Skip to main content

'There's no fish to catch': Global Warming Upends Traditional Livelihoods in Sri Lanka [psmag.com]

 

For Nataraja Kumar, 47, a fisherman from Guru Nagar, a sleepy coastal village in Sri Lanka's north, it's no longer possible to continue with his traditional livelihood.

"I went fishing as a 10-year-old boy with my father and grandfather. But I will not train my son to be a fisherman. There's no fish to catch," he tells Mongabay.

Fishing is Kumar's only life skill, and he has five mouths to feed. Having failed to eke out a living in the past two years as a fisherman, Kumar is now slowly letting go of his traditional livelihood to work as a day laborer at a construction site in another town, earning around $3 a day to keep food on the table. Many other fishermen, he says, are making the same switch.

"The sea seems to have changed. We find less [fish] and fewer species," Kumar says, adding that the northern waters no longer yield the highly popular black tiger prawns, a top seafood export.

It's the same story for those engaged in growing traditional crops, like onion farmer Sudhiran Kanapathipillai, 51, from Jaffna, the capital of Sri Lanka's northern province.

[To read more, please click here.]

Add Comment

Comments (0)

Post
Copyright ÂĐ 2023, PACEsConnection. All rights reserved.
×
×
×
×
Link copied to your clipboard.
×