Donatien Garnier
Climate, migration and culture, the example of Tuvalu “Climate Refugees” by the Argos Collective, a group of French writers and photographers dedicated to documentary journalism, took five years, between 2004 and 2009, to complete and ended into an exhibition, a book and web videos. At the time, studies related to climate change focused on the impact on biodiversity. Following our own approach, I working with the Argos Collective decided to question the impact on mankind. This was our basic approach. When we started we had no idea that we would be dealing with migration. However, going through the scarce documentation available, it became obvious that migration would become a major stake by the end of the century. Our project was to go to different parts of the world, finding communities who were already effectively affected by global warming. We went to Asia, in Nepal, Bangladesh and the Maldives. We went to Africa, visiting Lake Chad. We went to America. I’m afraid we did not go to South America whereas we went to two places in the United States. Maybe because it was urgent to highlight the human consequences of climate change in a state which was then strongly refusing its reality as well as the role played by greenhouse gas emissions. So we went to Alaska and to New Orleans, just after Katrina. We also went to the small state island of Tuvalu in Polynesia. Lastly, we decided to go to Northern Europe, to Germany, Schleswig-Holstein, so as to raise awareness within our European readers, convinced as they were that they would be less affected than the rest of the world.
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