Honduras pays the climate cost as its forests disappear and storms rise

TOCOA, Honduras – On a rainy November day in 2024, Storm Sara, a slow-moving tropical cyclone, struck Honduras, claiming at least six lives and displacing more than 6,000 people. Along the country’s northern coast, trees were bent or broken, roads turned into brown rivers, and houses were torn apart and swept away. Sara was one of 18 storms to batter Honduras last year. 

Storms like Sara have been wreaking havoc across Honduras in part because the country continues to lose its forests, considered one of its best defenses against climate change-related events, experts have warned. Deforestation rates in the country continue to be among the highest in the Americas, driven primarily by cattle ranching, logging, mining and illegal drug trafficking. The loss of vegetation cover has rendered the land unable to absorb excess water, worsening the impacts of floods that destroy homes, crops and entire communities. 

Amid the current climate crisis, forests may hold the key to mitigating climate risks, according to Josué León, coordinator of the forest unit at the Department of Environment and Development at Zamorano University in the capital, Tegucigalpa. Sources consulted by Mongabay say the Honduran government has started acknowledging the crucial role of forests in mitigating mounting climate risks, but its focus remains on emergency response, leaving most climate mitigation efforts to international actors or neglecting them altogether. Efforts to address deforestation are also lagging, they say.

“Honduras is extremely vulnerable to climate change,” says Cristina Marin, head of cooperation at the European Union’s delegation in Honduras. 

Hurricanes are part of Honduras’s normal climate patterns. But as human-driven climate change accelerates, storms are growing more intense, battering even areas that were previously considered safe. Rising temperatures cause more evaporation of water from the oceans, which fuels stronger storms, says Diego Obando Bonilla, a climate professor at Zamorano University. 

Between 1998 and 2017, Honduras ranked as the world’s second-most affected country by climate change, according to the Global Climate Risk Index, being frequently hit by natural disasters, including major droughts and landslides. During the 2024 Atlantic hurricane season, the country was hit by 16 hurricanes, in addition to other storms.

Lack of preparedness comes at a steep price. “In Honduras, it doesn’t take more than a storm [not even a hurricane] for the country to fall apart,” Marin says.

The World Bank estimates that in Central America, a major hurricane reduces the gross domestic product over the following 12 months by 2.6% to 3.9%. Without climate mitigation and adaptation measures, Honduras is estimated to lose 5.4% of its annual GDP by 2050.

In 2022, the country was responsible for just 0.03% of global CO2 emissions, yet it continues to suffer disproportionately from climate change, says Eduardo González, a climate change and environment expert at the Central American Bank for Economic Integration.

Deforestation a chronic issue

Between 2001 and 2023, Honduras lost almost a fifth of its forest cover, according to Global Forest Watch. The biggest driver of deforestation was shifting agriculture (accounting for 74% of tree cover loss), followed by commodity-driven deforestation (25%), wildfires, forestry and urbanization (less than 1%), according to Global Forest Watch data from 2023.    

Driving between coastal cities like Tela, La Ceiba and Trujillo in northern Honduras, the dense greenery is often interrupted by vast pastures and oil palm plantations. Some mountaintops lay bare, scarred by landslides and the stumps of felled trees. A lack of tree cover and the resulting soil erosion lead to poor water absorption, landslides, floods and droughts, according to León. 

“The soil’s capacity to absorb water is collapsing. We’re cutting down the natural barrier of vegetation,” says Edgardo Amaya, head of the municipal emergency committee in La Ceiba, a port city.

“Forests are the biggest absorbers of water on the planet — they act like a sponge,” says José Manuel Medina from Honduras’s National Institute of Forest Conservation (ICF). 

León says exposed soils become compacted, reducing their ability to absorb water, which leads to faster runoff and more severe consequences of flooding than in a forested area hit by the same amount of water.

“We don’t have the same water absorption anymore,” Manuel Medina says, adding that forest loss, which has accelerated over the past decade, worsens the impact of climate events on cities and infrastructure. 

“Livestock farming is one of the main causes of flooding, because cattle ranching compacts the soil a lot and removes forests,” León says. Cattle ranching often lowers water infiltration in soils, which can go below 15% of its previous capacity, he says. This means that instead of being absorbed, more than 85% of rainfall flows into rivers and causes flooding downstream. 

“There are fewer trees along the rivers,” says Darwin Cantarero from the Permanent Contingencies Commission in Colón department, from his office in Tocoa, Colón. “When the rains come, nothing stops the runoff anymore,” he says. His unit is tasked with preparing the department for climate events, but he says that “preparedness is everyone’s responsibility,” as he points to continued building in high-risk areas, close to rivers.

Forest fires, fueled in part by climate change, also further exacerbate the effects of extreme weather in Honduras. In 2024, ICF reported more than 3,000 forest fires, affecting nearly 300,000 hectares (741,000 acres) of forest. Such fires contribute to further forest loss, stripping away Honduras’s natural defense against climate change risks. 

Forests as the answer

Forests offer a nature-based solution to climate risks by absorbing water, reducing soil erosion, regulating temperatures, and providing a buffer against storms and floods. These benefits extend to both periods of floods and droughts, says Rafael Gómez from ICF.

But a lack of education and awareness about climate change is part of the problem, according to León. “You can have all the information, but if it’s not translated properly to citizens and policymakers, it won’t make much of a difference,” he says.

Better governance and stronger local policies are needed, León says, especially for protecting highland areas that function as water shields. 

Honduras has 91 protected areas covering a combined 3.9 million hectares (9.6 million acres), equivalent to 36% of the national territory. But despite their protected status, such areas continue to be affected by deforestation. “Even in the core zone of the protected areas, there is degradation and land-use change,” León says. 

He notes that many of the protected areas were private properties with forest-clearing activities before they received protected status. “There are communities living in the heart of the protected areas,” he says. León says the presence of Indigenous and rural communities in many of the protected areas makes it hard to ensure full environmental protection, as the lands were already in use. Local communities have buildings and agricultural activities on the protected lands, and such land use continues despite the protected status.

León says he’s especially concerned about Honduras’s highlands, particularly the wetlands, which he says play a crucial role in climate mitigation and adaptation. “If the highlands are not protected, everything becomes more vulnerable to floods and droughts,” he says. León suggests capturing excess water and making productive use of it to water crops, for example.

The EU’s Marin agrees: “Managing water and forests is key to handling climate risks,” she says.

Improving agricultural practices to safeguard forests

Improving agricultural practices to safeguard forests is one of the most effective strategies for mitigating climate risks, León says. The agricultural sector in Honduras accounts for 13% of GDP and more than a third of exports, and employs almost 40% of the population.

León says the government must implement sustainable production programs and offer technical support to farmers. But locals say the government, one of the poorest and most corrupt in the region, lacks the capacity to do so, leaving civil society organizations and international partners to step in.

“It is important to think more about prevention of climate risks,” says Marco Machado, country director of Heifer International, a nonprofit development organization focused on improving farming practices. 

Failure to adapt farming practices increases the risk of climate damage, according to León. The Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean (CEPAL) estimates that by the end of this century, potential losses from climate-change induced droughts could amount to up to 22% of Central America’s agricultural GDP. Machado says farmers are starting to understand climate risks and want to be part of the solution.

“We are very worried,” says Israel Ponce Carcamo, 73, a farmer and member of a livestock association in the Dos Bocas community in Colón. “Climate change has affected us a lot. In every aspect.”

After Storm Sara last November, he says, “About 70% of the homes here in Dos Bocas were flooded. This has been terrible for us.” He adds he wasn’t able to sell his milk as roads were flooded and their community cut off for weeks after the storm. Fellow farmers lost cattle, particularly calves that died due to extreme weather, while pasture and grain stocks were destroyed, leaving little food for the animals, Ponce Carcamo says. “We all have families to support, and with that little milk, we cannot even cover our costs,” he says.

Olman David Gaitan Morga, project manager for sustainable cattle ranching at Heifer International, says cattle farmers are moving into forested areas in search of pasture, a trend he says is concerning but which can be avoided by improving production methods. 

“There’s so much mismanagement of grazing in Honduras,” he says, adding that land use can be minimized by implementing rotational grazing, where cattle graze on smaller patches for a shorter time, instead of overgrazing. The latter system destroys pastures, often resulting in farmers deforesting new areas to make space for more pasture. 

Gaitan Morga’s team uses software to measure the carbon footprint of livestock production. He says a typical farm can reduce the carbon footprint of its milk production by about a third. For a farmer with 15 cows, this translates into avoiding the equivalent emissions of driving a gasoline-fueled car across the United States — every day.

Coffee and cacao farmers are also working to adapt to climate change by planting more resilient crops and diversifying production with lime, mango and rambutan trees. Farmers have started collecting rainwater and using solar-powered pumps to fuel their farms, says Kessel Rosales, an agronomist and project manager at Heifer International.

“You need to teach coffee farmers that they don’t have to cut down trees to make coffee,” León says. 

International organizations make forests a key priority

The role of forests in the fight against climate change has become a bigger priority for both national and international actors in Honduras, particularly in the aftermath of some of Honduras’s most intense hurricanes: Mitch in 1998, and Eta and Iota in 2020. 

“Now, everyone approaches ICF” to work on protecting or reestablishing forests, says Manuel Medina.

Marin says the green agenda is the European Union’s top priority in Honduras, with forests playing a crucial role. She says the focus on forests is also part of broader efforts to adopt nature-based solutions and live up to emissions reduction commitments that are part of the Paris climate agreement.

“Within international cooperation, everyone works on climate change,” Marin says. “There’s consensus among donors about the emphasis on forests.” 

Marin’s team also works with Honduran farmers to help them comply with the European Union Deforestation Regulation (EUDR), and supports reforestation and regeneration projects all over the country with a particular focus on the water basins around Lake Yojoa, the largest in Honduras, and the Chamelecón River, which originates in the mountains of Copán department. 

“Reforestation is one of the most efficient nature-based solutions for climate change adaptation,” Marin says.

Much of the responsibility for climate adaptation and mitigation still falls on international partners rather than the Honduran government, which lacks resources, institutional capacity and long-term planning, and has mostly been focused on emergency response, according to Marin. “This reactive approach doesn’t help. We need to think long-term and think about what’s next,” Marin says. She adds private companies are eager to work on climate adaptation and mitigation because of the impact climate change has on them.

Nevertheless, the government has stepped up its efforts recently. “International cooperation has motivated more national efforts,” Manuel Medina says. In May 2024, the National Defense and Security Council launched the “Zero Deforestation by 2029” plan. The government has declared a state of emergency for the country’s forests and aims to regain control of protected areas currently used by criminal groups for timber trafficking and other illicit activities.

ICF is one of the state actors working to reduce deforestation and restore forests. Its efforts include both active restoration (planting suitable trees) and passive restoration (protecting existing forest areas) across the country. Honduras is lagging in technology, so ICF is increasingly trying to leverage basic technology to save forests. Manuel Medina and Gómez from ICF say they’ve implemented a deforestation alert system that sends early warnings about forest fire risks by closely monitoring temperatures. In 2018, they created a map to track forest coverage and have since intensified their use of drones to capture aerial imagery and monitor the progress of forest fires. 

“Now we also think about finding alternatives for local communities,” Manuel Medina says. ICF also encourages Indigenous and rural communities in some of Honduras’s most deforested areas to implement agroforestry, combining agricultural crops with tree planting, for instance through the establishment of living corridors, which can be strips of forests or brush that link fragmented ecosystems. This helps ease passage for animals, improves biodiversity, and acts as a shield against extreme weather events.

Manuel Medina says Hondurans at all levels need to change their attitude toward and prioritization of climate change. Farmers should adopt more sustainable production methods, he says, and locals should stop building in climate-vulnerable areas. The government should also invest more in climate mitigation and preparedness than after-the-fact emergency response, he adds.

“We can spend millions and millions on forest protection and restoration,” he says, “but if we had a change in culture, I think we could use resources in a much smarter way.” 

Editor’s note: Heifer International helped with travel logistics for this reporting but did not have any editorial influence over the story.

Banner image: The Pico Bonito National Park in La Ceiba, northern Honduras, was heavily flooded during Storm Sara last December. Image by Mie Hoejris Dahl.

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