A photographic journey at the front of climate change.
October 29th was the last opening day of The Ethical Photography Festival in Lodi, Italy. I managed to sneak in and spend a few hours walking from one beautiful exhibition site to the next: from a deconsecrated church to a converted convent; from a baroque palace to another baroque palace. I was particularly keen on projects about climate change.
“Rising sea level” is a project by Kadir van Lohuizen that takes us where climate change is more directly impacting coastal communities, settlements and landscapes. In the middle of the Pacific Ocean, we see the broken coast of Kiribati with sea water intrusion everywhere: in courtyards, roads, gardens, plantations. And the people of Kiribati trying to contain the raising seas building walls and using sandbags to keep their homes dry, and delay the moment, in perhaps 30 or 40 years, when the atolls will become unfit to live on and gradually disappear underwater. Along the West shore of the Atlantic Ocean, sea rises even more than elsewhere under the effect of faster melting of Greenland and Artic ice. We follow the coastline of Florida and Massachusetts lying so low that seawater intrudes at the first opening, like during high tide in Miami. And when people are captured in the photos, they seem to adapt to this “new normal”, but I see tension and concern in their postures and expressions as the distance between them and the sea gets ever shorter. And closer to home, in Yorkshire, we see the effect of fast moving coastal erosion in East Riding on the North Sea that takes with it meadows, gardens, roads and even WWII fortifications.
“Fractured: the shale play” is a poignant project by Nina Berman that confronts us with our primal extractive instincts. Nina Berman takes us to Pennsylvania and more precisely the Marcellus Shale formation where hydraulic fracturing of the shale, or fracking, to release gas is underway across multiple sites, transforming the unspoilt valleys into industrial landscapes, causing earthquakes and polluting air, underground and surface water all around. Pennsylvania seems to be oblivious of its past experiences with deforestation to power the developing steel industry; with coal mining to power the then dominant steel industry; and with massive water and air pollution issues that the people of Pennsylvania had to endure then. The pitch dark of the Pennsylvania woods and valleys is now broken by artificial lights from 24/7 extraction sites and methane flares. The local community cannot drink and use tap water any longer. It is highly polluted and carries so much chemicals and gas that it flares up. We see residents giving horses bottled water to drink and houses with giant water tanks in their garden as tap water is contaminated and cannot be drank nor used at home. They are clearly at loss. They seem to have lost their sense of belonging.
However, the main theme cutting across the whole festival was migration. The focus was on the exodus — from the Southern shore of the Mediterranean to Northern Europe, through Greece and the Balkans, or across the sea - and on settling in a new country and a new culture. But what I was seeing in the expressions and in the stories of the migrants was the destiny of people who cannot live in their country any longer because of desertification, because of war, because of persecution, because they cannot make a living for them and for their families. And like many, I see climate change as the underlying cause forcing people to flee.
Often I hear that it is the duty of our generation to stop climate change to ensure that our children and grand children will have a liveable world they will be able to enjoy as much as we have. And I think of the people of the Sahel, of Kiribati, of Pennsylvania and of so many more places where the world is already unliveable, and feel the urge to act here and now because there are so many people, young and old, who are already suffering so much.
PS: this article is part of Climate Reality Project’s 100% Committed campaign that works with universities, cities, mountain communities, and businesses worldwide to support their transition to 100-percent renewable electricity by 2030 or sooner.
