KPBS Midday Edition

Connecting Climate Change To The Surge Of Migrants At The Border

By Megan Burke / News Editor, Mark Sauer / Host, The Roundtable

Published April 16, 2019 at 8:07 AM PDT

This story was published more than 5 years ago.

A Guatemalan child paints at the El Chaparral U.S.-Mexico border crossing, in Tijuana, Mexico, Wednesday, May 2, 2018.

In a recent series of reports for The New Yorker, staff writer Jonathan Blitzer examines how climate change is fueling an exodus of Guatemalan migrants coming to the U.S. border.

The reasons why Central American migrants come to the U.S. are varied. Some are escaping violence or extreme poverty. And climate change is also a major factor forcing people to leave farming communities in Guatemala and Honduras.

In a recent series of reports for The New Yorker, staff writer Jonathan Blitzer examines how climate change is fueling an exodus of Guatemalan migrants coming to the U.S. border.

"Because climate change has so devastated communities, crops and their food, one thing that (Guatemalan) community leaders have noticed is that people are leaving quite simply because they've gone hungry," Blitzer said.

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As part of the KPBS climate change desk, Mark Sauer recently spoke to Blitzer about what he found in his reporting.

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Megan Burke

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Megan Burke is an Emmy-award winning news editor overseeing the environment, health, and racial justice and social equity reporting beats. Prior to her current role as editor, Megan spent more than a decade as a producer for KPBS Midday Edition, a daily radio news magazine and podcast. Other news production credits include KPBS Evening Edition, KPBS Roundtable, and San Diego’s DNA, a two-part documentary highlighting the region’s oldest traditions and culture using personal artifacts and oral histories of San Diegans.

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Mark Sauer

A newspaperman for more than 30 years, Mark Sauer joined KPBS in October 2010 and previously served as the host of the KPBS Roundtable. He spent 27 years as a reporter and editor at The San Diego Union-Tribune after stints at The Houston Post and at two papers in his native Michigan. A features/human-interest writer in the UT's Currents section for many years, Mark also spent about a third of his UT career as an editor and reporter on the Metro Desk. He has covered a wide range of events: Wild fires in Southern California and Hurricane Katrina on the Gulf Coast; Super Bowls and the World Series; foster care and child-abuse issues; the Roman Catholic Diocese's sexual-abuse scandal and bankruptcy; royal visits of Queen Elizabeth, Prince Charles and Princess Diana; Republican and Democratic national conventions; high-profile criminal trials; and many other stories, from the silly to the sublime. Along the way, he interviewed everyone from presidents to pan-handlers. His work exposing the false accusations and prosecutions of several San Diegans for murder, rape and child abuse garnered Pulitzer Prize nominations and many regional and local journalism awards, including Best in the West, the Sol Price Award for Responsible Journalism and several San Diego and California bar-association awards. Mark has a degree in journalism from Michigan State University.

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