Focus on Arts and Ecology

From blacksmiths to street food vendors, the country’s informal workforce fears it is being left behind by the green transition. Five workers tell their stories. 

By Safina Nabi, June 5, 2026

"Why do you want to know what we do? Do you want to steal our work and shut our shops?”

Seelampur, a neighbourhood in north-east Delhi, had seemed extremely loud until then; an endless cacophony of honking rickshaws, shouting vendors and the loud sizzle of oil from food stalls that eat up most available walking room.

Until he spoke. Hostile, worried and anxious all at once.

Behind the middle-aged man was his e-waste refurbishing shop. Huge white sacks, some bulging, some half-tied, spilled into every available corner. Among them, almost blending into the landscape, were men, women and children hunched over. Their hands moved quickly with practiced precision across fragments of metals.

What once belonged to another life arrives here as waste, only to be broken down again into something that can be sold. Seelampur is one of the Indian capital’s largest hubs for informal e-waste recycling. Here, a laptop becomes copper wiring, aluminium and circuit boards; a mobile phone yields tiny quantities of gold, silver and other recoverable metals; and an old transistor radio could turn into scraps of reusable components.

But what can often seem like scattered, small-scale work is in fact part of a vast, unregulated economy that sustains thousands of lives. Research indicates over 50,000 informal workers in Seelampur are involved in the “collection, dismantling, segregation, and rummaging for metals extraction through acid washing, and open burning”.

This labour comes at a cost: without formal safeguards, workers – few of whom use protective equipment – are routinely exposed to toxic chemicals such as lead, mercury and acid residues. The processes used to extract the metals also pose an environmental hazard through emissions and leeching of pollutants.

And it comes in a country that has steadily raised its climate ambitions. Under India’s updated national climate action plan, the country aims to cut the emissions intensity of its GDP by 47% by 2035, compared with 2005 levels. The transition is being driven by measures such as expanding renewable energy, investing in battery storage, and pushing for cleaner manufacturing and infrastructure.

Analysis by the Centre for Research on Energy and Clean Air shows India’s carbon dioxide emissions are already slowing, with CO2 emissions growing by just 0.7% in 2025, the slowest increase in over two decades. This marked a sharp drop from the 4-11% growth seen in the preceding four years.

As the world’s third‑largest emitter of greenhouse gases after China and the US, India faces a massive workforce challenge. A substantial portion of the country’s economy runs on its informal sector, which contributed about 45% to the GDP in 2022-23. Many of these workers earn their living in sectors that rely on fossil fuels or emit greenhouse gases; jobs that are deeply embedded in the local cultural landscape. In cities, for instance, there is the ubiquitous local dhaba, or roadside food stall, that runs on coal-fired ovens; or the presswala, a typically family-run clothes-ironing business operated out of a shack.

To understand how the green energy transition is impacting their lives, Dialogue Earth spoke with five informal workers in urban and rural areas across two different Indian states, each from a different trade. They unanimously expressed a deep sense of worry that the transition was leaving them behind.

As the man in Seelampur put it: “Our livelihoods are under threat.”

The weight she carries

Sushila Devi reaches her roadside ironing shack just as the first light begins to settle over Khirki, a village in south Delhi. The 50-year-old pours a little water onto the dusty ground and begins sweeping; a method of claiming her small, cleaned space before the day begins in earnest.

She opens a metal almirah (free-standing cabinet) and pulls out two heavy irons and a bucket of charcoal. Devi fills them with the coal and waits; the equipment must be ready before her father-in-law and son arrive for work.

Up close, her hands tell their own story. They have been worn down by years of labour, callused by the coal, darkened by the heat. “The iron is very heavy and using it constantly has left me with severe pain in the shoulder,” Devi says.

There is little comfort around. No fan to cut through the heat, no tap for cool water, no corner to rest in. By noon, the irons are almost too hot to touch. “In summer, the heat rises from the street and the irons,” Devi explains. “At times, I get so dehydrated that I get a severe headache and lose my appetite for days.”

But winter proves even more uncertain for her livelihood. “That is when we struggle the most,” she says. “Pollution increases, government announces restrictions, and anything that causes pollution must stop.”

These restrictions are often enforced under Delhi’s Graded Response Action Plan, a four-stage system that imposes progressively stricter restrictions as air quality worsens. At Stage I, when air quality enters the “poor” category, authorities can restrict the use of coal and firewood. Higher stages bring tighter curbs on construction, industrial activity, as well as the use of diesel generators and vehicles.

Among the first casualties are coal and firewood-based activities that sustain thousands of informal workers, from roadside ironing stalls to small workshops and furnaces. As restrictions tighten, fuels that are essential to these livelihoods become harder to access or more expensive, leaving workers to absorb the costs without necessarily having the means to switch to alternatives.

As restrictions tighten, the supply of coal becomes unpredictable. “Sometimes it just disappears,” she says. “The suppliers start playing hide and seek. When it does come, they spray it with water to make it heavier, so we end up paying more for less.”

On most days, she makes around INR 400-500 (USD 4.20-5.30). “But when coal is expensive or not available, even that becomes difficult.”

For workers like Devi, there are many barriers to the adoption of clean energy. They don’t get coal through formal channels, “where they can show a ration card and receive it at a regulated price”, explains Rahul Tongia, senior fellow at the Centre for Social and Economic Progress. “Instead, they rely on informal networks, what we might call jugaad – leftover or diverted coal from the secondary market.”  

That tension, between survival and regulation, shapes Devi’s life – and those of many others.

A family of eight

Mohammad Qasim lives in Shaheen Bagh, a neighbourhood in south-east Delhi, and has worked at a small roadside eatery for the past two years. Cooking in a tandoor, or clay oven, is entirely dependent on coal, the 19-year-old says. “The grilling process cannot be done without charcoal.”

In his mind, his work is tied not just to skill, but to a system that offers no easy exits. Winters, like for Devi, are difficult. “We cannot do anything else. We face problems when the government shuts down tandoors,” he notes. “Their point may be fair, but what will we do? How will we live? If we don’t work, we don’t eat.”

A few kilometres away, on the outskirts of Delhi’s Malviya Nagar neighbourhood, blacksmith Vikram Mani has set up shop under a tree; a shop that morphs into a home for his family of eight at night. He has been part of the informal labour force since he was 15, building construction equipment and household utensils ranging from axes and hatchets to woks and iron skillets.

That life of labour has brought very little fortune. His home still lacks a toilet. “In the morning, there is no proper way to wake up, freshen [up] or cook,” he said. “First, we rush to find a toilet, then water.”

His work, too, is built around coal. Mani heats raw iron in a small furnace until it softens, and shapes it into tools which he sells. On average, he earns INR 30-40 (USD 0.30–0.40) per item. “We barely survive.”

With margins so tenuous, any disruption to the coal supply has serious consequences. “When incomes are this low, even modest increases in input costs or disruptions to supply can have outsized consequences,” Tongia explains. “That’s why social protection and support mechanisms need to be built into transition planning from the outset.”

Changed habits, losing livelihoods

Thousands of kilometres away, the forests of Kashmir are markedly different to the bustling streets of Delhi. Here, the air is quieter, broken by the sound of cowbells and the crackle of wood fires. Scattered along the forest edge are settlements of the Gujjar and Bakarwal communities – characterised by clusters of mud and wood houses known as dhokh.

Gujjar families burn dead wood and felled timber, converting it all into charcoal that is used to fuel kangri – small wicker fire pots that they tuck under their woollen robes to stay warm through the harsh winters.

Life in the community revolves around the forest. Throughout the year, families rely on it for fuel, fodder and grazing land. The work is seasonal but predictable, helping sustain households through Kashmir’s long winters.

“But with time, and because of climate change and shifts in people’s behaviour, we are losing everything,” says Iqbal Deedar, who, like his father before him, makes kangri fuel. “Not only work, but survival itself.”

Deedar explains that from May until October, he used to make charcoal and sell it in city centres. But now, demand has more than halved: “People prefer other electric and gas options to keep warm.”

Gunjan Jhunjhunwala, programme lead for renewables at the Council on Energy, Environment and Water, a think-tank, says that few sectors can match the stability still provided by the coal industry to its workers. Such workers are also hesitant to relocate for work. “We need to think of active and comprehensive regional development plans that attract… sectors which are [similarly] able to employ and match the wages and social security of workers,” she says.

Jhunjhunwala suggests formally certifying workers’ existing skills, with provision for “top-up skills training” so they can progress into higher-paying job roles.

A blog from World Resources Institute India highlights administrative solutions for informal workers that could help soften the blow of the green energy transition. “Expanding social security coverage, including pension schemes and healthcare access, is crucial to safeguarding these workers,” the authors write. “Wage security programs and financial assistance can provide immediate relief, while targeted re-skilling initiatives can help them transition into emerging green jobs.”

They point to Jharkhand’s plan for a livelihood transition initiative, which will connect informal workers in the state’s mining regions with alternative employment options. “Establishing similar worker registration systems nationwide will improve access to government benefits and create a more resilient workforce in a changing economy,” the authors note.

For informal workers from Delhi’s Seelampur to the forests of Kashmir, “transition” is not a policy slogan, but a daily calculation: the nebulous balance between staying alive today and losing livelihoods tomorrow. Government plans may be written to meet climate targets, but they must factor in the risk absorbed by the same hands that keep the country running.

Back in Seelampur, the sceptical man watches over sacks of discarded electronics waiting to be dismantled. “People talk about the future,” he says. “But nobody tells us where we fit into it. If these shops close, what will happen to all of us?”

Safina Nabi

As ‘climate whiplash’ collides with a shrinking humanitarian wallet, Malawians are feeling the consequences. 

By Jack McBrams, June 9, 2026

For 27 years, the Dzaleka refugee camp in Malawi has been the closest thing Marriam Habimana has had to a permanent home. A 30-year-old Burundian refugee and single mother of three, she has built her family’s survival around one certainty: the monthly food assistance from the UN World Food Programme (WFP).

Since the establishment of the camp in 1994, WFP has been providing food to maintain and improve the nutrition of refugees and asylum seekers. Originally, WFP provided in-kind food assistance. It shifted to cash transfers in January 2021, to allow families greater flexibility.

“But over the last couple of months, the money has become less and less,” Habimana explained. “There are reports that we will not receive any support by the end of June if the WFP is unable to raise money for the programme.”

She said she used to receive rations worth USD 100 per month but that’s now USD 7 – “which is not even enough to buy a bag of maize to sustain me and my children for one month.” In Malawi, USD 7 will not quite buy four loaves of bread.

Located 50 km north of the capital Lilongwe, Dzaleka was established by the Malawian government and the UN refugee agency UNHCR to shelter a maximum of 12,000 people fleeing regional conflicts.

Today, it is a sprawling, overburdened settlement. According to UNHCR, the camp contained 52,000 people by the end of 2024. The vast majority of them are women and children from the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Burundi and Rwanda.

Many families’ stay in the camp has long depended on the assurance of the next distribution cycle. But over the past three years, that stability has steadily evaporated. Habimana has watched her cash assistance drop precipitously.

In May, the refugees received messages warning about the possibility of further reduction or suspension of food and cash assistance, due to a severe shortage of funding from international donors.

What is happening to Habimana is by no means an isolated case. “Global humanitarian needs are outpacing available resources,” explains Hyoung-Joon Lim, WFP’s Malawi country representative.

Malawi’s humanitarian system has been stretched thin in part by years of climate extremes. Across Southern Africa, repeated droughts, destructive floods, and failed harvests have pushed aid agencies into permanent crisis mode and forced difficult decisions about who receives help and who is left to fend for themselves.

A compounding crisis

In the last few years, the country has been battered by back-to-back disasters: Cyclone Idai in 2019; Storm Ana in 2022; Cyclone Freddy in 2023; immediately followed by a severe El Niño-induced drought in 2023 and 2024; and then cyclones Chido and Jude in 2024 and 2025.

This year, the country is reeling yet again after severe localised flooding struck the southern and central regions between 15 and 18 March, according to the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs. Citing data from the national Department of Disaster Management Affairs (DoDMA), it said the water destroyed 34,100 hectares of vital cropland, threatening food security.

The human toll is staggering: 37 people dead, 233 injured, and over 368,000 people affected. More than 26,000 households were displaced into 84 temporary camps.

Yet, as the floodwaters rose, the financial reservoirs meant to save these communities ran completely dry.

DoDMA, which is implementing the three-month 2026 National Flood Response Plan (spanning April to June), says it requires MWK 48.8 billion (USD 27.9 million). Currently, only MWK 2.7 billion has been mobilised, leaving a paralysing gap of MWK 46.2 billion.

Triage and the sacrifice of the future

During the critical October 2025 to March 2026 lean season, when food stores from the previous harvest have run out and the new harvest is not yet available, an estimated four million people in Malawi were projected to face acute food insecurity.

“WFP has only been able to provide food assistance to one million vulnerable people against the original target of 2 million people due to funding shortfalls,” admits Lim of WFP. “WFP is sharpening its targeting and maximising every dollar received.”

This is the grim reality of modern humanitarian triage. When resources are insufficient, agencies are forced into agonising calculations. Priority is strictly assigned to life-saving interventions for the most critically vulnerable.

This focus on immediate survival comes at a devastating long-term cost. Resilience-building programs, designed to break the cycle of poverty and climate vulnerability, are the first to go on the altar of budget cuts.

“Critical interventions such as school meals and integrated resilience activities are facing significant funding shortfalls,” Lim notes.

Without these funds, thousands of children risk losing the daily nutritious meals that keep them in classrooms, and smallholder farmers are stripped of vital climate-smart agricultural support. According to WFP, their “Zero Hunger Village” approach, meant to build self-reliance through local nutrition actions and livelihood diversification, is being stalled just when it is needed most.

“The frequency and intensity of climate impacts suggest that reactive funding mechanisms are no longer sufficient on their own. Malawi’s experience demonstrates the need for predictable and flexible resourcing,” Lim explained.

The cost of the last mile

The rapid transition from prolonged, baked-earth dry spells to intense rainfall means the ground cannot absorb the water. Such “climate whiplash” does not merely increase the number of people in need; it destroys the infrastructure required to reach them. Feeder roads are eroded, bridges washed out, and key trunk roads severed.

“These access constraints have required flexible logistics planning,” Lim explains. To navigate the deteriorating conditions in hard-hit districts like Nkhotakota and Mangochi, WFP has had to deploy specialised 4×4 and 6×6 trucks. Without these, “some communities would simply not be reachable,” he says.

When ground access vanishes entirely, agencies are forced to use boats or helicopters. These were heavily relied upon during the Cyclone Freddy response. Clearly, climate volatility drives up the cost of delivering aid, ensuring that every dwindling donor dollar buys less physical relief than the year before.

Responder burnout and “forced self-reliance”

Behind the multi-billion-Kwacha deficits and logistical nightmares lies a profound toll on the responders themselves. The front line of this crisis is not manned exclusively by parachuting international aid workers, but by a network of over 86,000 community-based Malawi Red Cross volunteers.

“These individuals are currently buckling under severe physical and emotional exhaustion,” said Felix Washon, a Malawi Red Cross spokesperson. “They are operating in an environment where they are both victims of drought-induced crop failures and the first responders called to manage flood evacuations in their own backyards.”

“This proximity creates a deep sense of responsibility and solidarity; responders are not ‘deploying elsewhere,’ they are protecting their own homes and neighbours,” says Maina Kingori, roving humanitarian director for CARE International.

The dynamic creates a troubling operational overlap. Kingori said that because shocks are rapidly sequenced, resources originally positioned for post-drought recovery, such as seeds and livelihood inputs, are diverted to serve as emergency relief for flood victims.

The humanitarian system is cannibalising its own long-term recovery efforts just to survive the present week.

As external investment shrinks, community resilience is eroded. Kingori refers to this as a shift toward “forced self-reliance,” where impoverished households are pushed to repeatedly draw on depleted coping strategies. Communities are left to rebuild flood defences, such as dykes, using fewer materials, less technical oversight, and at massive personal cost.

Evictions without a safety net

Nowhere is the harshness of this self-reliance more evident than in the Malawi government’s approach to displacement camps.

Facing an overwhelming MWK 11.7 billion (USD 6.7 million) deficit for the emergency response to the floods, DoDMA recently began decommissioning 13 camps in the Nkhotakota district.

DoDMA Commissioner Wilson Moleni assured the public that the government is providing “recovery packages”, including maize, beans, salt, buckets, and heavy polythene sheets for roofing. But the underlying truth is apparent: the state simply cannot afford to maintain the camps.

For some survivors, leaving is a necessary step toward normalcy.

“If we don’t go now, we cannot cultivate, we will have no food and we will remain dependent on government support,” said Samuel Pensulo, a flood survivor desperate to resume his livelihood.

But for others, returning home means returning to a void.

Eighty-year-old Zelifa Phiri lost her entire home to the floodwaters. Now, standing outside a decommissioned camp with a plastic sheet in her hands, her options are limited. “I have no alternative but to build a makeshift shelter,” she said quietly. “We still need people to hold our hands. I have no one to rely on.”

Agnes Petulo, another displaced mother, summarised the impossible bind facing tens of thousands of Malawians: “We cannot live forever in tents on the ground. We need proper homes.”

However, proper homes require funding. DoDMA is currently grappling with a separate MWK 148 billion (USD 85 million) deficit in its Lean Season Food Insecurity Response Programme, despite piecemeal corporate donations like a recent MWK 210 million contribution from First Capital Bank.

A system on the brink

The consensus among humanitarian leaders on the ground is unanimous: the traditional, reactive funding model is obsolete. Waiting for a disaster to strike before passing the hat around the international community will fail in an era of compounding extremes.

Strategic survival in Malawi and Southern Africa more broadly now demands anticipatory action, the early release of funds ahead of shocks based on early warning thresholds, and multi-year financing to ensure continuity for resilience investments. Without this fundamental shift in donor behaviour, the cycle of vulnerability will only deepen.

Until that shift occurs, the burden will continue to fall squarely on the shoulders of the marginalised. From the 80-year-old grandmother building a makeshift plastic shelter in the mud of Nkhotakota, to Marriam Habimana staring down a month with zero food rations in the sprawling confines of Dzaleka camp, the human cost of the humanitarian aid freeze is already here.

Jack McBrams

In responding to climate change, Colombia’s Wayuu are bringing together dreams and science. 

By Luzbeidy Monterrosa Atencio, June 5, 2026

For Ronald Fuenmayor, a young Wayuu from the coastal territory of Paraguachón in northern Colombia, dreams are an inseparable part of his spiritual relationship with nature.

“Dreams announce things that might happen to your family or those close to you,” he recounts.

In the Wayuu worldview, dreams are in dialogue with the territory. The sea, plants, wind, or rain warn of illnesses, visitors, losses or climate shifts.

“When the sun has a large halo, it announces illness,” Fuenmayor explains. He recalls how certain birds herald the arrival of a visitor or a death, and how intensely orange sunsets are interpreted as signs of grave events in the territory.

This knowledge has historically been passed down by grandparents and spiritual authorities.

However, the climate crisis has altered these readings, Fuenmayor says. The territory the 30-year-old knew in his childhood is no longer the same. Droughts are longer, rains more unpredictable, and the sea has changed its behaviour. And the signs one reads in dreams are losing their clarity.

Studies demonstrate that the climate crisis has modified historical environmental patterns, making rainy seasons unpredictable and affecting agriculture and community survival. It is also profoundly impacting Wayuu culture.

Great uncertainty

This transformation directly affects agriculture and the communities’ ways of life. In many Wayuu communities, seed sowing has become a risk. Families prepare the land, investing seeds, time, and collective labour, but the rain no longer responds as it once did.

“Sometimes it rains for a single day and then never rains again. The seed, the work, and the hectares sown are lost,” Fuenmayor tells Dialogue Earth.

The elders, who could once interpret the weather by observing the moon, the clouds or the wind, now feel uncertainty. Fuenmayor says his father clings to his crops, though he recognises that “it is no longer like before”. Currently, the risk of losing a harvest is much higher than the chances of making a profit.

Water scarcity is another major concern. Obtaining water to supply homes, animals and crops involves travelling long distances. The jagüey – traditional handcrafted wells – are fundamental for community survival, though many dry up quickly due to extreme heat and the lack of constant rain.

“Everything changes depending on whether there is water or not,” says Fuenmayor. The impact is not only material; the absence of water affects the collective mood and spirituality. “It afflicts mothers, grandfathers, grandmothers; it afflicts the spirit,” he says with sorrow.

Within Wayuu spirituality, the rain has its own name: Juya. Its arrival represents abundance, well-being and the renewal of life. When Juya visits the territory, “there is a party, there is a meeting; the spirit is happy”, Fuenmayor says. But when the rain does not come, the community interprets it as an imbalance between the people and the land.

The UN has warned that climate change alters precipitation patterns and accelerates both droughts and water scarcity in vulnerable territories. This phenomenon coincides with what Fuenmayor describes when speaking of unpredictable rains, loss of seeds and longer dry seasons.

Reading the climate is also linked to the Wayuu calendar. Unlike the Western calendar, the most important cycle begins with juyapu, the great rainy season between August and November. Its presence marks the start of a new cycle of abundance: sowing, fishing, hunting and community activities.

Beyond climate change, coastal communities face another growing problem: coastal erosion. Fuenmayor reports that in Caño Zagua, a Wayuu settlement on the northern peninsula of La Guajira, several homes have disappeared due to the advancing sea and the alteration of natural channels following human interventions years ago. “There are homes that collapsed, and others are cracking,” he points out. According to community counts, at least five houses have already vanished.

Amidst a global climate crisis, the experience of the Wayuu people reveals that climate change does not only affect weather patterns – it transforms ways of feeling, interpreting, and inhabiting the world. Where dreams once announced the arrival of rain, uncertainty now reigns.

In search of solutions

Yet the memory of the elders persists, attempting to keep alive an ancestral reading of the territory that still has much to teach.

In Wayuunaiki, the language of the Wayuu, there are no exact words for “rubbish” or “recycling”. The explanation lies in the ancestral practices of Wayuu grandmothers.

“Everything had a use within the territory,” explains Yenilin Lubo Bonivento, a young Wayuu woman. Fabrics were reused to make new items; tins were turned into household utensils; maize and cassava husks served as animal feed or compost for the land.

At talking circles attended by Lubo Bonivento, older women recalled how families once moved according to the rainy seasons and how knowledge of the climate allowed them to care for animals, sow crops and preserve seeds resistant to desert conditions. “We realised that we had already experienced the effects of climate change in the past, even though we didn’t call it that,” explains Lubo Bonivento. “The difference is that in the past, the seasons were more predictable.”

It was there that two concerns began to connect: the loss of ancestral knowledge of the land and the disappearance of traditional seeds. Many older people noted that younger generations no longer recognised various wild species or knew when to harvest or sow them. “Our seeds are the foundation of our food, medicine and spirituality,” says Lubo Bonivento. “The diversity of our seeds also reflects the cultural and biological richness of our territory.”

Tekia is another settlement in La Guajira. In 2024, its community began compiling oral histories of native seeds and sowing techniques from community elders. The result was the creation of an ecological and spiritual calendar documenting rainy seasons, harvest times, climatic signs, lunar cycles and seed-gathering periods.

Building on this experience, the community began creating a nursery and community seed bank for native seeds historically adapted to the arid conditions of La Guajira. The initiative involves women, children, young people and the elderly in training programmes for the collection, storage and conservation of their own seeds. “Sowing and caring for our seeds is an act of resistance, resilience and love for the land,” says Lubo Bonivento.

These initiatives seek not only to store seeds, but also to preserve the knowledge necessary for those seeds to continue existing in the future. The community handbooks created in Tekia contain stories, practices and recommendations passed down by the elders: what signs herald a good harvest, which foods should not be eaten after sowing, or which behaviours can upset the balance of the land.

To strengthen these processes, communities have begun to work in coordination with Wayuu and non-Wayuu professionals from fields such as biology, agronomy, agroecology and environmental conservation. The aim is to combine scientific tools for seed conservation and reproduction with ancestral knowledge of the territory’s climatic and spiritual cycles.

The UN Food and Agriculture Organization has documented how native seeds conserved by Indigenous peoples can be an important tool for tackling the climate crisis, given their resilience to extreme droughts and fragile ecosystems.

Blending scientific and traditional knowledge

Knowledge that for years was viewed as mere superstition now takes on new significance in the face of a climate crisis that is destabilising even scientific prediction models.

Whilst science speaks of altered hydrological cycles, desertification and loss of biodiversity, the Wayuu people speak of a territory that can no longer be read as it once was. In addition to community meetings and knowledge exchanges in Wayuunaiki, these conservation processes train young seed guardians and develop climate adaptation strategies designed by and for the Wayuu people. The goal is not only to protect crops but also to preserve the spiritual memory of the territory.

This is, perhaps, one of the most pressing warnings coming from communities such as Paraguachón and Tekia: the climate crisis is not only drying up the jagüeyes or destroying the harvests. It is also severing an ancestral bond between people, seeds, dreams and the land.

As the climate cycles of Woumainkat – “our territory” – continue to change, the Wayuu people endure through their words, their memories and their seeds. Because preserving a seed, in the middle of the desert, is also preserving a way of understanding life.

Heat and salt threaten to end a tradition dating back hundreds of years. Farmers and scientists are fighting back. 

By Regina Lam, June 4, 2026

Away from the skyscraper clusters of Hong Kong’s business districts sits the weathered northern fishing village of Lau Fau Shan (Floating Mountain).

Chan Kwok Leung, known as “Brother Leung”, is a 58-year-old, sixth-generation oyster farmer. As a child he shucked oysters with his father during winters on the shore of Deep Bay where his village sits, on the eastern side of the Pearl River Estuary. 

The colder the weather, the fatter the oysters grow, farmers used to say. But chillier winters made harvesting harder. “The seawater felt icy cold and often numbed my hands,” says Chan. “It doesn’t feel like that any more.”

Today’s subtropical Hong Kong rarely experiences the bitter cold days below 5C that Chan says he sometimes experienced while growing up in the 1970s and ‘80s.

Driven by climate change, warming, saltier water has slowed oyster growth and contributes to die-offs every year. “Super typhoons” now batter the bamboo rafts used for farming for more hours per year, pushing increasing numbers of aging growers to retire their practice.

Similar problems are plaguing those who rely on oysters in other parts of the world. The animals filter large volumes of water as they feed on microalgae, boosting water quality. Their growing shells trap carbon and create reefs that protect coasts and create habitats for other species.

But warmer waters, shifting weather patterns and more damaging storms are straining many who farm or collect them.

Despite the hardship, Chan has not left oysters. Instead, he joined a team of scientists working to help the sector adapt and trying to revive this piece of Hong Kong’s cultural heritage, which enriches marine biodiversity.

One solution they have been working on is to breed a “super oyster” that can better survive Deep Bay’s increasingly salty waters.

An ancient practice

Historical records show an oyster business in Lau Fau Shan as early as 1667, operated by the Tang clan. Oyster farming lineages go back further still. Some farmers, including Chan’s father, migrated to the area in the 1960s from the coastal town of Baoan in Shenzhen, about 20 km away, where their ancestors had farmed oysters since the Song Dynasty (960-1279).

Today around 10,000 bamboo rafts float across Deep Bay. From each rope, dozens of oysters hang in the currents and grow fat before being harvested and sold to Hong Kongers who prize their size and flavour.

Most oysters produced here carry a local identity in their scientific name: Crassostrea hongkongensis. These are plumper and grow better in less saline estuary waters than the more common commercial species, the Pacific oyster.

Some Hong Kong oysters are sold fresh, often for hotpots or deep-fried dishes. Many others are dried along the shore before being traded in a narrow lane in the village lined with seafood stalls or dispatched to other markets in the city.

Air-dried oysters, including both semi-dried “golden oysters” and fully dried varieties, are a beloved delicacy symbolising prosperity in Cantonese culture. During the Lunar New Year, families usually pan fry or braise them with mushrooms, vegetables and other seafood to wish for good fortune in the year ahead.

Massive die-offs

For the oysters to thrive, “the winds and rains must come in good time”, Chan says. Farmers follow the traditional 24 solar terms of the Chinese lunar calendar to track seasonal changes and guide their work. “It’s a practice passed down from our ancestors,” he says.

But climate change driven by greenhouse gas emissions has disrupted the longstanding rhythms that earned Hong Kong oysters their loyal following. 

Traditionally, farms began to yield good harvests from the mid-autumn festival, in September or October. But recent winters have arrived later and with higher temperatures, pushing the harvest to start in January and February, shortening the previous six-month harvesting season to three months.

Worse than poor harvests are the die-offs that increasingly occur when Hong Kong enters spring in March and April. Over a decade ago, farmers began reporting more frequent oyster die-offs, which wipe out large swathes of the farms in Deep Bay, killing oysters string by string, raft by raft.

Farmers told Dialogue Earth such events, which cause over 70% loss of oysters, used to hit the bay once every decade. They now strike every three to six years. Smaller mortality events, which see over 30% of oysters dying, have become an annual problem.

Scientists at the University of Hong Kong believe climate change is the likely culprit. Southern China’s temperature now spikes up earlier and faster in spring, said ‪Thiyagarajan Vengatesen, a professor at the university’s School of Biological Sciences.

The rainy season is also often arriving later, and does not dilute the salinity of waters in Deep Bay as it used to. This warming and high salinity, along with deoxygenation caused by nutrient pollution and limited sunlight in overcast spring, puts oysters under extraordinary stress. This leaves them more vulnerable to pathogen attacks. Once a group of oysters die, other follows, says Vengatesen.

For farmers this is devastating.

“When you shuck the oyster, you can tell immediately something is wrong, as the flesh turns reddish,” Chan says.

He still remembers vividly his first encounter with a mass mortality event in 2007. “It was unsettling. A whole year of my work was gone.”

Die-offs of different levels of severity have happened almost every year since. Farmers now seek to harvest their shellfish before the high-mortality period and move rafts to less saline waters at the first sign of problems.

While this helps somewhat, Chan says a farmer’s life is “in the lap of the gods”.

Worse typhoons spell disaster

Farmers feel even more powerless when intense typhoons hit.

“We are seeing more super typhoons these days,” says Chan Shu Fung, an oyster grower in his 40s also from Lau Fau Shan, referring to the most intense tropical cyclones. Unlike mass-mortality incidents, “when typhoons hit right at the bay, there is nothing you can do about it.”

Last year, Hong Kong faced 14 tropical cyclones that either landed or passed close enough to trigger warnings, more than double the long-term average and the highest number in a single year since 1946.

Chan Shu Fung took over the family business when his father retired in 2014. Three years later, Super Typhoon Hato skirted Hong Kong. It was followed in 2018 by Super Typhoon Mangkhut. Together, the storms caused hundreds of injuries and billions of Hong Kong dollars’ worth of damage.

Hato wreaked havoc on 60 operating oyster rafts that were now Chan Shu Fung’s responsibility, swallowing some half a million shellfish. After he rebuilt and reseeded nearly half of his rafts, the following summer he lost 90% of his crop again to Mangkhut.

Chan Shu Fung saw many elders in town hang up their shuckers after the storms, shrinking the scale of production in Deep Bay. At the industry’s peak in the 1960s and ‘70s, it supported around 300 oyster-farming households; today about 70 remain, he says.

Chan Shu Fung too thought of giving up after 2018. But he had just sunk new investment into the business after taking over from his father. “All I could do was hang in there, grit my teeth and carry on.”

Improving survival rates

At his lab at the Swire Institute of Marine Science, Vengatesen is working with Chan Kwok Leung to investigate the struggles of the ancient industry and look for ways science can alleviate its modern problems. 

Vengatesen’s team of researchers have developed a way of predicting which oyster strains are more likely to survive under conditions of high salinity and other stressors, based on gene comparison and oyster survival data.

Commercial breeders can use this toolkit to analyse oyster DNA and identify parents with a better chance of surviving in the warming Hong Kong waters, which they can use to produce seeds in their hatcheries.

The team have also bred salt-tolerant shellfish themselves. Using their genomic selection technology they have developed a more resilient animal they call the Hong Kong Super Oyster. 

This has a 30-40% survival rate in high salinity conditions, the team says, a significant improvement from the regular Hong Kong oyster’s less than 10%.  

Vengatesen aims to boost the survival rate to 80%. The more data that is entered to refine the models that predict survival, the more accurate it will become over time, he adds.

Chan Shu Fung began trialling the new strain on his rafts in September last year. “It will take a year for us to tell how good they are,” he told Dialogue Earth.  

Hemmed in by concrete jungle

Even if these new oysters can allow the village fishers’ traditions to continue, it is unclear how long Lau Fau Shan will remain as it is. A development project proposed by the Hong Kong government is set to transform the area into a hub for fintech, start-ups and residential buildings dubbed New Digi Bay.

The initial proposal sparked concerns about the continuation of oyster farming. Chan Shu Fung, who frequently liaises with the government as the chair of farmers’ group the Deep Bay Oyster Cultivation Association, is hopeful though. He says the latest planning proposal pledges to conserve part of the bay and promote oyster traditions. Doing this while improving infrastructure could bring more tourists to experience its oyster culture, he hopes.

“If the urbanisation plan does not come into conflict with oyster farming and the ecosystem it depends on, it has more benefits than drawbacks,” he says.

Chan Kwok Leung fears the industry could decline further under seemingly unstoppable trends of urbanisation, climate change and younger people reluctant to take up the hard life of an oyster farmer.

But he is determined to keep trying, adding modern innovations like the Super Oyster to an ancient tradition.

The forces battering Hong Kong’s oyster farms are strong, but Chan Kwok Leung cites a Chinese idiom that only gold remains after strong waves wash away the sand.

“We had our glory days,” he says. “I am trying to do something now. Hopefully, new technological breakthroughs may bring them back.”