A fishing village on a mangrove coast in Southeast Asia. It is not one real place, but many like it.

A Not For Sale story

When the Land Breaks

One coast, over time: how the destruction of an ecosystem pushes people toward traffickers, and how to stop it upstream.

About 5 minutes · Based on Ecocide Meaning: How It Fuels Human Trafficking

The coast

The mangroves are the village’s wall and its larder. Below the waterline, their roots shelter young fish. Above it, they break the waves.

The ponds

Then the mangroves are cleared for shrimp ponds, farms and building. Across much of Southeast Asia, coasts have lost their mangroves this way.

The storm

Without them, storms reach the houses.

The empty sea

The fish that grew up among the roots are gone, and the catch with them. So is the village’s living.

The road out

Families leave for the city. Recruiters are waiting there, with offers of work.

Some of them end up back at sea, on fishing boats far from any shore.

What we know

Forced labor on fishing vessels, including debt bondage, has been reported across Southeast Asia. Not For Sale has published research on Thailand’s seafood industry.

The sea that once fed them now holds them.

Upstream

The way to stop this starts back on the coast.

Protect and replant the mangroves, and build livelihoods that depend on them standing: ecological protection and economic power together.

It is the idea behind The Forest Line: a forest that pays its way is a forest people keep. And behind Upstream: act before the harm.

About this story

One system, not two crises

When ecosystems collapse, communities lose their homes and livelihoods, and traffickers prey on their desperation. Not For Sale works on both at once, because confronting one without the other leaves both intact.

“Unlawful or wanton acts committed with knowledge that there is a substantial likelihood of severe and either widespread or long-term damage to the environment being caused by those acts.”

The legal definition of ecocide, written in 2021 by an independent panel convened by the Stop Ecocide Foundation

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Sources and notes

  • The chain from mangrove loss to forced labor: Not For Sale, Ecocide Meaning: How It Fuels Human Trafficking.
  • Forced labor on fishing vessels and Not For Sale’s research on Thailand’s seafood industry; the legal definition: What is ecocide?
  • The village is illustrative: a composite of mangrove coasts, not one real place.

Concept mockup for review. Not published, and not the live site. Illustrations are drawn in code as placeholders for commissioned art.

All story mockups

Mockup for review. Not the live site.