A2 · Elementary
9 min
climatemigrationhumanitarian affairsafrica
The Road South: Climate, Hunger, and the People Who Leave
El Camino al Sur: Clima, Hambre y los Que Se Van
Five Ethiopian migrants are killed in xenophobic attacks in Johannesburg, South Africa. Fletcher and Octavio explore why people leave Ethiopia, how climate change destroys homes, and what it means to move through a world that doesn't want you.
Cinco migrantes etíopes mueren en ataques xenófobos en Johannesburgo, Sudáfrica. Fletcher y Octavio exploran por qué la gente abandona Etiopía, cómo el cambio climático destruye hogares, y qué significa moverse en un mundo que no quiere recibirte.
8 essential A2-level terms from this episode, with translations and example sentences in Spanish.
| Spanish | English | Example |
|---|---|---|
| sequía | drought | En Etiopía hay una sequía muy larga. |
| migrante | migrant | Los migrantes buscan una vida mejor. |
| hambre | hunger | Los niños tienen hambre porque no hay comida. |
| clima | climate | El clima cambia mucho en África. |
| exacto | exactly (personal agreement) | Exacto, eso es lo que yo pienso también. |
| frontera | border | Muchas personas cruzan la frontera para buscar trabajo. |
| agricultor | farmer | El agricultor espera la lluvia todos los años. |
| suficiente | enough | No hay agua suficiente en este país. |
Last week, five Ethiopian men died in Johannesburg.
Three of them were shot inside a McDonald's restaurant.
The story is being covered as a crime story, a xenophobia story.
And it is both of those things.
But I keep thinking about a different question, which is: why were they there in the first place?
Mira, la respuesta es simple.
Look, the answer is simple.
En Etiopía no hay agua.
In Ethiopia there is no water.
No hay comida.
There is no food.
La gente tiene que salir.
People have to leave.
That's the thing, right.
We talk about migration as a political problem, as a border problem.
But before it's any of those things, it's a climate problem.
The Horn of Africa has been in a slow-motion catastrophe for years.
Sí.
Yes.
Etiopía tiene muchos problemas.
Ethiopia has many problems.
El clima es muy difícil ahora.
The climate is very difficult now.
Let me put a number to that.
The Horn of Africa experienced five consecutive failed rainy seasons between 2020 and 2023.
Five.
That's the longest drought on record in forty years.
Roughly 36 million people faced acute food insecurity at the peak of it.
Treinta y seis millones.
Thirty-six million.
Eso es mucha gente.
That is a lot of people.
Muchos niños también.
Many children too.
And Ethiopia is just one country in that region.
Somalia, Kenya, Eritrea, Djibouti.
They're all in the same climatic zone.
The same pressures.
And when the land stops producing, people move.
That's not a new thing, actually.
No, no es nuevo.
No, it is not new.
La gente siempre busca un lugar mejor.
People always look for a better place.
Siempre.
Always.
The Great Ethiopian Famine of 1983 to 1985 killed somewhere between 400,000 and a million people.
That one got the attention, the Live Aid concerts, the televised images.
The current crisis is quieter, more diffuse, spread across a decade.
Harder to photograph.
Es verdad.
That's true.
Las fotos son importantes.
Photos are important.
Sin fotos, la gente no ve el problema.
Without photos, people don't see the problem.
Octavio, you spent time in sub-Saharan Africa reporting.
What did you see?
Vi familias sin casa.
I saw families without homes.
El río no tiene agua.
The river has no water.
Los animales están muertos.
The animals are dead.
Es horrible.
It is horrible.
There's a specific mechanism worth understanding here.
In the Horn of Africa, the rains come in two seasons: the long rains from March to May, and the shorter rains from October to December.
When both fail, it's not just inconvenient.
The entire agricultural calendar collapses.
Los agricultores esperan la lluvia.
Farmers wait for the rain.
Pero la lluvia no llega.
But the rain doesn't come.
No hay nada que comer.
There is nothing to eat.
And climate scientists are reasonably confident that the warming of the Indian Ocean is the main driver.
The Indian Ocean is warming faster than other ocean basins.
That disrupts the moisture patterns that East Africa depends on.
This isn't bad luck.
This is physics.
El océano cambia el tiempo.
The ocean changes the weather.
El tiempo cambia la comida.
The weather changes the food.
La comida cambia todo.
The food changes everything.
That's a clean chain of causation, actually.
And it leads to the next question: where do people go?
For a lot of East Africans, the answer has historically been South Africa.
It's the wealthiest country on the continent.
It has infrastructure, jobs, a functioning economy.
Relative to Addis Ababa or Mogadishu, Johannesburg feels like an opportunity.
Sí, Sudáfrica tiene trabajo.
Yes, South Africa has work.
Pero también tiene problemas grandes.
But it also has big problems.
Big problems is understating it.
South Africa has roughly 32 percent unemployment.
Some townships have rates closer to 60 percent.
And there's a long, brutal history of scapegoating migrants for economic frustration.
These attacks in Johannesburg are the latest chapter in something that's been going on since at least 2008.
En 2008 hay ataques también.
In 2008 there are attacks too.
Muchas personas mueren.
Many people die.
Es el mismo problema.
It is the same problem.
The 2008 xenophobic violence killed over 60 people and displaced roughly 100,000 in the space of two weeks.
And what's maddening is that South Africa itself is not insulated from the climate crisis.
Cape Town came within weeks of running out of water in 2018.
That was called Day Zero.
The country is both a destination for climate migrants and a victim of the same forces.
Sudáfrica no tiene agua suficiente.
South Africa doesn't have enough water.
Y recibe muchos migrantes.
And it receives many migrants.
Eso es difícil.
That is difficult.
The irony is almost too neat.
People flee drought in Ethiopia and arrive in a country that's also running out of water.
Climate stress doesn't respect national borders.
It doesn't care that you've traveled 3,000 miles to escape it.
El clima no tiene fronteras.
The climate has no borders.
Eso es muy importante.
That is very important.
La gente no comprende eso.
People don't understand that.
And that's actually where international law starts to look very dated.
The 1951 Refugee Convention defines a refugee as someone fleeing persecution: war, ethnic violence, political repression.
It does not recognize climate displacement.
If your farm dried up and your children are hungry, you are not, legally speaking, a refugee.
La ley es del año 1951.
The law is from the year 1951.
El mundo es muy diferente ahora.
The world is very different now.
Written when the great displacement fear was communism and the aftermath of the Second World War, yes.
Nobody in Geneva in 1951 was thinking about the Indian Ocean warming.
They were thinking about Stalin.
Necesitamos una ley nueva.
We need a new law.
Una ley para el clima.
A law for the climate.
Pero nadie habla de eso.
But nobody talks about that.
A few countries have started to.
New Zealand created a special visa category for Pacific Islanders whose islands are literally disappearing under rising seas.
Tuvalu signed a deal where its citizens can relocate to New Zealand as their homeland becomes uninhabitable.
That's extraordinary.
And completely exceptional.
Nueva Zelanda ayuda a esas personas.
New Zealand helps those people.
Pero el mundo no hace lo mismo.
But the world doesn't do the same.
Es injusto.
It is unfair.
There's a number I find genuinely difficult to sit with.
The World Bank estimates that by 2050, up to 216 million people could be internal climate migrants, just within their own countries.
Not crossing international borders.
Just moving from where their land died to somewhere that still works.
216 million people.
Doscientos dieciséis millones.
Two hundred and sixteen million.
Eso es un número enorme.
That is an enormous number.
Imposible de imaginar.
Impossible to imagine.
And most of those people will be in sub-Saharan Africa, South Asia, and Latin America.
The regions that contributed least to the carbon emissions that caused this.
There's a moral weight to that fact that political conversations tend to skip right past.
África no usa mucho petróleo.
Africa doesn't use much oil.
Pero África sufre mucho.
But Africa suffers a lot.
Eso no es justo.
That is not fair.
Ethiopia emits roughly 0.3 tons of CO2 per person per year.
The United States emits about 15.
And yet the Ethiopian farmer whose wells have dried up is the one boarding a bus to Johannesburg, and then getting shot in a fast food restaurant.
That calculus is going to haunt us.
Los países ricos crean el problema.
Rich countries create the problem.
Los países pobres pagan el precio.
Poor countries pay the price.
Siempre es así.
It is always like that.
Octavio, I want to push on something you said before, though.
You said the answer is simple, no water, no food, people leave.
But it's not always that linear, is it?
There are millions of Ethiopians who stay, who adapt, who find ways through.
What makes one person leave and another stay?
Tienes razón.
You are right.
No es simple.
It is not simple.
Necesitas dinero para viajar también.
You also need money to travel.
Los más pobres no pueden salir.
The poorest cannot leave.
That is a point I did not know until I started reading about this seriously.
The very poorest, the most desperate, often can't migrate at all because migration costs money.
Bus tickets, border fees, bribes.
The people who make it to South Africa are often the ones who had just enough resources to go.
Exacto.
Exactly.
Y llegan a Sudáfrica y la vida es muy difícil también.
And they arrive in South Africa and life is very difficult there too.
No es el paraíso.
It is not paradise.
The word you used just now, exacto, meaning exactly right, I've noticed you reach for that one when something lands cleanly.
In English we'd say 'exactly' or 'precisely' but it comes with more weight in Spanish somehow.
What's the difference between 'exacto' and 'correcto' in everyday speech?
Buena pregunta.
Good question.
'Correcto' es para los hechos.
'Correcto' is for facts.
La respuesta correcta en un examen.
The correct answer on an exam.
'Exacto' es más personal.
'Exacto' is more personal.
Es para decir: sí, eso es lo que yo pienso también.
It is for saying: yes, that is what I think too.
So 'correcto' is factual agreement and 'exacto' is more like, you've said the thing I was thinking.
Like in English when someone finishes your sentence and you say 'exactly' with that slight relief in your voice.
Exacto.
Exactly.
Y ahora tú también lo usas bien.
And now you use it well too.
Mira, aprendes rápido, Fletcher.
Look, you learn fast, Fletcher.
That might be the first compliment you've paid me in eight years.
I'm going to write it down.
Five Ethiopian men died in Johannesburg last week.
And behind that, somewhere, a failed rainy season, a dried-up well, a family decision made at a kitchen table in a drought year.
That's what I keep coming back to.