On the outskirts of New Delhi, the four-month brick-making season is ending, and migrant worker Munna Majnu is preparing for the arduous 1,560-km journey home to Cooch Behar, in far northeastern West Bengal.
Majnu, 40, started labouring at the brick kiln in Uttar Pradesh’s Gautam Buddha Nagar district this year, when the previous one he worked at shut down after the government rolled out new rules – including a coal ban – to reduce heavy air pollution from the sector.
The green switch has been unaffordable for many kiln owners and has had a domino effect, with kilns closing one after the other in districts around the Indian capital.
“The kiln we were working at shut down and the owner sold his land to a builder,’’ said Majnu, adding that a house will be constructed there instead.
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Majnu had originally found work in the now closed kiln in the Ghaziabad district of Uttar Pradesh through a network of thekedars (contractors) back home, which helped him get his current job too.
“We did not lose a season of work when the kiln shut,” Majnu said. But there are concerns that things may become harder, with many labourers lacking access to social welfare.
Brick-making stops during the monsoon rains – when workers head home to their villages to work on the land, either on their own plots or as farmhands – and restarts at the end of the year.
Measures to ease air pollution
Brick kilns account for 6-7% of Delhi’s emissions of particulate matter, which contains black carbon (soot), according to government officials and researchers with India’s Centre for Science and Environment.
Since 2016, measures have been imposed on the kilns in stages, to cut pollution and help combat the capital’s toxic air. They include shifting the location of some kilns, mandating new, more energy-efficient technology, and last year banning the use of coal to fire the kilns.
Farm fields now line roads that cut through Ghaziabad district, in India’s Uttar Pradesh state, where brick kilns stood even until a few years ago, before many shut down due to new measures to cut air pollution. (Photo: Esha Roy/The Migration Story)
The effort is showing results alongside a range of other measures, with the air quality in Delhi having improved considerably. According to government data, the daily average air quality index in the capital fell from 225 in 2018 to 204 in 2023, showing lower levels of pollution.
But with no proper plans to help brick kiln owners and workers adjust to the changes in how they operate, the sector – which is among the country’s biggest employers, covering some 10 million workers – is floundering, labour rights experts and bosses said.
Unregistered workers
Saniya Anwar of non-profit The Climate Agenda, which advocates for a socially fair shift to clean energy, said most of the brick workers are unskilled, landless and change their phone numbers regularly, making it hard to register them.
“This in turn, means that they often fall outside the safety net of welfare schemes provided by the government for migrant workers,’’ Anwar added.
Like Majnu, Salam Hak, 29, also moved to Gautam Buddha Nagar when the kiln where he worked in Ghaziabad closed.
“We don’t have job cards (for work under the national rural employment guarantee scheme), so while we do daily wage (work) back home, it is not often easy to find,” Hak said.
“It’s the income from the kilns that sustains us through the year. There have been many kilns shutting, and we don’t know what will happen in the future – but we feel that there is no point worrying about it for now,’’ he said.
Hari Chand, 27 (first from left) and Shivam Rai 18 (second from left), hail from Chattarpur in Madhya Pradesh and work at a kiln in Uttar Pradesh’s Baghpat. While kiln owners in Baghpat said the sector is struggling with the new green norms, in this region, kilns have not shut down yet nor has labour been laid off. (Photo: Esha Roy/The Migration Story)
The 22 districts of the Delhi-National Capital Region are home to more than 3,800 brick kilns. Among these, Uttar Pradesh (UP) has the highest concentration of kilns at 2,062.
A state official working on pollution control said Ghaziabad is among the areas most affected by the green transition, with the number of kilns halving in the past six years, but there is no count of, or plan to support the workers who lose their jobs.
Another UP official in the labour department noted that brick kiln workers are seasonal rather than permanent and as such are not entitled to alternative government employment schemes that kick in when a factory shuts down, for example.
Excluded from state benefits
Living off agriculture alone would be tough for workers like Majnu and his family, who cultivate fields belonging to landlords and keep a portion of the crop, mostly rice paddy, as income.
“We are bhag chashis (landless farmers) back home, and we never make enough,’’ said Majnu, stacking the last lot of bricks next to mountains of agricultural waste being used to fire the Dankaur kilns.
“The earnings here (at kilns) are more than what we make back home, where we only get part of the crop to either consume or sell – whereas here, we make 600 rupees (around $7) per 1,000 bricks made and can make up to 1,200 rupees a day,’’ he said.
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The Building and Other Construction Workers (BoCW) Act of 1996 does include social security and welfare benefits for brick kiln workers, including scholarships, maternity benefits, marriage assistance, pensions, financial help for funeral services and food rations.
But labour experts say most brick kiln workers are not registered and therefore cannot access the benefits – neither have they been part of the energy transition conversation so far.
“The isolated nature of seasonal migrant workers at brick kilns is a major factor in preventing access to services, and makes them entirely dependent on the kiln owners,” said Ravi Srivastava, director of the Centre for Employment Studies at the Institute for Human Development.
The cost of going green
In Ghaziabad, a congested, booming industrial township 36 km from the capital, Ravinder Kumar Tewatia, former general secretary of the All India Bricks and Tile Manufacturers Federation, said 200 of 430 brick kilns have shut since 2018.
He closed the last of the four kilns he owned two years ago as norms got stricter and the business less profitable.
In 2016, the Environment Pollution (Prevention & Control) Authority gave all kilns in Ghaziabad a two-year period to switch to “zig zag” technology – an energy-efficient kiln design allowing chimneys to retain heat for longer.
Then, between 2022-2023, the Supreme Court ordered the annual period for manufacturing bricks to be cut from seven to four months and imposed the mandatory use of agricultural waste instead of coal to heat the kilns.
“Now you can’t get coal even if you want to,” Tewatia said, explaining that the main issue with farm waste – mainly wheat and mustard husks – is lower temperatures in the kilns where the clay bricks are hardened.
“As a result of this, the bricks that are being produced are of lower quality and more fragile,” he said.
Workers stack bricks at a kiln in Ghaziabad, Uttar Pradesh, as their shift comes to an end. (Photo: Esha Roy/The Migration Story)
Kiln owners said the shortened brick-baking season has impacted production volumes, hitting overall earnings. At the same time, falling brick quality has led to prices plunging by around half.
“We have been demanding that the government allow us to use a mix of coal and agricultural waste,’’ said Tewatia.
Pollution control board officials said the central government did provide alternatives, including biomass briquettes and compressed natural gas, but these also suffer from lower heat generation and gas is not suitable for use in most traditional kilns.
Farming fails to pay
The kilns have been a second home for Nidesh Kuma, 27, since he was a toddler, accompanying his parents to mould and shape bricks near Delhi, as frequent floods on the Ganges River prevents farming in their village.
For the past five years, Kumar has been “supplying” migrant workers from his Sambhal area of Uttar Pradesh to the Delhi region. This year, he placed 40 families in three kilns there, noting that his network is strong and extensive.
But with more brick kilns closing, the seasonal migration pattern has started to lose its appeal – and could be a sign of things to come, say labour rights campaigners.
“What can we do?” asked 55-year-old Laturi Singh, a brick-maker and labour contractor also from Sambhal.
“When the kilns shut down, most (workers) were absorbed at other kilns, but some have gone back to the villages and are working as daily wage workers earning 300 rupees a day, which is much less.”
(Reporting by Esha Roy; editing by Megan Rowling)
This article was first published by The Migration Story, India’s first newsroom to focus on the country’s vast internal migrant population.
Esha Roy is an independent journalist writing on issues of climate change, social development and government policy. Reporting for this story was supported by Buniyaad, a movement for a just transition in the brick kiln sector.
The post Pollution clampdown on Delhi kilns threatens brick workers’ future appeared first on Climate Home News.
Pollution clampdown on Delhi kilns threatens brick workers’ future
Climate Change
After a week of plenty of activity and drama for Greenpeace at sea, I felt like writing to you on a much quieter theme…
Do you have a favourite book, poem or story about the ocean?
When I was very small, it was the TimeLife book of The Fishes, by F. D. Ommanney, which I remember endlessly poring over, my child’s mind gripped, in total fascination. The cover illustration showed a shoal of barracuda, mid-water and heading upwards, lit up as an iridescent blue by a column of sunlight. Oddly, it is only the cover and the illustrations of the deep sea creatures which I now remember—but I loved that book, as the weakened spine, blunted pages and dog-eared corners attested.
The Fishes has been on my mind recently, because I’ve been working with some dear friends on our own illustrated oceans book, to be published by Upswell Publishing. The book is called Scott Reef: Like Nowhere Else on Earth, and I want to share with you a bit of the story behind its creation.
Scott Reef is absolutely magnificent: Australia’s largest freestanding oceanic reef, brimming with life, including rare and threatened species such as a genetically distinct population of green sea turtles, pygmy blue whales and the wonderfully elegant dusky sea snake. But Scott Reef isn’t near our capital cities; it is way off the north-west coast of WA. And it is threatened with devastation by Woodside, which wants to drill up to 57 toxic wells at the Reef for its vast, dirty Browse gas project.
One of the main challenges in the fight to save Scott Reef from being turned into an industrialised gas zone by Woodside is bringing this incredible location to life for people who haven’t actually experienced it first hand. Because despite its ecological significance and dazzling beauty, ‘Scott Reef’ is also—at least not yet—exactly a household name.
To help get over this barrier, Greenpeace has enabled a number of photographers to travel to Scott Reef by boat (including the Rainbow Warrior) to document its astonishing diversity of colour and life. We then brought these images together in a remarkable photobook, produced by our talented in-house team, which we’ve been putting into the hands of as many leaders as possible—including the MPs whose decisions can determine the Reef’s future.
Back in June this year, I was sharing a copy of our in-house book at a business gathering in Perth when someone pulled me aside. Had we thought about publishing the book commercially? Apart from anything else, he wanted to buy a copy himself! He had a point. We were proud of what we’d created, but a commercially published version could reach a much wider audience and have even greater campaign impact. I immediately turned to my dear friend, Terri-ann White, who runs Upswell Publishing in WA, for advice.
Terri-ann has a huge heart and terrific vision. So many wonderful things in WA owe their existence to her doings, and, true to form, she was immediately encouraging and enthusiastic. “But,” she said, “it would add a whole new dimension if we had some words to accompany the incredible pictures.”
Fair enough, I thought. I could ask a few authors.
“And when would you like it published?” she asked.
“Ideally November,” I answered sheepishly.
Now, in publishing terms, nobody goes from idea to finished work, beautifully produced by a commercial publisher, in just four months. It. Just. Doesn’t. Happen. A book of this scale would ordinarily take nine months, I was told. But Terri-ann was undeterred. “If you can get a rapid turnaround on the writing, I will give it a shot.”
Over the following few days, I sent out 24 emails to prospective writers. To my joy and surprise 23 of them responded almost immediately with an enthusiastic yes!
Terri-ann was somewhat alarmed and perplexed when I told her the good news… we’d discussed a few authors, not more than twenty! “Impossible,” she texted. “Editing is important and you are talking about thousands of words!” But I also know Terri-ann. She does the impossible. And so, here we are… Terri-ann is going to hit that improbable deadline. Scott Reef: Like Nowhere Else on Earth will be on shelves in November.
The contributors are a wonderfully diverse bunch, united by their enthusiasm for Scott Reef — and their extraordinary speed!
It’s a brilliant mix. The book brings together national icons like Peter Garrett, Tim Winton, Mick Dodson, Janet Holmes à Court and Fiona Stanley; the intellectual heft of professors Frank Bongiorno, Jessica Meeuwig, Rick Steiner and Samantha Hepburn; the poetic vision of Prema Arasu, Berndt Sellheim and Saadiah Freeman; the field expertise and passionate first hand witnessing of Imogen Zethoven, Tooni Mahto, Ben Fitzpatrick, Geoff Bice, Olaf Meynecke, Paul Gamblin, Sarah Gittoes and Hayley Baillie; and the determination of emerging activist voices Jackson Reid and Emma Sangalli.
Their elegant words wrap themselves around the sheer wonder of the underwater world, brought to life by the work of the photographers — of whom one, Wendy Mitchell, has also contributed a wonderful essay.
Terri-ann showed me the full physical proofs this week and they are breathtaking. This book contains some of my absolute favourite images of wildlife beneath the waves -– and believe me, after almost 20 years at Greenpeace, I’ve been privileged enough to see some remarkable shots! The essays bring a whole new depth and richness to the story of Scott Reef.
If I am being honest, and maybe a bit sentimental, I hope that a four or five-year-old child somewhere in Australia will spend part of their summer holidays turning the pages of this book, wide-eyed with curiosity and awe at the beauty and strangeness of the creatures that call our oceans home.
Our shared commitment is to make sure that, as those children grow up, the wonders of Scott Reef will exist not just in the pages of the book, but out there in the wild waters off north-western Australia—alive, thriving, and every bit as extraordinary as they are today; a living wonder beneath the waves.
Pre-orders of Scott Reef: Like Nowhere Else on Earth are available here.
Q & A
Sometimes you get asked a question so often that you decide to produce a report to answer it!
We know there is strong public opposition to voter opposition to gas drilling at Scott Reef and fracking in the Kimberley in Western Australia. But I am frequently asked whether, even if people don’t want it, more gas drilling is a necessary evil to sustain WA’s prosperity?
The short answer is an unequivocal ‘No’. The longer answer is our new report, From Gas to Green: Building Western Australia’s Future State, which makes the comprehensive case that Asia’s gas market is declining — while WA has an enormous untapped opportunity to become a global leader in green industries and exports, helping drive the region’s shift away from fossil fuels. The faster that WA embarks on a decisive shift away from gas—and that includes no fracking in the Kimberley, or drilling at Scott Reef — so much the better for the state’s people, ecology and economy.
For the first time, new-energy vehicles (NEVs) made up 67% of new car sales in China in September, according to the latest data from the China Passenger Car Association (CPCA).
The figures show that NEVs, which include battery electric cars and plug-in hybrids, captured a record share of sales, even though fewer were sold than last year.
This is because sales of combustion-engine cars are falling steeply, a trend that the CPCA has attributed to rising petrol prices following the start of the Hormuz crisis.
Indeed, sales of fuel-only cars were down 31% year-on-year in the first nine months of 2026, with plug-in hybrid sales down 26% – whereas battery EV sales were only down 4%.
One analyst tells Carbon Brief that China’s rapidly growing EV fleet has offset demand for 143m barrels of oil since the start of the Hormuz crisis.
Another says that the crisis is “reinforcing China’s electrification of road transport”.
Meanwhile, amid slowing domestic sales, Chinese carmakers’ exports of NEVs more than doubled [in 2026 to date / in September] from a year earlier.
NEV record
A record two out of every three cars sold in September in China were NEVs, according to CPCA data, as shown in the figure below.
(NEVs predominantly include battery electric vehicles – BEVs – and plug-in hybrids – PHEVs. BEVs only run on electricity, whereas PHEVs also have a combustion engine.)
This marks a rapid rise for NEVs from just 6% of new car sales in 2020 up to 58% in 2026 to date – and a record 67% in the month of September.
This year, NEVs’ share of sales has also bounced back from a low of 39% in January, after the full purchase tax exemption that had been in place for more than a decade came to an end in December 2025.
The gain in NEV share in 2026 has come amid a slowdown across the wider domestic passenger-car market, which has hit sales of combustion-engine vehicles particularly hard.
This September, passenger-car retail sales across all categories declined, with overall sales volumes falling 28% year-on-year.
The contraction was led by combustion-engine vehicles, which saw sales fall 43% year-on-year in September and 31% in 2026 to date.
However, sales of PHEVs also fell by 36% year-on-year in September and by 26% in 2026 to date. By comparison, BEVs performed better, although sales still declined 8.5% from a year earlier in September and 4% in 2026 to date.
As a result, NEV sales overall fell by 17% in September and 13% in 2026 to date.
While the market changes in 2026 to date were particularly dramatic, they reflect a broad continuation of trends seen over the past decade.
Indeed, sales of combustion-engine cars in China peaked in 2017 and they have been declining ever since, shown in the figure below.
Impact of Hormuz
Part of the reason for the advance of NEVs in 2026, said Chinese technology news outlet OFweek, was petrol cars “giving up market share” as they were outperformed by electric alternatives.
Cui Dongshu, secretary-general of the CPCA, cited higher petrol prices as an explanation for September’s weak combustion-car sales, in comments to financial news outlet National Business Daily.
Imports of oil into China in January-September have fallen 15% compared to 2025, equivalent to 470m barrels, as ongoing conflict tightened supply and drove up prices.
China’s passenger-car NEV fleet has displaced 143m barrels of oil so far during the strait of Hormuz crisis, Euan Graham, senior energy analyst at thinktank Ember, tells Carbon Brief.
EVs “accounted for 12% of the decrease in China’s oil use post-Hormuz”, according to an estimate provided to thinktank the Brookings Institute by an unnamed analyst.