With a landmass of 524,000 km
2, Central America covers only 0.1% of the earth’s surface. Yet this tiny isthmus is home to a staggering 7% of the world’s biodiversity. From where the north western borders of Belize and Guatemala meet Mexico, to where the southern tip of Panama reaches Colombia, the subcontinent twists among mountains and volcanoes, valleys and coasts, and wild forests, surrounded by mangroves and coral reefs. It is this variety of landscapes and habitats that makes Central America so beautiful and so valuable, and also so vulnerable. In the 2012 Global Climate Risk Index, by the Bonn-based NGO, Germanwatch, which analysed the impact of extreme weather events and the socioeconomic factors associated with them over 20 years, Honduras and Nicaragua ranked first and third respectively with over 100 extreme weather events recorded between them. El Salvador and Guatemala ranked 4
th and 9
th in the list of countries most at risk in 2011. Extreme events in these two countries alone resulted in the deaths of at least 100 people and severely affected thousands more. As the frequency and intensity of flooding and hurricanes is increasing, countries in the region simply do not have the time or the resources to recover from them.
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