• Hold mouse over the image for the caption information
  • Use the keyboard arrows to click through images

Content on this page requires a newer version of Adobe Flash Player.

Get Adobe Flash player

  • Introduction
  • 2004 Tsunami
  • AIDS
  • Poverty in India

Introduction

Environmental disasters, both natural and manmade, often most severely strike those living their lives in the balance.

There are the large events that capture the world’s attention.

The 2004 Indian Ocean tsunami held the world’s attention for its overwhelming devastation of people, with more than 225,000 killed, and devastation of place, with nothing but traces, if that, left of many villages along the coasts of countries such as Indonesia and Sri Lanka.  Whole communities and their inhabitants were disappeared, save isolated trees or single structures.

Hurricane Katrina in 2005 submerged much of the city of New Orleans, flooding 80 percent of the city and forever changing its economic and racial make-up as the poorest section of the city, the Lower Ninth Ward, bore the brunt of the damage.

Most recently, the 7.0 earthquake just miles off the coast of Port au Prince, Haiti is estimated to have caused up to 200,000 deaths.  Three million people in this small island nation were affected, with 90 percent of some neighborhoods collapsed and hospitals, churches, army barracks and national symbols such as the presidential palace and the national cathedral destroyed. 

The poverty rate in rural Aceh was double that of Indonesia overall.  The national poverty rate in Haiti had been 85 percent.

Questions that arise are: How much of these events are inevitable natural disasters? And how much of these events can be attributed to poorly conceived government policies and government inaction?

There are also quieter environmental disasters happening that often evade sustained publicity or any notice at all.

The continued burning of the Amazon rainforest in areas equivalent to the size of Greece.  Chemical and oil spills from Ecuador to Alaska. Water polluted from industrial waste and metals from Nicaragua to Nigeria.  Nuclear waste contamination.  Toxic dumps.  Mining.

What are the implications for the planet of our current policies? Will Man vs. The Environment become a zero-sum game? And who speaks for the vulnerable?

Through their images, the photographers of VII have sought to tell these stories and show their consequences, for people and for the planet.

Links to VII Essays relating to Environment:

click here to return to the home page