Precarity and Resilience: The Wellbeing of U.S. Latinos in a Time of Mounting Climate Change

Abstract

This environmental epidemiology article examines the understudied issue of Latino risk in the context of climate change. The largest ethnic minority group in the U.S., Latino socioeconomic characteristics put them disproportionately in harm’s way for the adverse health impacts of climate change, including being subject to diverse forms of discrimination in gaining access to government resources for prevention and recovery from climate impacts. The specific ways climate change is experienced in Latino communities varies by physical location, employment and residence patterns, and community resilience. Failure to address the threat of climate change, and to identify the specific needs of those who are most vulnerable, including not including them directly in preparedness planning, enhances the likelihood that official responses to climate change will perpetuate historic patterns of denial of Latino concerns about the environment, and existing patterns of inequality, and widen prevailing differences in climate-driven adversity.