'Flooded with trash' Rise in migration via Darién Gap creates pollution crisis

The Darién Gap's isolation has shielded the Indigenous communities who live there from the outside world for centuries.

- Luke Taylor

Spanish conquistadors died trying to settle in the sliver of dense, swampy rainforest connecting Colombia with Panama, and in recent decades only the most intrepid outsiders have undertaken the 60-mile trek as a test of their mettle.

Now, however, with half a million people slogging through the rainforest on their way to the US each year, Darién's Indigenous groups say their ecosystem and way of life are under threat.

"It's something that we did not expect, as the migration took off from one day to the next and suddenly we found ourselves flooded with trash," says Yenairo Aji, a community leader, or noco, in Nueva Vigía, a village close to the Darién's northern frontier where about 1,400 Emberá people live. "It's worrying because we depend on our local ecosystem for everything. It's our source of life."

Estimates differ, but at least 8,000 people live in the Darién Gap, mostly from the Emberá-Wounaan and Guna Indigenous groups. The rainforest's inaccessibility had protected it from development and environmental degradation.

A surge in migration since the Covid pandemic has quickly changed that. In 2019, 24,000 people undertook the week-long trek. By 2022, that number had reached 250,000. It doubled in 2023, passing half a million people for the first time.

Human rights groups such as Médecins Sans Frontières and Amnesty International are sounding the alarm about the humanitarian crisis as dozens of poorly equipped, malnourished people succumb to the jungle's natural perils each year, and armed bandits rob, exploit and sexually abuse many more.