Forgotten in Dust

In Colombia’s La Guajira region, prolonged drought, expanding coal mining, and shifting climate patterns have reshaped daily life for Indigenous Wayuu communities. Water sources that once sustained families, crops, and livestock have dried, diminished, or become contaminated. At the same time, Cerrejón, one of the largest open-pit coal mines in the world, has expanded operations, extracting more than 20 million tons of coal annually in recent years. River diversion projects, including the rerouting of tributaries that once fed the Ranchería River basin, have further reduced water flow, intensifying scarcity and deepening tensions over access. Livestock have perished, crops have failed, and families often travel long distances for unreliable water deliveries. Many are forced to leave their ancestral land.

In Forgotten in Dust, NICOLÒ FILIPPO ROSSO traces this slow-moving emergency with measured attention, showing how climate volatility and large-scale resource extraction converge to transform environmental stress into structural displacement. His photographs show climate change as a daily reality, visible in parched terrain, depleted reservoirs, and communities caught between endurance and departure. The work suggests that when scarcity is prolonged and politically mediated, it exceeds environmental hardship; it destabilizes social continuity, turning the struggle for water into a struggle to remain.