Panama and El Salvador Declare Emergencies as El Nino Drought Batters Central America, Disrupting Panama Canal Shipping

Panama and El Salvador have rolled out emergency measures to confront a severe drought driven by the El Nino weather pattern, joining Honduras as Central America struggles with failed harvests, record-breaking heat and growing alarm over potential food shortages.

The emergency declarations come as the drought already takes a measurable toll on global commerce. The Panama Canal, one of the world's busiest maritime trade routes, has been compelled to scale back the volume of shipping it handles because water levels in the reservoirs that feed its locks have fallen dangerously low.

In Panama City, Interior Minister Dinoska Montalvo said the emergency declaration puts the government in a position to respond to whatever conditions El Nino brings in the months ahead. She pointed to the damage already being inflicted on agriculture, warning that ruined crops have stoked anxieties that hunger could spread through affected regions.

El Salvador acted separately, announcing a state of maximum alert on Tuesday designed to mobilize monitoring operations, surveillance and relief programs for communities hit hardest by the dry spell. The country's Civil Protection agency announced the move in a post on X, saying a red alert was being imposed nationwide covering both meteorological drought and agricultural drought.

El Nino is a recurring climatic phenomenon that warms surface waters in the central and eastern equatorial Pacific, sending ripples through wind and rainfall patterns around the planet and producing unpredictable weather far beyond the Pacific basin. On average, the pattern returns every two to seven years, but meteorologists say this year's episode is emerging as one of the strongest in recent memory.

The phenomenon is also pushing worldwide temperatures higher in what forecasters had already predicted could become the hottest year ever recorded. All three affected countries — Panama, El Salvador and Honduras — shattered their monthly temperature benchmarks in both June and July, deepening worries about crop failure and famine. In El Salvador alone, 14 heat records have fallen so far this month.

The drought's reach across the region is extensive. Honduras has placed 80 percent of its national territory under alert, while farmers across the isthmus watch rain-dependent harvests wither. In El Salvador, rainfall that would normally be plentiful at this point in the year simply has not materialized, wiping out planted fields.

El Salvador's agriculture ministry said it would deliver food aid to rural households that lack irrigation systems and therefore have no means of protecting their crops from the prolonged dryness. Several of the country's municipalities sit within the Central American Dry Corridor, a notoriously arid band stretching across parts of Guatemala's neighbors Honduras and Nicaragua that is especially exposed to extreme weather swings.

The regional response continues to expand southward as well. Last week, Peru declared a state of emergency covering one-third of its cities because of El Nino, with officials cautioning that both intense heat and unusually heavy rainfall could wreak havoc on food production there.

With the peak of the crisis likely still ahead, officials in all four countries face mounting pressure to secure water supplies, shield staple crops and prevent a weather event from turning into a full-blown humanitarian emergency.

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