Original subtitles

I had a pretty unconventional childhood.

My father was the publisher and friend of Jacques Cousteau,

the underwater explorer.

And so I grew up listening to the stories of Cousteau’s adventures.

I remember one day him telling me the very first time

they dove into this dark cave with some experimental lighting.

They hoped it would improve their ability to film underwater.

In the murky depths,

sea life had always just appeared as dark and gray silhouettes.

But when they turned on the lights

they discovered the most extraordinary colors they had ever seen.

I was really young,

but I remember feeling just how much that experience had affected him.

Not only had they discovered something so beautiful in nature,

but they had the power to share those incredible colors with millions of people.

He knew how much that could change our perception of the world.

And something profound changed within me that day.

I think that's when I became an artist.

In 2013 I began

photographing these installations, that I call TimeShrines,

to document how our planet was changing.

I started using these strong symbols about time and choice,

everywhere I went.

I wanted to show what we have,

what we're about to lose,

and especially what we've already lost.

I discovered so many worlds along the way.

From the highest peaks of the Himalaya...

to the depths of our underworld.

From the Amazonian rainforest to the great mega cities.

Everywhere I went I found the same story.

One story.

From the earth's tallest peaks to the ocean floor,

scientists warn no part of the world will be spared from the climate crisis.

That storms are going to sweep the Earth and we are all gonna die by a heat wave.

I mean, this is an incredible bad bad science...

Roughly one million species are on the verge of extinction.

Carbon dioxide doesn't control temperatures or climate

on any scale of time.

When I was a kid I never really thought about whether the world that I knew

might be different 20 years down the road.

It’s during this journey that I realized just how fast the world is changing.

One worst case prediction sees

a billion people affected by the year 2050.

Drought and famine are forecasted

along with more frequent and destructive storms.

All civilizations will become spacefaring or extinct.

We need a plan B.

It became clear I couldn’t rely solely on my artistic intuition to understand it.

I needed a soundboard. I needed facts.

That’s when I met Doctor Julie Pullen.

Climate change can manifest in so many different ways across the planet.

As you have seen on your travels, as you chronicled,

not everywhere is experiencing rainfall,

not everywhere is at the moment experiencing extreme heat.

And so weaving that story together, these are all connected.

This is a global pattern with local impacts.

It's a really big story to tell.

Throughout my journey I noticed a kind of pattern emerging.

A lot of the people that I encountered were on the front line...

and already dealing with the changing planet.

They were reacting to it,

but more than anything, they were adapting to a new world.

It was clear to me I had to share their stories

in order to make my art complete.

Upper Mustang is one of the most remote location in the Himalaya.

It's very difficult to fly to,

because the mountains are so high and so close together

that it's actually quite dangerous to get there by plane.

It was incredible: you felt like you could actually touch the mountains

if you had stuck your hand out the window.

Some of the milestones of change are associated with the higher latitudes,

seemed to be happening sooner than was projected.

You know, some of the most resilient people are on the planet

are the ones that are experiencing the most acute changes

associated with climate change.

This way? Let’s go this way.

This way!

Upper Mustang used to be this isolated kingdom in north of the Himalayas.

As a kid, we grew up like playing in the rivers, riding horses.

Trying to ride cows and all that.

The first visitor arrived in 1992 when it was open for tourism.

I remember that somebody had a Polaroid camera

and he took photos of us and gave it to us.

Me and my friends were like very blown away

to see this foreign person in the neighborhood.

But we were all even shocked to see all the little things

like the Polaroid photos of ourselves and things like this.

Tashi is part of the new youth groups that have started in that region.

These youth groups are trying to preserve their culture and their art,

and in the same time they try to develop new opportunities for a new generation

to be able to stay there and not leave to go to the cities.

Hey, look at these guys!

We used to ride horses and cows. They're riding bicycles.

A new set of Prayer wheels. They're so shiny and bling bling.

They are! They are so bling, bling.

Someday I would love to make electricity out of them.

I would love to put a little turbine and then you can have electricity.

- That would be amazing! - Yes, there would be streetlamps.

I'm here because we want to document the evolution of the climate here,

and climate change and climate breakdown in a way.

And so... nobody really believes that is happening in the Himalayas.

It's very hard for people to think it's cold in the glaciers and all that.

The glacial sources of water are drying up

and, if they're not drying up, they're getting reduced so much

that they have not enough water to irrigate their fields,

which is the main source of food.

It's just a desert everywhere.

And two of these villages that we're going to,

the only option is to move elsewhere where there's abundant sources of water.

So they're moving right now.

If you find it hard to balance you just press your knees onto the...

The glaciers in the Himalayan region represent

the primary fresh water source for that whole region.

Downstream it’s really creating life for humans,

so losing the glaciers is going to transform their lives.

It was very challenging and a little dangerous too,

especially if you're not a good horseback rider like me.

You've got these really deep ditches

and your horse is going on this really thin path...

You just shouldn't look down, you just have to trust your horse

and just keep on going.

It was like really living the nomad life

and seeing and understanding how they've been living forever.

What moves me a lot, or moves so many people I'm sure,

is when you see in televisions and news and media

that people believe in climate change or not...

and the fact that some people think they can believe in it or not.

It's just so striking when you see it happening right in front of you.

As a westerner I had this vision that the Himalayas, snow and ice and water...

I really didn't realize that there was such a drama unfolding.

There is so much ancient culture there,

and so it's this incredible duality: they're losing their glaciers,

but there's such a great risk that they're going to be losing their culture.

It was almost immediate:

there was no way I could recount the story of the loss

without integrating the cultural loss as well.

- Oh my goodness, this is amazing. - Yes.

The protector Gods of Samdzong.

They're so strange... They are so different.

All the protective Gods are made to look as wrathful as possible, you know?

They will be forced to migrate,

and they will have to abandon their ancestry.

They are literally leaving their gods behind.

It's a big reality:

the 2000 Himalayan glaciers that are feeding around 1.6 billion people on earth

is now slowly, slowly disappearing.

And there's nothing they can do as a person and measure to solve this.

Climate change is unpredictability a global concern.

We should all act on it, because we're all responsible in a way.

It's them today, but it will be everybody else tomorrow.

They're just at the front line.

It's also about compassion and deciding who we want to be as a species.

Do we want to keep on saying: "That's far away, it's never going to happen to us"?

Or do we feel these are fellow humans, and we need to be compassionate?

My installations are about showing you that reality,

asking you not to turn your back away from it

and decide what you choose to do because you have a choice.

We don't have time anymore to delay action.

One of the extraordinary advances in science...

has been the ability to simulate the whole Earth system

using advances in supercomputing technology,

so we can look at how the different components of the Earth system,

the air, the water, the land surface, the ice,

interact with each other and feedback to each other.

We can already read the future thanks to these supercomputers, is that possible?

You know, if our emissions continue on a high pathway,

then we can see what how that plays out for the planet.

If our emissions are capped and decline at a certain point,

then that's a different trajectory.

The ones who are experiencing the most significant changes...

are those sentinels: those societies and civilizations

that can help point the way to how to navigate this world in flux.

I've seen this with the Shipibo tribes that are in the Peruvian Amazon.

By culture and by nature, they are Earth protectors.

There are thorns, be careful.

Is the machete for survival?

Yes, for survival and self-defense.

We can be attacked by wild animals.

What is this?

This is a male Huayruro.

We use it for luck on necklaces.

- Luck? - Yes, luck.

It's beautiful.

It’s perfect for the installation.

Sometimes it's a cultural object, sometimes it's organic.

There's a search, there's a quest.

There's definitely a process, in what I do.

A tree hug!

I arrive on location and I need to connect to the location

and understand the place better,

its challenges, the people,

their challenges, their history.

And every time it's a learning process

because I'm trying to put together a symbolic representation of that place.

Are these trees in danger?

Yes, of course.

Primary forests are immense, large trees

which no one has deforested, no one has cut down.

Nowadays we no longer see

large primary forests near the city.

All these great trees... They no longer exist.

Because of the increase in population, they keep on cutting them down.

Until our resources will be over...

Jared is a forest protector by tradition,

because the Shipibo tribe is a tribe that has always protected the forest.

He has also become a park ranger.

He's become a modern forest protector as well.

My Shipibo name is Gushamani.

It means strong and kind man.

Sometimes I also feel worried.

I am concerned that there will be no more guardians like me

because trees are standing there, they grow alone, year after year,

they can last thousands of years

but they are not able to defend themselves.

I brought you friends who admire your strength

and are here to take your picture.

Jared is obviously protecting what they call the spirit trees,

because they're so ancient and they're so huge

and therefore they have this value,

because that's like the ultimate luxury is to be able to cut them

and use them for something else.

This tree has so many creatures living in it...

All these little spiders came over

and started walking around in the installation...

And then, of course, I put in my symbols.

Is this a symbol of death?

No, it means “life”.

Life?

Our life choices between

a positive life

or a negative life.

And so there are these red flowers, these beautiful red flowers

that in our western world is something that is so luxurious and so rare to find.

You only find them in certain florists and they're everywhere.

At the beginning it's like there's no way I can cut these flowers,

because for me there was just such an incredible luxurious experience.

And then that's when the Shipibos told me that's not a problem.

You need to cut them because like that it will just regenerate faster.

(Shipibo language)

We're going to send a drone to the part that is deforested,

so we can see if there's no one dangerous in there, so it's safe for us.

So we just send a drone and if nobody's there, then we can go?

- We can get in... - Ok, perfect.

Destructive fires tore through massive sections

of the Amazon rainforest last summer, and even before that,

it had lost 20% of its landmass to deforestation in the last four decades.

Logging is a lucrative industry in Peru,

and timber from the rainforest has become a key export.

The vast majority is caused by small scale loggers or farmers

many of whom cut down forest to grow coca for the black market.

How many hectares?

This deforestation area is about five hectares.

It’s incredible.

How long?

This deforested farm is about a month old, approximately.

- One month? - A month since they've knocked it down.

This is the other facet of the Amazon. I mean, it's the deforestation.

So this image is... you know, what I had to do.

The other one is what I wanted to do and this one is what I had to do.

We are only 14 park rangers

for a protected area of 1,354,485.10 hectares.

It's quite dangerous because of illegal activities

that exist in this protected area.

I need it for the installation.

It's very strong.

First they cut down the trees

and set them on fire

to clear and then plant the coca plants.

This?

It's like walking in a cemetery,

if you're coming from that life and from that vitality and you end up here,

it's not even like a burial ground. It's just a dead zone.

We've already had cases of Shipibo-Conibo people

who have been murdered by coca growers, drug trafficking.

It happens.

A gun? No, it's not allowed.

It’s very risky because we don't have anything to defend ourselves.

I think now if he gets the palms to put on the sides to...

What I saw there it was a force under attack,

the entire jungle is completely under attack. It's like a war zone.

You know, we have this sense of the Amazon as being infinite,

with this infinite capacity to regenerate itself.

But all of the incursions and the threats that you're mapping in your work

are really devastating and really profound.

And they really compromised the ability of the Amazon...

to renew, to refresh, and to regenerate itself.

There is a lot of pollution in big countries

and we are a buffer against this pollution.

Every person in every country, all governments are called...

to protect the forests we have.

The scientists warn that if the planet increases by three degrees Celsius...

above pre-industrial levels within the century, that could be fires,

the kind we see in Australia and in many other places.

Scientists say the fires across Siberia, fueled by abnormally high temperatures,

are contributing to global warming.

Russia has one fifth of the world's forests.

If they're burning, the fallout is global.

When I arrived in Baikal there was already a drought,

so that’s another thing that blew my mind, is that there is drought in Siberia...

A few days into our trip, these huge fires exploded

and they were so strong that they actually affected the climate.

It still smells like burning.

I had to create an installation

and there was nothing optimistic about it.

There were a few little yellow flowers that were growing around,

but I just couldn't put them on the installation.

There was nothing positive or good or hopeful about that forest.

Environmentalists now fear it's reaching a tipping point.

Everybody's talking about tipping points these days.

Can you really tell me what this is about?

The idea of a tipping point is that once these thresholds are crossed,

we expect there to be cascading effects and feedback loops...

that will drive even more accelerated change.

With the fires in Siberia,

creating this warming and accelerated melting of the permafrost...

we have an accelerated cycle of warming,

and then the ice just can't take hold anymore.

We're going through the worst fires in the US ever,

or in Siberia or even in the Amazon...

Are those like feedback loops of the tipping points?

Is that the consequence of the consequence?

They are. They lead to really significant, profound land surface changes.

So all of these things sort of cascade on themselves.

What did you feel when you came here after two years?

This is one of my first experiences of a great forest being burned.

A burned forest, anthropogenically burnt forest was here.

And definitely I'll never forget.

It feels like you can shoot a horror movie here.

And it was one of the most famous

and one of the most beautiful places around Baikal.

And you know? This way is more black.

It's weird.

Years ago, it was completely different. It all was evergreen...

and it happens because of us.

Of course, forest fire is something very natural

and it happens just because of a thunderstorm or something...

But now it happens like hundreds of times more frequently.

While I was doing my exhibition in Moscow, I decided to go to Siberia,

I had always wanted to go there.

It was one of those places that had always fascinated me

and especially lake Baikal.

We got in touch with some activists who are in Siberia...

and who agreed to welcome me and take me around...

and start giving me a sense of lake Baikal.

Dasha was one of those people.

Most of us living here...

We define ourselves not that much as Russians,

but as Siberians.

All the activists told me: "You have to come back in the winter."

"You can't understand Baikal if you haven't seen the winter season."

And they were right.

Baikal?

I would say that it's not only the main water source for the planet,

it's also a great energetic resource.

I always put my hands in and say like: "Hello, Father",

like in this big meaning... yeah.

And it actually helps.

It shouldn't be like: "let's not touch nature".

Let's touch nature but in a smart way so we actually conserve that.

Sometimes people do something bad for the nature

not because they don't care,

but because they haven't thought about that.

And when you actually explain,

when you actually give them the message,

you change the world with a very slight movement.

At the end I can put a little wild herbs around it.

Smell this one...

I love it!

That’s great! Yeah a little bit more on the side.

Yeah, yeah, beautiful.

Around the world, stronger storms and more intense droughts

will create humanitarian crises and risk more conflict.

Climate change has a potential to exacerbate...

many of the challenges the world already confronts...

For instance it can intensify competition for natural resources,

drive up food prices and increase geopolitical tensions.

Governments recognize that they need to factor in the risks...

associated with climate change and alter their operations accordingly.

Are you saying to me that all the navies around the planet...

are already adapting to climate change?

Well, they have to be to be resilient, yeah.

Fresh water will be in short supply in the future,

and it already is in some regions in the world.

This is going to be one of the most,

if not the most valuable resource on the planet.

As water becomes scarcer, people get more aggressive...

in protecting their water rights. The fight over who gets to use...

the world's water has been a long, ongoing battle.

This lake is over 30 million years old.

It's the most old lake in the world.

The most big and the purest.

They say that with the water of Baikal you could give water, drinking water

to the entire planet for at least over a year.

Only on the last maybe couple of years I mean,

locals start to realize what we have.

Because more and more we can see...

in the media and news that people are suffering without just water.

The water is just... Gone.

Our small movement become huge for all of us.

So, yeah, of course, we start to appreciate the clean water.

We start to fight for clean water.

We start to scream like - "We need to save Lake Baikal!"

A lot of people become an activist

even like making a post on Instagram or Facebook or something.

Maybe it's the first step to do more.

I'm drinking water from the Lake Baikal.

This is Lake Baikal water directly from the lake.

And I want my sons to do the same.

So it's really important for me.

Could it become a militarized zone?

I mean, could this become blue gold?

Could it be that people will not want to share it?

So there is research that suggests that conflicts are instigated

and magnified by resource constrictions,

and that water will be a flashpoint.

I have some climate science colleagues that say

they're less worried about the changes that the planet is undergoing

and they're most worried about the changes that it could bring out in people.

In the Himalayas, countries are already fighting over glaciers,

I think we all need to understand that the solution to this...

is not trying to have bigger controls on supply of natural resources,

but learning how to use it controllably and ethically.

These are the fields of the 15 houses of Samdzong, right?

And since this year, they have abandoned all the fields.

All the fields you see around have been abandoned.

So this village has been here for over a thousand years,

and now it's going to have to move because of lack of water, is that correct?

That's a result of the glaciers drying,

which is a result of the Earth that is warming

due to things that we're doing, so...

And this is happening all over the Himalaya?

Totally. The people of Samdzong...

are one of the first climate refugees in all of the Himalayas.

It's a reality that they're forced to undertake.

You know, so, for them, it's just absolutely forced migration

brought about by a problem they don't know why or how to solve.

So, it's a global crisis.

It's all empty excep for our house and a few others.

We are like refugees now.

We know that we cannot block the changing weather.

They've been able to rely on the seasonal water cycle of the planet for generations

and it's treated them well.

- Yeah, until now. - Until now.

And they have almost no impact on our planet.

They bring cow dung to heat themselves.

This historical millennial village is disappearing.

How does that make you feel?

I just also feel like somehow, we are all to share the blame

and like these people the least,

because they're the least contributors, but the most affected, so...

But they're on the edge, so they have to leave.

What's the biggest problem overpopulation or living sustainably?

If you take that area in Nepal,

you compare that with an area like New York City,

that has magnitudes more consumption than the whole of Nepal,

which has just like a fraction of that...

Do you mean an entire country like Nepal has a lower consumption footprint...

- than Manhattan? - Yes.

Massive disparities in consumption patterns between different regions.

You know, this concept of overshoot day,

so midway through the year we’ve consumed

what we could sustainably manage to consume...

for the whole year in order to live and allow it to regenerate.

In the global north we often are told...

that we have unlimited, boundless resources.

Is that really a message that we want to be giving and receiving?

I think they understood why I was there,

and they wanted to make sure

that I was able to transmit who they were and what they are.

And I think that these carved mantras is probably one of the strongest things.

- It's carved with these mantras. - Beautiful, let's put in the front.

So that's a very strong symbol for warding off evil spirits

and praying for victory to the gods.

And they told me it was okay for me to use them for my installation.

And that was something that really blew my mind

because in my religion, you don't touch anything that's sacred.

You can't really share it and you have to just look at it and honor it.

Time is ticking.

Time is ticking.

And all those carved mantras are going to stay in Samdzong

and they're going to leave.

I think that the crisis that Samdzong is facing now

is something that each of us are somehow responsible for.

Everyone else will have to go through what Samdzong is going through today.

More than one billion people could be displaced by the year 2050,

according to a new analysis of global ecological threats.

Those areas are expected to expand across one fifth of the planet

in the next half century.

North Africa is one of the areas that has projected the strongest migration patterns

and the loss of water and water supply will drive many people to leave that area.

I met quite a few refugees, both in Lampedusa and in North Africa.

They're anonymous mostly.

I can't even say where I was in North Africa. We weren't there legally.

We kept on going, on and on.

We were really tired, but we kept on going.

It's deadly, but you don't have a choice.

You have to reach the destination you are thinking.

Another impact of climate change is global migration, like we've never seen before.

It's going to require us to think about,

to rethink how we think about

what security, safety, human rights are in an environment

where so many people are displaced.

I started going to Lampedusa almost right at the beginning of my project,

because the European island is the closest to North Africa

and that's where a lot of people arrive.

This was before the refugee crisis started.

And every year it just got worse.

In a desert or something like that, there is no policeman, there is no rule.

Human being and a chicken is the same for them.

I met five men who stopped me and raped me.

All five of them.

We suffer, we all suffer...

but women suffer the most.

What shocked me the most was the rape, and then this child...

What's his name?

He doesn't have a name yet. I don't have a name for him.

I don't know...

We are just here.

I love him.

He is innocent.

This is Lampedusa, right?

I had brought it to Brussels.

People kept saying "it doesn't work" or "I don't like it"...

but they can't really explain why... What does it mean "it doesn't work"?

Nobody wants to talk about refugees.

Nobody wants to see the problem, that is the truth.

This is the purpose of my work,

even if I create artistic compositions there is also a documentative aspect.

This is what I found there.

This is what I saw there.

There is no will to understand nor to evaluate the image

because it corresponds to something they don't like.

Art in all its forms right now has an extra duty, like a civic duty

to remind us of who we are,

where we belong and what our roots are

and what we've been able to achieve,

and therefore what we can still achieve.

And art can do that.

Most of the time, our eyes stop at the first layer of the ocean

and already that one is able to make us dream.

- Hello! - Being in the bottom of the sea.

But there is so much more beneath that layer.

Imagine that 80% of all living species live in the marine environment.

And the ocean actually covers 71% of the Earth's surface.

So our planet that is called planet Earth, but should be called planet Ocean.

Those animals, those marine creatures, can be really a catalyst for change,

but this is the most important lesson that we should learn from aquarium.

Mariasole and I met at the United Nations.

I was a speaker for World Oceans Day and she was the moderator.

She's a marine biologist in Italy.

In the context of climate change,

it is going to require us to do things really differently.

How does it make you feel personally to see the state of the ocean?

Witnessing the state of the ocean

and knowing what I cannot see with my eyes, makes me sad.

I am responsible, as an individual, as a citizen,

as a marine biologist, as someone that works in marine conservation,

to talk about these issues,

to make people aware that something major is happening,

but we still have time to turn the tide.

Oceans are stressed at levels they have rarely been before,

and it could have grave consequences for all of us:

dying coral reefs and chemical pollution.

Scientists say some of these changes are happening faster than predicted.

Abundance of plastics filling the oceans and landfills...

and in places on Earth that even humans don't occupy.

The combination of these stresses could lead us...

to a mass extinction of multiple marine species.

Every year, about 8 to 10 million tons of plastic enter the ocean.

And it does this through rivers.

95% of all the plastic that enters the ocean sinks after five months.

Somewhere that is like yet to be explored by us

is already touched by us through plastic pollution.

I was diving and suddenly this current came through

and I saw all these jellyfish.

I started to try and avoid them, and then one of them touched me.

I backed off.

It wasn't a jellyfish, it was a piece of plastic.

Those pieces also absorb external chemicals...

that are already in the ocean, like pesticide,

but also all the odors and smells that you can find in the ocean.

What happens is that for fish and other marine creatures,

plastic looks like food and smells like food.

There was this piece of pink plastic and it was exactly as the jellyfish,

and I tied this tiny miniature hourglass around the piece of plastic

and then I took my smallest vanity, my smallest skull,

and I wrapped that around the other part of the piece of plastic

and then suddenly it just looked like the scary mermaid.

Hundreds of hundreds of marine mammals die every year

because they have been eating plastic.

This pilot whale is stranded and starving to death.

It cannot eat because its stomach is full of plastic.

The human race, humankind in the whole world,

we drink over one million plastic bottles every minute,

and just 8% gets correctly recycled.

The plastic production is foreseen to increase by 40% in the next decade.

I think that we still need to work a lot in order to change our behavior...

and approach to something, a material, that is made to last forever.

This is when the TimeShrine is just disappearing,

because now we're entering into this new anthropogenic moment

of what our oceans look like now.

I have to find a different type of message.

I have to show you something different.

I have to show you what our planet is becoming.

I have to show you how much it's changed.

People are still discussing in the global north

whether we're going through the Anthropocene or not.

And so many people don't even know what it means.

It's this period of time of rapid change in the environmental conditions.

I started discovering the destruction by going to these locations,

I wasn't expecting it.

It was a little bit the other way around, really like going to these locations,

hoping to create beautiful installations

and realizing that I couldn't, because all I was finding there was trash.

If I didn't know about it, probably most people didn't either.

So humans are the dominant drivers in this new era that we're in.

And so that touches all kinds of things.

The way that we're modifying our environment,

the way that we're consuming, the way that we're disposing of things.

The largest emissions introduced into the atmosphere

happened over the last 50 years,

I mean, that is just a compressed time frame of change

and these poor species, I mean, how do they keep up?

How could they possibly keep up with that?

And then there was a shift in my mind, in my spirit,

about what our legacy was going to be about.

Was our archeology going to be trash?

Is that what our civilization is?

Are we going to be remembered for trash?

All the plastic that was ever produced still exists

because it just breaks down into smaller pieces,

but it stays. It does not biodegrade.

And when it breaks down into pieces that are smaller than five millimeters,

it's called micro plastic. And recent studies prove

that basically we ingest five grams of plastic each week,

which is the equivalent of a credit card every week.

We went to Norway,

we went to Patagonia,

we went to a glacier near Santiago de Chile...

- Also to Mount Kenya? - Yes, also to Mount Kenya.

And that was the last expedition we did.

I met Roberto Ambrosini through Mariasole

because both are studying microplastics, her in the ocean and him in glaciers,

and this is where the voice of science is important

and where collaboration between different specialties,

whether it's through art, through science, through engineering or whatever,

we all have to come together to talk about these things.

The first and only scientific demonstration so far...

of microplastic contamination in a glacial environment

is the work we did on the Forni glacier.

If you want to understand the amount of contaminants of an area,

glaciers are the right place to go.

Is plastic contamination aerial?

Yes, on glaciers it arrives mainly by air.

Plastic is transported from cities,

from down valley and arrives on the glaciers.

So this is already a good selection, imagine downstream, in our cities...

In our cities there is much more.

So we all breathe microplastics every day.

Yes, every day.

Microplastic particles have been revealed in the placenta...

of unborn babies for the first time.

The particles are likely to have been consumed or breathed in by the mother.

We need time to find the solutions,

and the problem is that we're running out of time.

Glaciers are like these extreme environments,

and so within extreme environments exist bacterias and microbes

and a whole world of elements that don't exist anywhere else,

and perhaps have the strength of, for example, eating the microplastic...

or destroying it.

But they're disappearing, they're melting.

And we have to cover them up with these intelligent materials,

not to prevent them from melting, but only to slow it down.

Can we still talk about mitigation or are we just...

already in full blown adaptation? That's just the way it's going to be.

The reality is we need it all.

We need to be doing mitigation. We need to reduce our emissions.

We need to be drawing down our emissions...

at the same time that we're rapidly adapting.

The scale of the challenges is so immense

that it's going to take all of our systems adapting to sustain our life

not just for humans, but for all the range of different creatures on the planet.

But there are a range of different ways to address adaptation:

from barriers, from walls, which are very strong interventions,

to more passive interventions

like more terrace structures that allow the water to flow and then recede

but still provide some protection.

This facility was created to protect this area

from flood damage which is a huge problem here.

When all the little rivers are about to overflow,

this will be the place that ensures the safety and security of the people

by taking all the excess water and draining it to the big river Edogawa.

That was really important for me: to discover that concept,

the fact that we were geologically affecting our planet.

And it was the first time in the history of our planet.

And the fact that we were a geological force,

that was something that really pushed me in my project even more,

because obviously, if we were being a negative geological force,

we could also become a positive geological force.

My work for the “Jóvenes por Xcalak” group...

is monitoring snails, lobsters,

turtles, lionfish and reefs.

We also look for turtles caught in fishing nets

and we set them free.

We are an example because we're protecting species from extinction.

"Jóvenes por Xcalak" is a great example of community science.

We take measurements,

we take blood samples that can be analyzed...

They are bringing all these data to the scientific platform

and this is real data, because they have...

the local knowledge of the places where they can do this monitoring.

What is the future?

I would love to see our reefs preserved

as we have them now, they are so beautiful.

I am one of the people that is taking care of nature.

We as "Jóvenes por Xcalak" conserve our planet,

we have to transmit to our children...

the knowledge of how to take care of our planet

because we only have one planet, we don't have another.

In addition to monitoring, we raise awareness in schools

and we transmit the importance of taking care of the environment.

As a mother I teach my daughters to preserve our species,

because I know them and I would like them to keep reproducing

so my daughters get to know them...

and that their children get to know them too.

Normally we think that...

we go to the communities and teach them something,

and now there's a community going out of the community

and teach the youth in the city...

what is happening in terms of conservation at the local level.

But you were a "Jovenes" yourself.

I mean, this is where you started. So this is you 10 years later.

I started here when I was 18 years old as an environmental educator.

My work at the United Nations is representing...

an international nongovernmental organization.

I am there to raise the voice of the community

and to bring the voices of communities,

to bring the reality of what's happening on the ground

to the global vision.

What surprised me about Lili was her determination.

She’s from a very young age,

had to deal herself with people coming in and drug dealers

because Mexico has its issues.

And she was confronted to a very rough reality.

Yeah, negotiations can be tough.

It can be frustrating... but we are there with a purpose.

Thinking about Xcalak makes me...

Helps me to keep up and...

knowing that there we are looking for solutions.

Xcalak absolutely made me belong to this planet, belong to this Earth.

I'm amazed by its beauty,

but also about the fragility and the social situation.

Coming back and seeing that amount of sargassum.

That was really shocking.

That tells you that something is wrong, something is happening.

That's what shocked me the most when we arrived in Xcalak,

is that we actually smelt the sargassum seaweed

before we actually saw it.

And then you get to the beach.

And it is just everywhere. There's no white sand.

Sargassum is a natural ecosystem floating in the water,

and it actually has its own endemic species on it

but having a lot of it is really causing problems.

It’s definitely something changing in the environment, in the ocean...

So the activities that we do on land affect the ocean.

The nutrients come in the water system, the river system,

all these irrigates to the ocean and it affects.

Sargassum is affecting us women economically as we work in tourism

because of the bad smell and at the same time it ruins our things.

This was an incredible collaboration.

I've never done such a big collaboration with so many people.

They're these incredible Ocean protectors, this new generation of kids.

In their office was this huge whalebone,

like humongous.

And I was like "oh, my gosh, can we use that to create the installation?"

And they were like, jumped up, yes, of course.

Just kind of carried it out and helped me create this installation.

So this was a real collaboration with them.

Obviously, I could have never gotten that whalebone where it was without their help.

Probably my big worry is that we ignore things.

If we keep thinking that nothing is happening,

we're not going to be able to do anything.

We ignore the fact that things are changing.

So, if we live in ignorance,

we are not going to make a difference.

We are not going to make it work.

That's my big worry.

You choose your own limits.

No one else.

And when you really love something,

you will find several pathways, there's a lot to do!

And this is one of those places that really made me want to...

go beyond the installation,

and tell the stories of who was behind the installation,

of the backstage of the installation,

of what I've learnt and who I've met.

As you can see Mimi and Panchita are excellent,

incredible examples of why 50% of humanity is key...

for the world of tomorrow and for the protection of the oceans.

The sargassum seaweed has tripled from last year.

As much as they are courageous

and are doing locally everything that they should and can do to survive

are very much aware of how fast the environment is changing

and how much their survival depends on global change.

I go really deep under the sea to see what's happening there.

Do you know what I found?

I started to see the changes that were happening around the world...

We actually are physically changing the planet.

We have that power.

We will have to choose what we want to keep...

and what we are ready to let go.

So that was another really interesting moment

when teachers and professors started coming to my shows

and asking me if they could come back with their students.

I had never anticipated that.

We can choose between a positive and constructive life

or a negative and superficial life.

I realized that my art, in a way, had a voice.

The question is:

do we want to live on a planet where snow leopards still exist?

Today the United Nations says that by 2050...

And that children and youth really got it.

What can we do to help?

We can all fix something, even if it is something very small

and make it beautiful again.

Does anybody have a last question before we show the last film?

I think your project is cool because, you know, "Save the Planet" and...

Yeah, it’s awesome.

But I think you are not giving real tips of how to save it

because it’s your generation and the generation above you that...

you know, destroy our planet in a way.

You can teach us to save our planet

but actually we can’t do because we are teens.

The politicians can do something but they don’t care so much in the end.

What happened is that I saw the youth evolve,

the first year they would listen to me graciously

and then little by little, I started getting pushback.

People ask me what I want to do when I grow up,

and my question is why do I have to grow up to be somebody?

You say you love your children above all else

and yet you are stealing their future in front of their very eyes.

Greta Thunberg is a young woman from Sweden

who has decided to make her life’s mission to save the world from climate change.

It’s a shame because we could change the world,

it’s up to us to change the world.

But right now, only old people can vote

and old people don’t want to change the world.

Millions of people around the world today are gathering for climate strike.

The demonstrations are being held...

with activist Greta Thunberg’s Fridays for Future movement,

which invites young people stage school strikes for the climate

When Greta Thunberg and the youth movement started,

I was really not surprised, because I had already started seeing those reactions...

for over a year in my educational projects.

I met Alexandria in New York when she was 13 years old,

and that was right at the beginning of the Fridays for the Future Movement.

She's that generation that belongs to the Anthropocene,

where these children are taking onto their shoulder these responsibilities

and these challenges and these worries for their future.

Sitting at this bench is a very cold,

I have been school striking in wind, rain, sleet, snow,

and I've even striked in the polar vortex in a subzero sleeping bag.

Some people have geotagged it Alexandria's bench.

Sitting at this bench has turned myself into an activist

where I'm constantly working now to have a future to get climate action.

My family has always been really connected with nature,

so when I was younger, we'd go on family road trips to the beach

and there'd be the specific beach, Pebble Beach in Northern California

that we would always go to.

And it would be really fun because I'd get to bury my dad in the pebbles...

and they'd bury me in the pebbles.

Pebble Beach is disappearing because with sea level rises,

the water is getting higher to the point...

where the beach may no longer exist anymore.

And with the beach disappearing, it's like a part of myself disappearing.

Having that love for California and wanting to protect where you're from,

it really makes me feel more encouraged to stay going.

No, CO2 emissions are not actually harmful to the planet.

I hate to see so many young people especially panicking about climate change.

The climate hysteria movement is not about science.

If it were about science, it would be led by scientists rather than by politicians

and the mentally ill Swedish child who is being exploited by her parents...

I think when people read articles about that, sadly it's a good sign

because that means that they're really threatened by our beliefs

and how we're really making a difference

to the point where we're threatening what they've thought for so long.

And so the way they fight back is trying to cyberbullying us

and we're trying to save them as well.

And their children and their grandchildren,

the people who are the climate deniers... we're saving them.

Do you feel that what you're getting out of what you're doing now as an activist

is something you would not have gotten from school?

I definitely think the educational system is something that will have to change

because we aren't being taught the crisis we're in.

We're not being told the truth.

A lot of the time we're being taught about how to live...

in the same world we're in, how to be the same consumers.

That's what we have to learn on ourselves

and have to push back and teach ourselves, which isn't fair.

I think that in the environmental movement,

there was a before and an after Fridays for the Future for sure,

In a couple of months they were able to start communicating...

and get through messages that lot of us had never been able to get through.

But it doesn't take away the fact that Alexandria never had a little girl's life.

And that is because of what the generations before them did.

And that is extremely unfair.

The system is broken and it needs to change.

That's what all the activists are calling for.

We're calling for a system change, not climate change.

Failure is not an option for us because this is our future

and we're going to make sure that we have a livable planet.

It's so striking because in the cities we're so disconnected from nature.

But yet we are the ones that are and will be affecting the natural world.

You know, technology and wealth have never rated this high,

and yet we've probably never faced such an uncertain future, as right now.

It suggests that there's more to be done to channel the technology toward

where our sustainability challenges are right now, like in this moment.

Are there ways to align the incentives of innovation

to be focused more on climate solutions.

And there's this whole area of climate tech, which is focused on that,

like how do we rapidly innovate in the energy space

and the climate solutions based in the agriculture space.

- Can you hear me? - Yes.

Yes, I can.

This is like a science fiction movie.

We are looking at the first ever experimental underwater farm in the world.

Is that Basil?

It looks so healthy.

It even looks happy.

I mean, look at it!

Can you imagine how many people we could feed?

It is completely self-sufficient.

We're swimming in the future!

Technology is a tool,

it's like a knife:

you can use it to share a piece of cake, or you can use it to kill.

So, it's up to us, the tool is there. It's up to us how we want to use it.

Is that happening all over the planet or is just going to be for the global north?

The hope is that they'll be able to share both that knowledge and those resources.

So we do have more of an equitable allocation.

Because our ability to take action is going to be different

than the people's ability to take action in the other places you've been visiting.

And we can learn from them and they can learn from us.

And it's not a one-way street.

This is a mutual engagement.

If we choose it.

My ancestors, my grandparents lived here.

We came here, grew up and lived generation after generation.

These are communities that are a barrier

between full blown economic exploitation of the Amazon and the nature,

so they're the last frontier.

You see how little technology they have considering how much more they need.

There's absolutely no investment made by the government.

The new technologies that are coming out are really a support for us.

Like the drones, that we can elevate to check who is there

and that helps protect us from dangers.

Wouldn't that be incredible to coevolve with the technology,

to really bring it to bear on the issues

that are the most pressing for our civilization and society?

Is coevolution an option... With a positive...?

- It sounds so positive. - Absolutely.

I believe that traditions and technology can be combined.

When they will come together...

a greater knowledge will take form.

We came back down from Cashiboya, and next thing we knew,

Coronavirus had hit all of Europe and the United States.

We barely made it out of Lima because there were no more flights.

There's always a cultural shock once you come back from a place like the Amazon.

But then it was like that the world had completely changed overnight.

We can't go back.

This is something incredibly non-linear that has just happened.

And the ripple effects are enormous. They're incredible.

Everything has just been shifted forward.

You know, we have this thing we call it climate vision,

when you can look ahead and see what those impacts will be.

But now we're just, we're feeling those impacts

and these waves that are, like, crashing on top of each other.

I have been bedridden for about a month and a half, almost two.

So are there a lot of Covid cases in the community?

Thousands of thousands,

hundreds of hundreds of Indios have died because of the Coronavirus.

What do you think about this situation with the government?

It's like they say "they can die."

Or something like that...

We have been pushed aside and forgotten by the government.

They don't give us much importance,

they care more about those in the city.

And as climate change impacts accelerate and expand,

we're going to see more of these types of compounding cascading tipping points.

It's like a boot camp of what could happen in the Anthropocene, right?

That's a big transition point for us.

So there's important lessons to learn from this:

how to keep each other safe, what does security mean,

how do we love each other through crises.

- Where are we going to put the third one? - I think it’s going on the top.

Ok, so we need “Trash”.

- It’s 42 cm here. - I’m at... 41.

Going and creating art in places that are so challenging and so difficult

and meeting Earth protectors that have to deal with difficulties and societal issues

and then coming back to a world of beauty and sophistication and wealth,

never bothered me at all.

My art had the purpose.

The purpose of bringing back these stories and sharing them,

but also the fact that by selling the art,

I was also contributing to help these communities through my foundation.

So many systems have flaws, you know?

I think the best approach would be rather than being outside the system,

to push that thing through the system and I would love to be a part of it.

Do you believe that that's going to happen?

Do you really believe in the future?

There are so many things that prevent us from believing that it will happen.

But I think that the approach is to believe.

For me personally, it would be even if it never happened in my entire life,

I would tell my children that it will happen.

Definitely, the art takes its whole meaning

once it's in an exhibition, and it's seen

and it can touch people from a completely different reality.

Not everyone will have positive reactions...

Those are beautiful images, but they make you think...

That's what empowers it. That's what makes it purposeful.

It can be shared and seen by people

who could never else relate to any of those realities.

We had seen things that could change.

But in that race of awareness are we bringing solutions?

Are we bringing tangible solutions that are going to help people on the frontline?

One Planet One Future...

is the show at the Moscow Modern Art Museum

on the issues related to global pollution.

When I think of us as Mankind,

I feel that at the same time we are very very small and silly

compared with Nature.

On the other side we are very very strong.

Each small person can make a huge difference.

I don't exactly know what people are going to do,

but I think the crisis is getting so urgent...

that people will start thinking of ways that the youth aren't thinking of,

in ways where they do become violent.

There is still more room for civil disobedience

because now is the time to do direct action.

In order to survive as a species,

we need to step back a little bit and talk about also regeneration.

We have changed the very essence of the ocean in the past 50 years.

Now it's time to give back.

I think I'm just the tip of the iceberg.

I think there's an entire generation of artists arriving after me

who will take on that role in extraordinary ways

that I have not even been able to imagine.

But if in my generation we don't create the installations and the TimeShrines

and we don't put them in front of nature;

what's going to happen to the next generation of artists?

What are they going to have to photograph?