38 images Created 23 May 2017
INDIA CLIMATE CHANGE
Christian Aid commissioned me to go back to India, one of my favourite posts, to shoot a story about climate change in West Bengal. The region is facing more frequent flooding as the Earth’s temperature rises but, ironically, millions of people live off the electrical grid. If people there adopt alternative energies, they would avoid creating a massive carbon footprint.
India was chosen as a focal point, because it represents a developing nation which is growing rapidly and therefore needs more energy to continue to grow. The business of coal – used to produce electricity - is currently high on the news agenda, with whispers of corruption surrounding its production and distribution, and continuing reports of the effects of coal fuelled power stations on climate change.
We visited a tribal communities living in affected areas in the Sundarbans to see how they are adapting to the effects on their environment. The shrinking Mangroves, rising waters, and increased number of cyclones, increased salinity, tidal inundation, flooding, erosion, water logging, rising sea levels.
The communities were provided training on different varieties of edible plants to grow, encouraged to rotate crops and create home garden and by introducing lift irrigation to create a fertile land on which to produce food for their families and surplus to sell at market..
Grass root NGO's are working to promote the use of sustainable energy, such as solar power, wind power, biofuels, to replace the reliance on fossil fuels. The hope is families will be able to rely on solar power avoiding the now widespread use of kerosene lamps and stoves which produce harmful fumes. A bird’s nest tangle of electrical cables in city slums will be a thing of the past along with a primitive form of biofuel: dung patties marked with handprints drying against a village hut.
India was chosen as a focal point, because it represents a developing nation which is growing rapidly and therefore needs more energy to continue to grow. The business of coal – used to produce electricity - is currently high on the news agenda, with whispers of corruption surrounding its production and distribution, and continuing reports of the effects of coal fuelled power stations on climate change.
We visited a tribal communities living in affected areas in the Sundarbans to see how they are adapting to the effects on their environment. The shrinking Mangroves, rising waters, and increased number of cyclones, increased salinity, tidal inundation, flooding, erosion, water logging, rising sea levels.
The communities were provided training on different varieties of edible plants to grow, encouraged to rotate crops and create home garden and by introducing lift irrigation to create a fertile land on which to produce food for their families and surplus to sell at market..
Grass root NGO's are working to promote the use of sustainable energy, such as solar power, wind power, biofuels, to replace the reliance on fossil fuels. The hope is families will be able to rely on solar power avoiding the now widespread use of kerosene lamps and stoves which produce harmful fumes. A bird’s nest tangle of electrical cables in city slums will be a thing of the past along with a primitive form of biofuel: dung patties marked with handprints drying against a village hut.
