Meet the Brighton photographer documenting climate change

This year the UK had its hottest day in history when the mercury reached 38.7C in Cambridge on July 29.

But halfway across the world in Central America, Brighton born-and-bred photographer Sean Hawkey has documented global warming’s more extreme effects.

“In some countries, the main impact is the increase in extreme weather events, cyclones, hurricanes, storms that wipe out infrastructure, housing, crops,” the 54-year-old said.

“Elsewhere there are prolonged droughts, scarcity of water for drinking and washing.”

“This year I visited farmers in Honduras who haven’t had a harvest for nine years.

“The predictions are that they won’t be getting one again. They aren’t farmers any more.

“They are just very poor people living in a rural area of Honduras.

“Projects are trying to provide alternatives to the staples of corn and beans because they are already unreliable crops.”

Seas flood Havana, Cuba

As global temperatures increase, droughts are becoming longer and more regular in warmer countries.

In Valle, an area of Honduras, Sean photographed Jose Santos, a man digging a deep well by hand.

“The water table had dropped by 20 metres in his area,” the father of five said.

“And in the capital water supplies have dropped to critical levels.

“We’re already seeing that the production capacity of agriculture is failing in many places, and this is dramatically significant for human life.

“We are reaching tipping points in the sustainability of the production of food, and that will affect us all in different ways.”

Jose Santos digs a well in Valle, Honduras, where the water table has dropped 20 metres

And it is not just agriculture that is beginning to fail as climate change sets in.

Communities that depend on fishing have experienced severe loss of fish because of warmer seas.

“The heating of the water, and the absorption of carbon dioxide by water, is affecting fish populations,” Sean said.

“Some places have massive die-offs of fish population, which affect the nutrition and livelihoods of a lot of people.

“A billion people in the world depend on fishing some way. That is under threat.”

When droughts get longer and harvests fail, food shortages are just one of the many dire consequences of climate change in these countries.

“When agriculture fails in an area, you get what scientists call food insecurity and there are consequences in social behaviour,” said Sean.

“Lack of food increases conflicts, and violence, and it increases migration.”

This year thousands of Central American refugees made their way towards the USA in a “migrant caravan”.

Sean was there to capture the desperate asylum seekers fleeing climate crisis.

“Many of them were escaping failing agriculture and a decrease in farm work that is coming from unpredictable and extreme weather,” he said.

“A lot of them come from areas where there are prolonged droughts.

“Many of the people on the caravan were from Honduras, where climate change is a component of the social disorder there.

“First food insecurity, then social unrest, increased violence, internal migration, and finally people leaving the country in huge numbers.”

A migrant caravan of Central American refugees passes through Mexico

And according to the photographer, this is an issue that will only become more serious over time.

Sean said: “We will see a big increase in the numbers of people on the move around the world looking for stability and food security.

“We are just seeing the beginning of that now.

“Here with Brexit we are pulling up the drawbridge to stop climate refugees from many countries where climate change is a motor for migration.

“But while the impacts are being felt most in tropical countries now, climate change will affect us all and urgent action needs to be taken to reduce the catastrophic impacts that are coming.”