Sarah Bermeo cited in NYT article on cutting USAID’s climate programs
The associate professor offers insights in a New York Times article focused on the impact freezing USAID funding might have on migration in Central America.
Photograph by Johan Ordonez/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images
Sarah Bermeo, associate professor of public policy and political science, offered insight into the link between climate change and migration in Central America and how stopping aid could affect small farmers in the region for the New York Times article, titled “U.S. Aid Agency’s Climate Programs Aimed to Curb Migration. Now They’re Gone.”
In the Feb. 8 article, author Christopher Flavelle writes, “As the link between climate change and migration in Central America was becoming clearer, the Biden administration began helping to make those countries more resilient to extreme weather.
"Programs included crop insurance for small farmers, making it easier for coffee producers in Honduras to get drought-resistant seeds, improving access to water for irrigation and early warning systems for flash floods.
"Small farmers ‘are facing increased food insecurity for their entire families, linked to increased drought and changing rain patterns,’ said Sarah Blodgett Bermeo, a professor of political science at Duke University who wrote a book about foreign aid. ‘Cutting aid will decrease funding for the people in precarious situations who so far have chosen not to migrate.’”