MASSIMILIANO CASSANO - The Post Internazionale
The city hosts a UN exhibition on climate change. It represents the denunciation of 12 women artists on the front line against the crisis. At TPI, Rattray, the Chef de Cabinet to UN Secretary-General, proposes that: “The rich countries compensate the poorer ones”
With the latest predictions of the experts that set the time when the earth's temperatures will rise by 1.5°C due to global warming at around 6 years and 200 days, effectively marking a point of no return in the climate crisis, no one would want to be in the shoes of those who have to make decisions at the national or international level and take on enormous responsibility for the future of entire generations. Lucy Chinen, a professional working in the field of bio-based materials and researcher of food technology in relation to climate change, has found a way to bring the sphere of a country's resource management policies closer to ordinary people through a video game, “Half Earth Socialism”, to which she contributed as dialogue writer: by scanning a QR code, players take on the role of global planners of a future society, having to deal with the impact of human decisions on food systems and biodiversity. Choices have to be made on how to invest the budget, between alternative energy, 13 - 19 JANUARY 2023 huge infrastructure or even space travel, while calculating the respective carbon emissions.
A valuable ally
Her work, a true piece of contemporary art that actively involves the viewer in the performance with the aim of raising awareness, forms part - together with other artists' creations - of the exhibition "Fragile Soil, Fertile Souls", promoted by the UN System Staff College (UNSSC), the United Nations training body, which organised the event for its 20th anniversary at its central headquarters in Turin. “Over the past 20 years, UNSSC has become a centre that provides innovative learning opportunities, including in the area of climate change education," said Jafar Javan, Director of the College, who was present at the opening of the event. “Sponsored on the occasion of our anniversary,” he added, “this exhibition confirms how art is a valuable ally in our contemporary world: on the one hand, it allows us to challenge ourselves and rethink our view of the world, and on the other, it enables us to understand how we can approach environmental education in a different way”. A total of twelve artists brought their points of view on the subject, exploring all frontiers of communication, from visual and photographic art to conceptual art. Annabelle Agbo Godeau, a Parisian painter, lets a fish float in the air, playing with the figurative and literal meaning of the Anglo-Saxon idiom “red herring”, which in this case refers to any misleading statement against the reality of human-induced climate change. Uyra Sodoma, a performer from Manaus, Amazonia, uses his body as a medium, and through organic elements and camouflage make-up, he moves to show human violations of nature and promote environmental protection. In one of the exhibited photo-performances, he transforms himself into Boiuna, a snake-like creature from Brazilian mythology with a 10-metre tail. Lying on a pile of rubbish, he turns the spotlight on the polluted Rio Negro river, encouraging people to mobilise in the face of environmental degradation. “Each artist uses a different medium to discuss climate change. We have to follow the work of young artists, see the present through their eyes, and ask ourselves what we can do to make an impact,” says Federica Candelaresi, executive director of the International Association for the Biennial of Young Creators of Europe and the Mediterranean, who collaborated on the exhibition. The curator is Giulia Colletti, from Palermo, on the list of Europe's most influential Italians under 30 according to Forbes in the “Arts And Culture” category. “The aim was not to project the artists' actions into the future,” he explains to TPI, “because the present is now, the earth is suffering now. There are no futuristic works, the narrative is designed with today's Earth in mind. Fragility, which many female artists have shown, is also an invitation to take a stand. It’s an anthem of contemporary climate anthem”.
Time for action
And the urgency of action was also spoken about by Jamaican Courtenay Rattray, Chef de Cabinet to UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres, who gave the inaugural speech: “We are knocking on the door of climate catastrophe, and an existential crisis that we need to face up to. There are still a lot of climate deniers around us, they should talk to these artists”. After his introductory speech, he paused to admire the exhibited works, and willingly indulged in a brief conversation. “The world's poorest countries,” he told TPI, “will have to learn to live with the effects of climate change, they will have to adapt. What we can do is mitigation work, to support them as best we can during this phase. They need money to prepare for the impact”. Reference is made to the so-called “loss and damage” fund, resources that the more developed countries have agreed to allocate to the poorest parts of the world as a sort of “compensation” for having contributed the most to the environmental catastrophe we are already experiencing today. It is considered to be one of the most important results of Cop 27 in Egypt in November, although it is not yet clear which countries will be beneficiaries and how much each component will pay to compensate for the economic imbalances amplified by the climate crisis. To date, the countries that emit the least CO2 into the air because they are the least developed are the ones that suffer the most from the consequences of extreme events—take the extremely severe heat waves or droughts in Africa, for example. “It becomes a moral issue, it’s unfair, isn't it?" continues Rattray. “We still have a lot of work to do,” he insists, “Guterres said that we are dependent on fossil fuels. We have to free ourselves from this vice. When I talk to the younger members of my family, like my grandchildren, they always tell me that they are worried about their future and ask me to do something”. The ideas are clear on how to convince governments to give up the old oil- and carbon-based production schemes and embrace renewable energy in full. “We have to persuade them, make them ashamed of the decisions they make by showing everyone what the companies they rely on do. And then we have to tax these companies, using that money for loss and damage”. The exhibition and the culmination of the celebrations on the occasion of the 20th anniversary of UNSSC: over the years the UN college has invested its energies into training and cooperation with the UN and other bodies with the aim of achieving a sustainable future for all, confronting global crises, promoting development and social progress and fostering joint and cohesive management among member states aimed at achieving the sustainable development goals set by 2030.