Seeds We Carry: Finding Home through Climate Displacement

By ​Asli Gutiérrez

Understanding why people move in response to climate disasters requires imagining ourselves in their place for a while. The quote “Displacement is not the loss of home. It is the reminder that we carry home within us, like seeds waiting for the right soil”speaks to that truth.  Humans have always migrated, whether for lack of resources, insecurity, or the hope of a better life, but when climate disaster forces people to leave, they do not leave empty-handed. They take their traditions, languages, recipes, songs, and memories with them, like seeds that hold the potential to bloom again. 

Displaced communities often rebuild their identities in new places, just like a seed adapts when it's carried to a new place by the wind. Through cooking traditional foods, practicing ceremonies, planting family crops, and speaking ancestral languages. These acts become a way of rooting again. Home, then, is not always a physical place. It is the memories and traditions we carry with us, the ones that shaped our childhood, carried across borders and oceans. It does not matter wherever we go, where the wind takes us, we’ll take those pieces of home with us, and like seeds, we learn to grow again even in an unfamiliar environment. 

Recently, I  have been looking at climate displacement in Honduras. The impact of climate change on poorer communities in Honduras is having a devastating effect on livelihoods, forcing many people to flee the country to avoid starvation and lack of safe drinking water. One of the most devastating hurricanes was the hurricane Iota. Hurricane Iota caused catastrophic damage in Honduras, exacerbating the devastation left by Hurricane Eta just two weeks prior. The storm, which passed through as a tropical storm, brought extensive flooding, landslides, and wind damage to regions like San Pedro Sula, destroying crops, homes, and critical infrastructure, leading to widespread displacement and food insecurity. 
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After the hurricanes, over 3 million people were suffering from food insecurity, and 2.8 million people are in need of humanitarian assistance, over double the previous estimate issued in early 2020. Many families lost their livelihoods in fishing and farming, forcing them to either sell everything they owned or reduce daily meals for survival. As the UN expert noted, “Honduras is one of the most dangerous countries in the world for environmental human rights defenders,” and many because the combination of climate disaster, poverty, and violence left them with no choice. In these moments, memory becomes a map people carry inside—whether the land changes beneath them or they leave their land behind. 


Reference:

• United Nations Human Rights Office. (2023). Honduras: Climate change forcing people to flee, says UN expert.https://www.ohchr.org