Climate Refugees

by Guy-Pierre Chomette

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
H�l�ne David
J�r�mine Derigny
C�dric Faimali
Donatien Garnier
El�onore Henry de Frahan
Aude Raux
Laurent Weyl
Jacques Windenberger

Genres: Environment

350 pages, Paperback

First published April 30, 2010

Reviews

[Wendelle]

an emotionally arresting travelogue and photobook documenting the tragic and micro-scale disruptions wrought by climate change on the employment, habitation, living patterns, and relationships of people in gravely affected countries, within one or two generations. Developed countries (or regions) produce the most greenhouse sources, but developing countries severely bear the cost of the climate changes, and this will affect and direct their perception of the justice of migration patterns and rights of refuge in the future. Some of the countries (and places) featured include: Chad, Bangladesh, Tuvalu, Maldives, Germany, Anchorage in Alaska

[Nick · Rating 4 out of 5]

Coffee-table book more than anything, but makes real the varied ways climate change is affecting disparate peoples.

[Emilee H · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is a very interesting book that introduces the reader to various case studies of peoples who can be defined as climate change refugees. As this book as already over a decade old, I think it would be interesting if this were updated to include the climate change and COVID-19 impacts on these populations.

[Anthony · Rating 4 out of 5]

Published by the Paris-based Argos Collective, Climate Refugees encompasses 9 case study profiles of communities already bearing the brunt of climate change's effects in locations you're unlikely to have ever heard of. Through a team of journalists and photographers sent across the four corners, we come face to face with the dust storms of Longbaoshan, a community of 500 outside of Beijing, and the German Halligen, a collection of homes built on land raised 8m to avoid being washed out by the North Sea. The book's format is attractive: 7-12 pages of contextualization, interviews with locals, and prognostications followed by a greater number of pages of photos and uninspiring captions (largely recycled from the text). This is clumsy in as much as it requires page-flipping to understand local terms like the pirogues on Lake Chad or the German hallig. While the book is more emotional than scientific, the authors are grounded in IPCC findings and ensured that met bureaus or scientific bodies be consulted for each of the cases, as per the transcribed interviews. CR is a quick read and will make you connect the dots; like the Maldivians and Tuvaluans whose islands are eroding, these are the people on the front line of self-defense against climate change.

[Beatrice · Rating 4 out of 5]

Fascinating and scary. I couldn't put it down.

[Cipu · Rating 4 out of 5]

I wrote my comment in my blog. it is in Indonesian

http://www.cipuceb.blogspot.com.au/20...