Caribbean & Central America - June 2026

Increasingly confident forecasts that the El Niño weather phenomenon will develop this year have sparked widespread concerns in northern Central America, particularly in the arid so-called ‘Dry Corridor’.

The World Meteorological Organization (WMO) is now predicting that there is up to an 80% chance that El Niño develops in the next few months, and there is even a chance of a “Super El Niño,” which would be even more intense. In the Dry Corridor, which runs down the Pacific side of Central America through Costa Rica, Guatemala, El Salvador, Honduras, and Nicaragua, the phenomenon is associated with lower precipitation and higher temperatures.

With the region’s drought triggers officially activated across Guatemala, El Salvador, Honduras, and Nicaragua on 5 March, this would exacerbate existing difficulties in a region that is already under significant stress, according to the Famine Early Warning Systems Network (Fews Net), a monitoring system historically funded by the US government.

In a February update, Fews Net classified the Guatemalan Dry Corridor as already being in crisis (IPC Phase 3) after irregular rainfall and high temperatures last year left households with no food reserves. This is the latest stage in a deepening crisis as multiple years of adverse weather have negatively impacted livelihoods and increased household debt, it added, with households already selling assets and eating fewer meals.

The situation in El Salvador is also concerning. The country’s Eastern and Western Dry Corridor is classified as stressed (IPC Phase 2), and the proportion of households in crisis forecast to rise through September, said Fews Net in a separate update published at the beginning of June. “Smallholder farmers in these areas have already exhausted food stocks, face reduced income, and have limited coping capacity due to increasingly erratic rainfall and recurrent below-average harvests,” reads the report. 

Similarly, most of Honduras was already classified as stressed in April and May, said Fews Net in an update published at the beginning of May. There are also “pockets of poor households facing crisis (IPC Phase 3) outcomes, particularly in the Dry Corridor,” it added, with these conditions expected to become more common in the area through September.

At the end of May, Honduras’ permanent contingency commission (Copeco), a government entity created to coordinate public and private disaster relief efforts, increased the number of municipalities on high alert for extreme drought to 75, with officials highlighting concerns over agricultural production given a late rainy season and an early start to the hottest and driest period of the year.

Many poorer, rural households in the Central American Dry Corridor traditionally find their household budgets and food supplies stretched during this period, which is known as the lean season. This is usually alleviated by the ‘primera’ harvest around August and September, but El Niño will likely delay this harvest as well as contributing to lower yields. According to a Fews Net statement published on 31 May, dry conditions have intensified throughout the region, reducing soil moisture and preventing absorption, as well as encouraging pests such as whiteflies to appear earlier than normal, compounding negative impacts on crop yields.

As a result, the forecast weather phenomenon will exacerbate an already difficult situation that has been intensifying over recent years, rather than being the primary cause. In response, the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) has allocated US$10.5m from the Central Emergency Response Fund (CERF) to help prepare the Dry Corridor to support around 145,000 vulnerable people, including 65,000 in Honduras, 60,000 in Guatemala, and 20,000 in El Salvador. According to an OCHA report dated 6 April, “anticipatory measures are underway to protect livelihoods, crop production and access to food and basic services, as delayed planting and mounting water stress threaten to further constrain agricultural yields and exacerbate food insecurity across the subregion”.

However, while the execution of these plans shows that monitoring is working, the OCHA itself recognises that this is far less than what is required and warns that in general “the humanitarian system is overstretched and underfunded. Preparedness interventions are being deprioritized, and key forecasting tools such as Famine Early Warning and System Network or FEWS NET, have been scaled back or closed, limiting early warning capacity.”

This is due in large part to US President Donald Trump’s decision to dismantle the US Agency for International Development (USAID), which has historically played a key role in monitoring developing crises and supporting affected populations. This means that international support will be much less significant at a time when the needs of the population are increasing and are expected to do so further. 

National governments are also unable to provide much in the way of assistance, with limited budgets and state capacity. In its El Salvador update, Fews Net also predicted that there would be “no substantial scale-up of humanitarian assistance,” with programmes remaining highly targeted and localised. This means that vulnerable households in the Dry Corridor will largely be left to their own devices.

As a result, increasing food insecurity is likely to lead to more hunger, child malnutrition, and an increase in the poverty rate. In turn, this could encourage people to move away from the Dry Corridor in search of opportunities. With the US southern border now effectively closed to migrants, the majority of migrants will likely move to urban areas in their home countries, settling in informal neighbourhoods with limited access to basic services. This will add to mounting social issues in marginal neighbourhoods in population centres such as the Guatemalan capital Guatemala City and Honduras’ capital, Tegucigalpa.

Drought conditions will also affect electricity generation, as the region is highly reliant on hydroelectric dams. Lower water levels could lead to electricity rationing and blackouts, with economic impacts on households and businesses. This risk has already been demonstrated during recent periods of drought in the region, and investment in the electricity system has not kept up with rising demand, meaning that the region is highly likely to experience the same issues again.

Increased risk of forest fires

Lower precipitation also increases the likelihood of forest fires, which are already a considerable risk: satellite monitoring carried out by the Asociación Centroamericana Centro Humboldt (ACCH), a Guatemala-based non-governmental organisation focused on sustainability, detected more than 7,300 hotspots in Central America from 12-21 May. These locations are the highest-risk areas for forest fires, indicating the scale of the threat to both air quality and biodiversity, as many of these hotspots are found in or near protected areas.