Heartbreaking stories and pictures documenting the phenomenon of
populations displaced by climate change--homes, neighborhoods,
livelihoods, and cultures lost.
Our job is to tell stories we have heard and to bear witness to what we
have seen. The science was already there when we started in 2004, but we
wanted to emphasize the human dimension, especially for those most
vulnerable.
--Guy-Pierre Chomette, Collectif Argos
We have all seen photographs of neighborhoods wrecked and abandoned
after a hurricane, of dry, cracked terrain that was once fertile
farmland, of islands wiped out by a tsunami. But what happens to the
people who live in these areas? According to the United Nations, some
150 million people will become climate refugees by 2050. The journalists
and photographers of Collectif Argos have spent four years seeking out
the first wave of people displaced by the consequences of climate
change. Using the massive 2,500-page report of the Intergovernmental
Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) as their guide, these photographers and
writers pinpointed nine locales around the world in which global warming
has had a measureable impact. In Climate Refugees, they take us to
these places--from the dust bowl that was once Lake Chad to the melting
permafrost in Alaska--offering a first-hand look in words and
photographs at the devastating effects of rising global temperatures on
the daily lives of ordinary people.
Climate Refugees shows us damage wrought to homes and livelihoods by
rapid warming near the Arctic; rising sea levels that threaten the
island nations of Tuvulu, the Maldives, and Halligen; farmers displaced
by the desert's advance in Chad and China; floods that wash away life in
Bangladesh; and Hurricane Katrina evacuees in shelters far away from
their New Orleans neighborhoods. Added to the devastating environmental
effect of climate change is the immeasurable and irretrievable loss of
ethnic and cultural diversity that occurs when vulnerable local cultures
disperse. It is this often forgotten and tragic consequence of global
warming that Collectif Argos painstakingly documents.
**Collectif Argos
**Guy-Pierre Chomette
Guillaume Collanges
Hélène David
Jérômine Derigny
Cédric Faimali
Donatien Garnier
Eléonore Henry de Frahan
Aude Raux
Laurent Weyl
Jacques Windenberger
