In Shalagua there is a tiny cafe. The community of Guatemala which means a lot of water is led by a widow named Maria who began cooking after her husband a farmer passed away and the rains stopped falling on schedule. With a few plastic tables strewn about and a hammock swinging close by she serves plain meals beneath the shade of a large tree. The food is sincere and satisfying; it was created out of need rather than ambition. You haven’t been looking at the globe if you believe her story is a singular anecdote from a dry region of Central America.
Weather related disasters caused 32.6 million internal displacements worldwide in 2022 a 41% increase from 2008. That figure continues to rise. Every displacement has a person behind it who used to cook using items their grandparents used grow particular crops or eat a certain way. They take their food with them as they relocate. Not quite in bags but in muscle memory and the natural need to replicate a familiar experience when everything else has been taken away. Cuisine and climate refugees are becoming intertwined topics and the culinary effects are just now starting to become apparent.
| Topic | Climate Refugees & Cuisine: The Next Culinary Shift |
|---|---|
| Scope | Global with focus on Guatemala, Bangladesh, East Africa, Southeast Asia, and Western host nations |
| Estimated Climate-Displaced Persons (2022) | 32.6 million internal displacements triggered by weather-related disasters |
| Key Regions Affected | Sub-Saharan Africa, South Asia, Central America’s Dry Corridor, Southeast Asia |
| Global Food-Insecure Population | Approximately 690 million people (8.9% in developing regions) |
| Relevant Organizations | UNHCR, FAO, World Food Programme, ASORECH (Guatemala), Center for International Private Enterprise |
| Notable Food-Refugee Initiatives | Café Justo (Mexico), Displaced Dinners (New York), Conflict Cuisine course (Washington, D.C.) |
| Primary Climate Stressors | Rainfall variability, drought, flooding, sea-level rise, cyclones |
| Reference | UNHCR — Climate Change and Disaster Displacement |
The relationship between food culture and forced migration is not new. It served as the foundation for the entire restaurant identity of the United States. Bagels came with Jews from Eastern Europe who were escaping pogroms. Italians who were fleeing poverty brought pizza with them. Immigrants needed something portable for their twelve hour industrial shifts which is how the hot dog gained its American bun. However the current migration waves differ from those of the 19th and 20th centuries.
Today’s displacement is largely caused by the weather which is more difficult to deal with than by conflict or economic desire alone. Farmers in Guatemala’s Dry Corridor have seen crop losses of more than 70% in consecutive years due to drought. In Punjab Pakistan agricultural land is devastated by floods with startling regularity. Rice paddies that previously fed millions of people in Bangladesh are being destroyed by saltwater incursion from rising seas. The kitchen doesn’t simply shut down when a family is unable to provide food. It moves.
The way food acts on two tracks at once is what makes the convergence of climate refugees and gastronomy so intriguing and understudied. Yes it’s survival; people must eat. It’s also identity though. Researchers examining internally displaced people in Ethiopia discovered that food insecurity in camps had an impact on psychological health as well as physical health leading to a chronic worry that exacerbated the trauma of displacement.
Malnutrition was a problem for children in those camps not because there wasn’t enough food but rather because the processes in place to distribute it weren’t reliable or efficient. However something changes when groups are able to cook together share meals and recreate foods from the places they have lost. Food serves as a link between the past and the future.
A food incubator initiative helps displaced cooks establish companies in Istanbul where there are millions of Syrian refugees. After completing a thirteen-week training program they present their products to investors. The genius of cuisine as a bridge is that you can prepare and sell your dish without knowing the language of the foreign nation. Displaced Dinners was founded in New York by a Palestinian refugee named Nasser Jaber.
He organizes pop-up events where refugee chefs also referred to as chefugees share their story while preparing meals for patrons. Since the first Vietnamese refugees arrived in Washington D.C. in the middle of the 1970s the city has developed into a hub for diaspora cuisine. This legacy is now codified in a university course called Conflict Cuisine where students examine the connections between displacement war and what ends up on the plate.
Perhaps one of the most neglected facets of climate adaptation is this new food economy. Infrastructure for detention facilities monitoring towers and border fences cost billions of dollars. The small cooperatives community kitchens and food entrepreneurship initiatives that help displaced people rebuild via cooking receive relatively little funding. In the Mexican border town of Agua Prieta there is a coffee cooperative called
Cafe Justo. A group of farmers began roasting their own beans twenty years ago after pooling a $20 000 debt. Making artisanal coffee for export catalogs was not the aim. The goal was to establish circumstances that would allow their children to pursue careers without having to travel abroad. Recently the cooperative commemorated its twentieth anniversary. This kind of modest grass roots project which isn’t ostentatious or scalable the way Silicon Valley prefers seems to be what climate adaptation looks like when it succeeds.
All of this has sobering scientific underpinnings. In a 2009 study economist Wolfram Schlenker of the Harvard Kennedy School discovered that agricultural yields drastically decline above a particular heat threshold. Three years later a heat wave in the U.S. maize heartland reduced yields by 25% confirming the prediction. The strain on food systems is real given that global temperatures briefly exceeded the 1.5 degree Celsius warming target in 2024 and that approximately 700 million people are already considered undernourished.
The price of rice the evacuation of fishing settlements along the coast of West Africa and the competition for arable land that has transformed agricultural plots in the Global South into investment vehicles for Gulf states and European biofuel corporations are all examples of this.
We can hardly foretell how menus food economics and cultural palates would change as a result of climate refugees and gastronomy. The current patterns of displacement rural to urban south to north inland to coastal and back again bring culinary traditions to new places. The wife of a Guatemalan farmer who used to cook with rain-fed corn may eventually open a tortilleria in Houston.
A family of Bangladeshi fishermen may introduce river fish preparations to a London area that has never tried them. Quietly it is already taking place in cities throughout the Gulf North America and Europe. The question is not whether this change in cuisine will take place. It’s whether we’ll see it for what it is the flavor of a planet undergoing change not a fad or a novelty. and whether the cooks will receive assistance or just be eaten.
i) https://www.hks.harvard.edu/faculty-research/policycast/policy-change-needed-now-avoid-climate-driven-global-food-crisis
ii) https://www.climate-refugees.org/perspectives/2025/9/21/right-to-stay
iii) https://www.harvardmagazine.com/2023/10/food-and-climate-complexities
iv) https://civileats.com/2024/09/30/weathering-climate-shocks-how-restaurants-survive-supply-disruptions/