The “Indirectly” Affected: Invisible Victims of Climate Change

Although their homes may not have flooded, although the rains may not have carried away or destroyed their material belongings, there are thousands of people throughout El Salvador that lost a great deal during the ten days of torrential rains that hit El Savlador from October 10-19. 

Agriculture workers and day laborers lost ten days of wages

For the majority of those who work in the informal sector, a day’s earning is what – literally – puts food on the table that evening.  If you don’t work, you don’t eat.  Agricultural workers, day laborers, informal sellers in the markets couldn’t work during the rain.  Silvia Maldinero, Women’s Coordinator at UCRES, a grassroots rural organization, explains that most women who work in the informal sector earn about $4 per day, nearly all of which goes to buy food for their families. After just a few days of heavy rains, people had gone through all of the rice, beans and corn they had saved up, and hunger spread.  

Estimates place work in the informal sector at around 50% of the working-age population of El Salvador. These are the men who walk the streets offering to fix shoes; or who fill pick-up trucks with fruits and vegetables to sell; the women who make tortillas on the side of the street; the fisherman who go out on small boats and sell their catch to market vendors; the mothers who fill baskets with typical foods or trinkets and walk from community to community, balancing their wares on their heads.

Even after the storm, damaged infrastructure like this bridge over the Rio Sucio make life more difficult for informal vendors traveling to the nearby city, Aguilares

These people may not have been evacuated.  Their names aren’t on any census of those affected.  But they have suffered because of the storm as well; their children have gone hungry, they have gone without medicine, and the limited savings or food stores they had are gone.  These are the unseen victims of a climate disaster in one of the most vulnerable countries in the world.