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Panama and El Salvador have formally declared states of emergency as an El Nino-driven drought tightens its hold on Central America, joining Honduras among the nations racing to confront a prolonged dry spell that has already forced reductions in shipping through the Panama Canal and sharpened fears of famine across the region.
In Panama City, Interior Minister Dinoska Montalvo said the emergency status would put authorities in a position "to be prepared for what may come with El Nino." The weather phenomenon has helped fuel a punishing drought that is ravaging harvests and has stirred growing alarm that widespread crop failures could escalate into full-blown hunger crises.
El Salvador took action of its own on Tuesday, announcing a state of maximum alert intended to activate monitoring networks, surveillance efforts and relief operations for communities bearing the brunt of the crisis. The country's Civil Protection department said in a post on X that it had issued a red alert covering both meteorological and farming drought across the entire national territory.
At the center of the emergency is El Nino itself, a recurring climate pattern defined by elevated surface temperatures in the central and eastern equatorial Pacific Ocean. Its arrival disrupts wind circulation and rainfall far beyond the Pacific basin, generating erratic weather conditions around the world.
The pattern typically reappears every two to seven years, but scientists say the current episode is shaping up to be the most intense of recent years. It is also nudging global temperatures upward in what forecasters anticipate will be the hottest year ever recorded.
Central America is already suffering severe consequences. Honduras has placed 80 percent of its territory on alert, while operators of the Panama Canal have been compelled to slash ship traffic because water levels in the interoceanic passage continue to dwindle.
In El Salvador, rainfall that is usually abundant at this point in the year has largely failed to arrive, wiping out crops that rural communities depend on. The losses have left farming families across wide stretches of the countryside exposed, with little cushion to absorb the devastation.
Seeking to blunt the impact, El Salvador's agriculture ministry has unveiled food assistance programs targeting rural households that do not have irrigation systems and therefore cannot protect their fields from the parched conditions.
Geography compounds the danger. Several municipalities in El Salvador sit within the Central American Dry Corridor, an arid strip that also encompasses parts of Honduras and Nicaragua and remains acutely vulnerable to extreme weather events.
Temperature records underline how extraordinary conditions have become. All three affected countries broke their monthly heat benchmarks in both June and July, a string of extremes that has only deepened concern about looming food shortages. El Salvador alone has smashed 14 temperature records so far in August.
Farther south, Peru last week declared a state of emergency in a third of its cities over El Nino, warning that intense heat and heavy rains could also cause havoc for the country's food production.
With the phenomenon expected to persist and possibly strengthen in the months ahead, governments across the region now face mounting pressure to secure food supplies, assist struggling farmers and prepare their populations for whatever comes next from one of the most powerful El Nino events in years.
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