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Poseidon Lost

We thought the sea was infinite and inexhaustible. It is not. Calling for a new vision to save our oceans. Table of Contents | Digital Edition
Guardian Environmental Network

Spotlight: Climate Refugees

Climate Refugees Collectif Argos MIT Press, $29.95
Munshiganj, Blarigui, Longbaoshan, Dingboche: these are hardly names that trip off the tongue. They are remote, obscure places, yet each of them is emblematic of our future. Munshiganj, in southwestern Bangladesh, is being eaten by the sea. Blarigui is an island on Lake Chad in Central Africa, a body of water that has lost 90 percent of its surface area in the past 40 years. Longbaoshan, northwest of Beijing, is being engulfed by sandstorms -- the "yellow dragon." Dingboche, in Nepal's Khumbu Valley, is at the mercy of melting glaciers. The numbers of those who may be forced from their homes are vast abstractions: 50 million? 100 million? No one knows. But the beauty of Climate Refugees, the work of a group of French photographers and writers, is that it does not deal in millions, but in individuals. Hamid, the rickshaw wallah; Samuel, the fisherman; Ze Zhen Wang, the farmer; Rames Rai, the yak herder. Writers on the Holocaust have called this "the devil's arithmetic": one plus one plus one.... Here are their faces.
Related Tags: climate refugees