Victims and Perpetrators: Covering Climate Change

A woman walks through a cactus field in a drought-stricken area of western Somaliland, a semi-autonomous region in the north of Somalia, on April 6, 2016. Somalia has never been a forgiving place. A land of extreme temperatures and little rain, the country has faced cyclical droughts and periodic famines throughout the past century. But decades of civil war, coupled with the effects of climate change, have set the country on a path to environmental disaster. Home to a bloody Islamist insurgency that is arguably the world’s first climate war, Somalia is grappling with rapid desertification, increasingly erratic rainfall, and the destruction of coastal waters by foreign fishing fleets. “With this weather pattern, Somalia or Somalis will not survive,” says Fatima Jibrell, a Somali-American environmental activist. “Maybe the land, a piece of desert called Somalia, will exist on the map of the world, but Somalis cannot survive.”

“There’s a unique challenge, when it comes to documenting the environment and our climate. It’s such an overwhelming truth that it’s a very human reaction to want to turn away or disengage.” — Nichole Sobecki

The “Victims and Perpetrators” roundtable discussion, between Nichole Sobecki, Aaron Vincent Elkaim, Carol Devine, Gregg Segal, and Benjamin Petit, raises some fascinating and challenging questions on how we cover the health of our global environment.