tijuana, bordering the United States, to try to change their lives. They migrate alone or in large groups, and for multiple reasons: fleeing poverty, violence, discrimination, and increasingly, to leave behind disasters caused by extreme weather events that have devastated their communities.
According to a count carried out by the Internal Displacement Monitoring Center (IDMC) between 2018-2024, natural disasters and violence caused an exodus of 436 759 people country-wide, of which, from January to July of this year, 21 659, the Excelsior a Mexican daily reported.
From Fires to Hurricanes, a Wide Range of Disasters
Natural disasters such as fires, floods, landslides and cyclones led the mobility of people, adding up to 362 137 affected from 2019 to July 2024. Violence and conflicts caused 74 622 people to leave their homes.
Dana Graber Ladek, an International Organization for Migration (IOM) representative in Mexico, emphasized that, among other things, the violence caused by armed groups, organized crime, agrarian conflicts, and conflicts between communities and religions are the primary causes of displacement in our nation.
However, she stressed that natural disasters have gained relevance, since climate change begins to glimpse ravages such as droughts, forest fires, floods, cold and more intense hurricanes.
Graber Ladek recalled Hurricane Otis, which made landfall on the Costa Grande de Guerrero in the first minutes of October 25, 2023, “the most shocking, although that type of exodus is less prolonged because, generally, most people can return to their homes.”
According to data from the UN Organization for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA),
Otis was the natural disaster that resulted in the greatest number of displacements in the Americas in 2023, with 187 000 movements, the highest number of storm-related movements ever recorded in the nation.
It was considered the most powerful cyclone that has hit the Mexican Pacific coast. It destroyed about 50 000 homes, prolonging the displacement of many of those affected. The winds knocked down power grids, while floods and landslides left the population without other basic services,” said an Internal Displacement Monitoring Centre (IDMC) report. According to a monitoring carried out by IDCM,
in 2020, climatic phenomena triggered the exodus more than five times, reaching 103 000 cases, while violence and conflicts left “just” 9 700 displaced people.
A year later there was an important variation, because, while the meteorological phenomena only caused 19 000 events, the crime caused the mobility of 29 000 people in Mexico.
According to Ursulina Ossa, an associate for Central and South America Monitoring, the years 2022 and 2023 saw the greatest number of natural disaster-related displacements, with 2022 recording just 11000 events and in 2023 recorded 196 000.
Why is there such a significant internal rise? It responds to Otis in most cases. Ursulina Ossa told Excelsior, “This hurricane has been the one that has caused the greatest displacement in the Americas.”
However, the return to the homes of those affected by natural disasters is faster, on the other hand, the displacement due to violence is longer, as has been seen lately in several states,” said Dana Graber Ladek.
A Country Became Hell
The 2024 forest fire season broke all national records, due to the presence of a prolonged drought caused by climate change and the El Niño phenomenon, as well as high temperatures and the reduction in the budget to respond to emergencies.
According to the Mexico Drought Monitor, on May 31, 2024, the peak was reached, when 89.58 percent of the national territory reported effects due to the lack of rain and runoff, from the category of abnormally dry to exceptional drought. An important factor that also played against it was temperature, since 2024 is considered one of the warmest years recorded on the planet so far, according to the World Meteorological Organization (WMO).
Perhaps the most revealing fact is that this year the affected area broke all records by adding one 1 269 858 hectares, between January 1 and August 2, 2024.
Monday, May 14, was the day that the most active forest fires occurred in 24 hours with 214 conflagrations in 22 states of the Mexican Republic and 107,443 hectares affected. In historical records, 2023 ranks second in area impacted by fire with more than one million hectares affected by.
Biggest Forest Fires in Mexico:
• In 1998, 14 330 fires registered with an affectation of 847 127 hectares.
• In 2017 there were 8 651 with 701 489 hectares damaged.
• In 2021 they reported 7 194 with 647 686 hectares consumed.
• In 2023, 7 455 fires had affected of 1 023 373 hectares.
• In 2024 as of early August there are 1 269 858 hectares consumed with 7 627 fires.

This year, the states of the country most affected by disaster area are: Veracruz (14,109 hectares); Colima (10 290 hectares); Tamaulipas (9 108 hectares); Sonora (7 202 hectares); Baja California (6,208 hectares); Morelos (3 775 hectares); Hidalgo (3 606 hectares); Guanajuato (3 41 hectares), and Mexico City (2 864 hectares). Among the causes of the accidents appears firstly, the unknown origin; secondly, intentional; thirdly, agricultural activities, and fourthly, livestock activities.
Official statistics indicate that the firefighters were mainly from the private social sector, that is, community brigades or civil society groups, which in most cases do not have the necessary equipment or support to deal with forest fires.
Climate Change, a Trigger
The representative of the International Organization for Migration (IOM/UN Migration) in Mexico explained that climate change has become a trigger for displacement and this impacts not only on jobs and agriculture, but also on the inhabitants of coastal areas, “for example, in Chiapas there are already several communities that are being affected by the rise in sea levels, so, at some point, those villages will be forced to migrate.
Given this, we are working at the local level to find out how we can help these communities adapt to climate change, in addition, climate change is something long-term, the rise in sea level or droughts or natural disasters, such as hurricanes, floods and these phenomena also cause internal displacement.”
He stressed that due to violence, between nine thousand and ten thousand cases have been recorded per year, with the exception of 2020 and 2021, when there were 29 000 people displaced due to increased violence, mainly in Michoacán.
Central America and Mexico in the Focus
Due to high fertility rates in Guatemala’s highlands and urbanization in Mexico’s Central Plateau and other urban areas, the overall pattern of population distribution change in Mexico and Central America has historically been one of rapid population growth. With almost 75 percent of the population residing in urban areas, the subregion has a high degree of urbanization. In the ensuing decades, there will be some population growth there as well.
The climate of the subregion is characterized by extremes, such as high winds and heavy rainfall that accompany tropical storms and droughts. Extremes are already occurring more frequently and with greater intensity. The amount of rainfall during the summer has been increasing in intensity during the onset season, starting later and becoming more erratic in space and time.
There is a medium degree of confidence in the future climatic trends indicating that the subregion will see less precipitation in the upcoming century. By the end of the century, ensemble mean projections show a drop in precipitation in parts of Mexico and northern Central America between October and March.
Furthermore, there’s a chance that future El Niño events will be even more extreme. This would result in wetter conditions in the north and drier conditions in the south of the region.
The subregional variations in Mexico and Central America’s reliance on agriculture point to a region that is vulnerable to both climate variability and change. The percentage of people employed in agriculture varies from 13 percent in Mexico to over 30 percent in Guatemala, Honduras, and Nicaragua. Production of beans and maize is vital to the food chain. In Honduras, El Salvador, and Nicaragua, the productivity of these crops will be greatly impacted by long-term climate change and variability; less pronounced effects are anticipated in Guatemala. Smallholder farmers, especially those who grow market crops like coffee, will suffer large financial losses as a result of climate change.
It is predicted that between 2020 and 2050, there will be a rise in internal climate migrants in Mexico and Central America.
The subregion may see up to 3.9 million climate migrants by 2050 as a result of the increasing rate of climate migration in the upcoming decades.
The effects of climate change will probably also have an impact on the rates of internal and external migration. Research shows that the subregion’s migration already varies in response to climatic unpredictability. Families that rely on rainfed agriculture are especially vulnerable to the effects of cyclones and droughts, which forces them to look for alternate sources of income in other cities or overseas.
Is Climate Change a Major Driver of Migration and Displacement?
Climate change is not the main reason why people move, but it is increasingly part of the story. Environmental issues are generally minor factors in people’s migration decisions, typically far behind economic imperatives even in highly climate-affected countries. For instance, in El Salvador, Guatemala, and Honduras, just 6 percent of migrant-sending households cited climate and environment related reasons for emigration, according to a 2021 report from the World Food Program, Migration Policy Institute, and Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Similarly, in Central Africa, just 5 percent of migrants reported they moved for environmental reasons, according to a Mixed Migration Centre survey published in 2022. However, when asked whether the environment affected their decision to move, 50 percent of Central African respondents agreed.
This reflects a key challenge in understanding how climate change affects migration. Environmental factors clearly play a role, but not a clear-cut one. In cases where disasters directly trigger displacement, the impacts of climate change may not be clear (some events such as earthquakes are not climate-related, and not all disasters can be attributed to climate change). Government policies are also equally important. Droughts in Syria have been linked to internal displacement that helped enable the Syrian civil war, but government decisions to cut rural subsidies, income security, and access to water resources have been found to be more critical.