As climate change intensifies, street vendors in Malawi face unprecedented challenges. Heat stress, flooded markets, and unpredictable income threaten their very existence.

Yet amidst adversity, street vendors in Malawi are innovating, supporting each other and promoting sustainable practices. It’s time to amplify their voices and explore solutions to ensure their survival and environmental stewardship.

How street vendors feel the impact of climate change

Climate justice is a people-centered, human rights-based methodology that aims to share the benefits of justifiable comprehensive development and the burdens of climate change legitimately while building trust between countries.

Less privileged people are the ones that are highly affected by the impacts of climate change, even though they contribute less to it. In the case of Malawian vendors, every year’s climate change brings different challenges to their businesses and livelihoods.

Francis Reed Malamba, a dried fish vendor in the district of Nsanje gave examples of cyclones and drought which the country had so far experienced that brought so much harm to their businesses and lives.

Nsanje, his district is the lower part of the country with the highest temperature that the other districts. As of now, the inhabitants are experiencing severe heat waves which are leading to dry of the crops and dying of livestock.

“Severe drought conditions in the country have drastically reduced access to safe water, increasing the risk of waterborne diseases. During the rainy season, we also experience floods which makes it hard for us to reach our business places since there is water all over” Malamba said.

“Not only the diseases, but for me, I sell fish and due to heat waves and drought, water levels in the small lakes we used to get fish from are getting too low leading to scarce of some species of fish, hence reducing our selling margins. This leads to economic instability and income disruption”, he continued

Taking matters into their own hands and building resilience to climate change

However, street vendors in Malawi are not only victims:, they try as much as possible to find ways to make their lives better in the near future. Mary Banda and other vendors at Chitakale in Mulanje district developed some ways which they are following to make a greener future.They dedicate a day from their working days to plant trees in the community and take care of other trees they planted. Not only that, but they also have a cleanup day in which they take away the plastics and other materials suitable for recycling. These practices contribute to reducing environmental degradation.

In addition to that, Mary Banda also said that they encourage each other to have an alternative business product which they might be focusing on when climate endangers their usual business. They also guide each other to modernize their farming system, as well as diverting to hybrid seeds which mature earlier, and are modern weather friendly.

These vendors are also the members of Malawi Union for Informal Sector (MUFIS) and they acknowledged the organization for educating them on some of the ways to overcome the challenges that arise from climate change.

For example, Banda said that through some study circles organized by the organization, they were privileged to learn in depth understanding about the topic. She also added that the organization takes a lead to plant trees in some parts of the country to give an example to the rest of the members.MUFIS had planted over five thousand trees as one way of mitigating and building awareness on the issue of climate change.

The Department of Disaster Management Affairs (DoDMA) in Malawi reported that over 659,000 people were affected by Cyclone Freddy and over 690,000 affected by El Nino from 2023 to 2024.

This article was written by Youth Reporter and Media Activist Uthman Kaisi in the context of a joint campaign with the Global Platform of the Right to the City