Riesgos climáticos y vulnerabilidades de Honduras

Honduras is highly vulnerable to climate change and multi-hazard risks due to its exposure to hurricanes, tropical storms, floods, landslides, droughts, earthquakes, coastal hazards, and slow-onset climate impacts. Its mountainous terrain, degraded watersheds, climate-sensitive agriculture, rural poverty, informal settlements, and exposure to the Central American Dry Corridor increase the likelihood that climate and disaster shocks will affect food security, water resources, infrastructure, livelihoods, public health, and national development. Climate change is expected to intensify these risks through rising temperatures, erratic rainfall, recurrent drought, extreme rainfall, forest degradation, sea-level rise, and growing pressure on vulnerable communities. Strengthening multi-hazard early warning systems, climate-resilient infrastructure, drought-risk management, watershed restoration, climate-smart agriculture, coastal resilience, disaster risk financing, and locally led adaptation is essential to reduce future losses and protect development gains.

La stagione record degli uragani è legata al cambiamento climatico

Climate risk and vulnerabilities of Honduras

Honduras is highly vulnerable to climate change and multi-hazard risks due to its exposure to hurricanes, tropical storms, floods, landslides, droughts, earthquakes, coastal hazards, forest degradation, and slow-onset climate stressors. The World Bank describes Honduras as highly vulnerable to climate change, including both extreme events and slow-onset impacts such as increasing temperatures and forest degradation, with disproportionate impacts on poor and vulnerable populations. (World Bank)

1. Multi-hazard exposure

Honduras faces a combination of hydrometeorological, climatic, geophysical, and environmental hazards. The country is frequently affected by hurricanes, tropical storms, heavy rainfall, riverine floods, flash floods, landslides, droughts, and earthquakes. The World Bank highlights Honduras’s high vulnerability to natural hazards and climate change, including hurricanes, tropical storms, floods, droughts, earthquakes, and landslides. (World Bank)

Hurricane risk is particularly significant. A World Bank/GFDRR disaster risk profile estimates Honduras’s annual average loss from hurricanes at around US$48 million, equivalent to about 0.25% of GDP, compared with US$25.5 million from earthquakes, or about 0.13% of GDP. This indicates that while seismic risk exists, hurricane and storm-related risk is a dominant driver of disaster losses. (GFDRR)

2. Climate change as a risk multiplier

Climate change is increasing Honduras’s vulnerability by intensifying rainfall variability, drought stress, heat exposure, flood risk, ecosystem degradation, and pressure on water and food systems. Rising temperatures and changing precipitation patterns can worsen both extremes: longer dry periods in some areas and heavier rainfall events in others, increasing the likelihood of crop losses, water scarcity, flash floods, landslides, and infrastructure damage. The World Bank Climate Change Knowledge Portal provides country-level climate information for Honduras, including temperature and precipitation patterns relevant to climate-risk planning. (Climate Change Knowledge Portal)

Honduras is highly vulnerable to climate change and multi-hazard risks due to its exposure to hurricanes, tropical storms, floods, landslides, droughts, earthquakes, coastal hazards, and slow-onset climate impacts. The country’s mountainous terrain, degraded watersheds, river systems, Caribbean and Pacific exposure, high rural poverty, informal settlements, and dependence on climate-sensitive agriculture increase the likelihood that hazards will translate into major livelihood, infrastructure, food security, and development losses. Climate change is expected to intensify these risks through rising temperatures, erratic rainfall, recurrent drought, extreme precipitation, forest degradation, water stress, and growing pressure on vulnerable communities.

3. Key climate vulnerabilities

Agriculture and food security:
Agriculture and rural livelihoods are highly exposed to drought, irregular rainfall, flooding, crop failure, pests, soil erosion, and reduced yields. Parts of Honduras fall within the Central American Dry Corridor, where long drought periods and short periods of heavy rainfall strongly affect livelihoods, food security, and nutrition. (openknowledge.fao.org)

Drought and Dry Corridor vulnerability:
The Dry Corridor areas are particularly vulnerable to El Niño-related droughts, erratic rainfall, failed harvests, and food insecurity. WFP reports that Honduras and neighboring Dry Corridor countries are affected by intermittent droughts, hurricanes, and El Niño–Southern Oscillation dynamics, which can interact with poverty, insecurity, and migration pressures. (World Food Programme)

Floods and landslides:
Flood and landslide risks are driven by intense rainfall, hurricanes, tropical storms, steep slopes, degraded watersheds, deforestation, unstable soils, and settlement in floodplains or landslide-prone areas. These hazards can damage roads, bridges, schools, health facilities, water systems, housing, and agricultural land. Honduras’s 2020 experience with hurricanes Eta and Iota demonstrated how back-to-back storms can create cascading impacts through flooding, landslides, displacement, and infrastructure disruption. (World Bank)

Water resources:
Water security is highly climate-sensitive. Drought can reduce water availability for households, agriculture, ecosystems, and urban services, while extreme rainfall can contaminate water sources, damage supply systems, increase sedimentation, and overwhelm drainage systems. The Adaptation Fund has supported work in Honduras focused on increasing resilience to climate change and water-related risks for vulnerable urban populations. (Adaptation Fund)

Coastal and ecosystem vulnerability:
Honduras’s Caribbean coast, low-lying coastal settlements, wetlands, mangroves, river deltas, and coastal infrastructure are exposed to storm surge, coastal flooding, erosion, sea-level rise, saltwater intrusion, and hurricane impacts. Forest degradation and watershed degradation also reduce natural protection against floods, landslides, drought, and erosion. The World Bank CCDR identifies forest degradation as one of the slow-onset climate-related challenges affecting Honduras. (World Bank)

Social vulnerability:
Poor households, smallholder farmers, Indigenous and Afro-descendant communities, women-headed households, informal settlers, children, older persons, people with disabilities, and communities in remote rural or hazard-prone areas face higher vulnerability. These groups often have lower savings, weaker housing, limited access to insurance, weaker service access, and reduced recovery capacity after disasters. WFP notes that recent droughts, erratic rainfall, economic instability, and inflation have severely affected agriculture and household incomes in Honduras. (World Food Programme)

4. Sector-specific risk summary

Sector	Main climate and hazard risks
Agriculture and food security	Drought, erratic rainfall, crop failure, pests, soil erosion, reduced yields
Water resources	Dry-season scarcity, sedimentation, contamination, flood damage, drought stress
Housing and settlements	Flooding, landslides, earthquake exposure, informal settlement vulnerability
Transport infrastructure	Road washouts, bridge damage, landslides, river flooding, storm disruption
Coastal zones	Storm surge, coastal flooding, sea-level rise, erosion, saltwater intrusion
Ecosystems and forests	Forest degradation, watershed degradation, biodiversity loss, erosion
Public health	Waterborne disease risk, heat stress, vector-borne disease risk, disaster-related service disruption
Public finance	Recurrent disaster losses, emergency response costs, reconstruction burdens

5. Priority resilience needs

Honduras’s resilience agenda should prioritize multi-hazard early warning systems, hurricane and flood forecasting, landslide monitoring, drought early warning, anticipatory action, watershed restoration, climate-smart agriculture, water-security planning, resilient transport infrastructure, coastal protection, ecosystem-based adaptation, shock-responsive social protection, and disaster risk financing.

Estudios Atmosféricos, Oceanográficos y Sísmicos

Scientific tools enhance disaster resilience and readiness in Honduras

Source(s): Pacific Disaster Center Upload your content

Weather monitoring station in tree-covered hilly surroundings

Seipoe/Shutterstock

Nearly a decade has passed since the Government of Honduras conducted a National Disaster Preparedness Baseline Assessment to evaluate disaster management capacity and the key drivers of risks and vulnerabilities throughout the country’s 18 departments.

Finalized in 2017, the effort was undertaken in partnership with Comisión Permanente de Contingencias (COPECO), the national disaster management agency of Honduras, the U.S. Southern Command (US SOUTHCOM), and the University of Hawai’i’s Pacific Disaster Center (PDC). Unique assessment reports were developed in collaboration with the government of Honduras for each of the nation’s departments, as well as comprehensive national recommendations to maximize disaster management capacity and target the most effective risk interventions over a five-year period.

Now, in 2025, a new evaluation is taking place between PDC and COPECO, with support from US SOUTHCOM, to analyze the efficacy of outcomes from previous efforts and identify new capability enhancements aligned with current needs. The new initiative follows a series of major disasters impacting Honduras over several years including outbreaks of Dengue and COVID-19, catastrophic impacts from tropical cyclones Eta and Iota, and several major floods, landslides, droughts, and wildfires.

“PDC is honored to be invited back to collaborate with our friends and colleagues at COPECO and to help enhance the capabilities of Hondurans to create risk-informed and resilient communities equipped to deal with the rising frequency and severity of hazards,” said PDC’s Scott Kuykendall during the kick-off of the Risk, Resilience, and Adaptation Analysis in Tegucigalpa, Honduras, on January 21-23, 2025.

The event was opened with remarks from the Minister Commissioner of COPECO, Vicealmirante José Jorge Fortín, the Senior Defense Official Defense Attaché, Colonel Miguel Gonzalez, and the Security Cooperation Office Chief, Colonel Allan Kent. The workshop was attended by 35 personnel from 19 different organizations including the Honduran Navy and Air Force, COPECO Emergency Planning Directorate, Operations, Training, IT, and Communications, Red Cross Risk Management Division, civil affairs, Green Cross, and the nation’s firefighters, police, and U.S. Embassy.

“Through this collaboration, our partners at COPECO will be empowered to independently leverage the best scientific tools.”

“Through this collaboration, our partners at COPECO will be empowered to independently leverage the best scientific tools and data to monitor and warn of hazards, as well as use PDC’s globally recognized scientific tools to apply to their own risk analyses. By increasing the national capacity to anticipate potential disasters and quickly mobilize resources, as well as promoting risk-informed decision-making that enhances future preparedness, resilience, and readiness, we will together create a safer and more resilient Honduras,” said Kuykendall.

Seeking new and innovative ways to leverage technology to better anticipate and manage extreme hazard conditions and their impacts on displacement, suffering, and myriad other threats, the Government of Honduras and PDC have reconvened to measure successes, calibrate existing approaches, and equip the nation with the scientific and technical tools necessary to create ongoing improvements.

“We have the honor of collaborating with Pacific Disaster Center who trained us in the use of its DisasterAWARE platform. This platform has a very important scope for the Secretariat of COPECO and gives us a tool in which we can view statistical data received by each of the regional offices at the national level. It also makes it easier for us to view hazard information in the moments before, during and after an emergency.

These data complement each other, and they are shared with the members of SINAGER, the National Risk Management System which manages all phases of disaster management in the country, creating the same operational information channel at the national level. We are grateful for the opportunity to leverage these tools PDC has shared with us, and we are eager to share and exchange information that will contribute to building safer communities across the whole of Honduras,” said COPECO Director of Operations Luis Salinas.

The new partnership project between PDC and COPECO will review the results of the first National Disaster Preparedness Baseline Assessment, verify and update critical data for decision making and integrate it within PDC’s DisasterAWARE system, as well as perform DisasterAWARE training, a Train-the-Trainer program, and finally a comprehensive immersion into how to conduct risk and vulnerability analyses utilizing PDC’s methodology. Additional opportunities for collaboration were also identified including the opportunity to conduct a future preparedness exercise with COPECO in conjunction with US SOUTHCOM’s Joint Task Force Bravo.

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