Study Architecture 
ProPEL 
Author(s): Madalene Dailey
An escalating climate crisis is reshaping global landscapes at an accelerated pace, creating uncertainty within architecture and planning. As these once-localized issues spill over borders and intertwine, they converge into a single, large-scale crisis demanding humanitarian intervention. Because climate change affects multiple regions simultaneously, it can be difficult to determine where to allocate already limited resources, creating new challenges in determining how aid is distributed. So, who qualifies for assistance? And what response efforts are prioritized when need is so widespread and complex? Rural agricultural communities in Latin America are among the first to experience the impacts of large-scale displacement, disproportionate resource distribution, and drastically changing climates. As these threats intensify, rural populations face growing challenges in securing habitable living conditions. This crisis is particularly evident in Latin America’s Dry Corridor, where environmentally dependent communities struggle to survive. Guatemala, despite having the largest economy in Central America, has one of the fastest growing emigration rates.1 Half of the population lives in poverty, with the housing deficit exceeding 2.2 million homes.2 Facing discrepancies in inadequate shelter construction, limited land rights, and insufficient socio-economic opportunities, a high concentration of the country’s impoverished population continually struggles with housing insecurity and recovery, leaving them in a harmful cycle of repair. Climate-vulnerable communities require new approaches to address systemic discrepancies in how shelter-focused humanitarian work operates locally. In response to limited aid, homestead programs like Nueva Reforma in Chiquimula, Guatemala, are leading grassroots efforts to combat local issues and help their community build climate-related resilience through citizen-organized planning. The program has allowed residents to tackle issues like land tenure rights, affordable housing, and larger socio-economic development to combat displacement threats. Despite this success, long-term resilience challenges remain, particularly in updating shelters and expanding capacity for social investment programs. In 2024, the U.S. Agency for International Development Bureau for Humanitarian Assistance (USAID/BHA), Habitat for Humanity Guatemala, the Association for Education and Health in Central America (AEHCA), the Ipala municipality, and local village leaders contributed to an investigative case study conducted with residents of Nueva Reforma to examine how architecture and local planning can contribute to long-term resilience for vulnerable rural populations. Findings from Nueva Reforma contribute to understanding the complex challenges of climate-induced displacement and housing insecurity in rural Latin America, offering insight into how replicable key tools can be developed to address displacement and shelter assistance on a larger scale within the Dry Corridor’s climate-vulnerable populations.
https://doi.org/10.35483/ACSA.AM.113.34
Volume Editors
Sara Jensen Carr & Rubén García Rubio
ISBN
978-1-944214-48-7
