The Badjaos

The Badjaos, 2008 - A Silent Disappearance

 

Climate change and intensive fishing threaten the lives of the last sea nomads.

Lost in the remote reaches of northern Borneo, the Celebes archipelago in Indonesia, and the southern Philippines, navigating the Sulu and Celebes Seas, thousands of true nomads of the Badjao Sea see their way of life threatened, just like their settled cousins and all the populations of the region who live by fishing on the shallows. Millions of people are affected.

 

The El Niño phenomenon, an abnormally warm ocean current, is the major cause of destruction to one of the world's richest and most diverse underwater ecosystems, threatening populations and their resources. It is responsible for an increase in typhoons, torrential rains, rising sea levels, and increased acidity.

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In this area, a veritable powder keg, where pirates, Muslim extremists now linked to Daesh, corrupt police officers, traffickers of all kinds (humans, drugs, cigarettes, weapons...) coexist, a few thousand stateless nomads try to survive, victims of these armed groups.