A photographer shows that the climate crisis is already here

For much of the last decade, Kadir van Lohuizen photography has tried to document the climate crisis and analyze what it entails for the future. Since meeting in Panama on a reportage trip, the Dutch journalist has been documenting the effects of rising sea levels around the world. Working closely with scientists, and learning a lot about human migration and the tide, Van Lohuizen has managed to prove visually what so many experts have warned over the years: our coasts are in danger.

His work has been used in 11 countries, at United Nations presentations and at the Paris Climate Summit, and has become a TV series, book and various exhibitions. One on display in New York, Rising tide, highlights how the coming changes will affect the island’s cities.

His book, After the flood, provides a comprehensive look at how slow-moving climate change is affecting all continents and how it affects the people who live there. While some countries have shown that they are adept at forward-thinking policies (including relocation strategies), many refuse to accept that sea level rise is only a regional issue. Van Lohuiz’s work highlights an intimate connection between civilization and the sea, challenging the viewer to think more critically about the future.

Did you know that this project would take a lot of life?

I started this in 2011-2012 as a little story. I was studying contemporary American migration, a year I traveled by land from the tip of Chile to the northern tip of Alaska, exploring why people were migrating.

While I was interviewing people from the San Blas Islands in Panama, they told me: “They’re evacuating us because the sea level is rising. ”I was a little surprised because, you know, I’m talking from the bottom of the sea, like six meters above sea level. It happened 10 years ago, and I knew that sea level rise was coming, but I didn’t realize it was a problem anymore.I started researching different regions of the world if there was a need elsewhere.It was a big challenge, how do you see something you haven’t seen yet?

So how do you get a strong image that people will understand?

It took quite a bit of research, because I wanted to find regions beyond where people would realize that this is already a problem, such as in the Pacific or Bangladeshi nations. I really wanted to touch that on a global scale.

Actually, I thought I was closing the project in 2015 because it seemed like I was starting to repeat myself. How many islands, or how many eroded coasts, can you show? It was initially a collaboration with the New York Times, which later turned into an exhibition, traveled to and from the summit of the Paris climate, and eventually brought me closer to Dutch public television. This allowed me to go back to some of the places I’ve been, and sometimes I found the same people.

I worked a lot with scientists. I certainly had to adapt my working methods very early in the story because you know that you usually work with light as a photographer. I quickly discovered that if I wanted to visualize it, I had to work with the tides. If you see that the earth is flooded at high tide, it is a little less imaginative what it would mean if the sea were definitely three meters or six meters high. Not a lot. And it doesn’t matter if the sea level is rising. When is the question.

When do people decide to move?

You would assume that when the water is in your home forever the problem is urgent, but it starts much earlier. If seawater floods the land and often does not recede, people cannot plant more crops because the land becomes salty and the drinking water becomes salty. It’s just one reason to relocate. Often the government does not coordinate this, but it is the people themselves who will make the decision.

And where do people move? Will they go to the cities? Will they go to other countries?

It depends on where you are, right? If you are in the Pacific island states, like the Marshall Islands or Kiribati, there is nowhere to go because it is no more than three or five meters above sea level. People not only know where they will relocate, they also know where the country they will relocate will be.

If you have to relocate, you are becoming a climate refugee, especially if you have to cross the border. That’s not going internationally, and that’s crazy. If you are looking for asylum somewhere for climate reasons, there is no option given to you. It is usually considered a national or local issue. So Bangladesh has a problem and the Netherlands, but they don’t deal with it internationally.

Sea level rise is an aspect of the climate crisis, but it is obviously much broader. I don’t know how much is being discussed in the US, but a lot of people are fleeing Central America because there is no water or the crops can’t be planted anymore, they are losing land.

By the way, these people from these Panamanian islands are still there. The government’s program was to relocate, and that money suddenly disappeared. They are indigenous and do not have the highest priority in the Panamanian government. So that was interesting to see.

I noticed at first, when I was there, people were telling me that they were moving and that they didn’t feel like doing that, obviously, right? It’s a very hard message for anyone if they tell you that you need to leave your ancestral land: Give up your life, go to higher lands when you need to learn to be a farmer, wherever you are always a fisherman. When I came back [later], it seemed very complicated. People wanted to leave then, because they thought it was becoming too dangerous.

You did a lot of work over the years with these conflicts and migrations and these complex social issues. Is it very different to cover the climate crisis?

I think they are becoming the same. We know that one of the main causes of the Syrian conflict was the initial water shortage. If you see what is happening in the Sahel and other places, it is often linked to the climate crisis. If al-Qaeda or ISIS or someone steps in, it changes the story, but they are often related to each other.

During this project, did you see any solutions or strategies you were implementing, where did you think, okay? Maybe we’ve overcome that point, but maybe we haven’t lost everything?

I hope I have been able to provide some sort of balanced approach. A lot of people ask me, it must have been very disappointing in Bangladesh, and you know, it’s not really that, because people have solutions in their hands. They have been living with water all their lives. They know what’s going on, and they adapt. I already met a lot of people who were moving five or nine times. And then, if it’s not sustainable where it is, they’ll go to the big cities. There is resilience.

There is nothing new about rising sea levels. The big difference is that it took hundreds of years, or if not thousands of years, and now it’s happening in two generations. This makes it very different.

Before the Dutch were so well protected by dikes, people would build houses on the ground to make sure the house was dry or they would move to another area. Especially in Western countries, we have lost the ability to adapt. We think it has to be where a city like New York or Miami or Amsterdam is. And, of course, we’re dealing with a much larger population.

The Dutch commissioner Delta in 2018 asked one of the major engineering companies to look into the worst case scenario. And in the worst case, basically, if nothing is done, and if we don’t reduce global temperatures in the Paris Agreement, sea levels can rise in the Netherlands by between three and nine meters by the end. century.

They are 80 years old. If you were born today, you will probably witness that. In the Netherlands we can do maybe three feet, but we can’t do six feet or nine feet. So there are very wild plans for what the Netherlands should do to protect itself, but it often seems like the final realistic plan is to relocate.

It is a very difficult concept to imagine that cities like Amsterdam or Rotterdam, which is the largest port in Europe, could be abandoned.

I think it’s also very problematic in New York. It wasn’t until Hurricane Sandy that people began to consider sea level and take it seriously, and investment has been very slow. We’re eight years old, nine years after Sandy, and when it comes to something physically real, there’s almost nothing.

A lot can be done, of course. The Dutch have proven that you can live in a country below sea level, but it has been a huge investment, and it has taken several centuries to create that, in this still very small country.

Most of the east coast of the United States is unprotected. Even worse, the people who live on the barrier islands. Very real estate is very valuable on a fence island, but you shouldn’t live on the fence because a fence is supposed to move because it will touch the storm and form a buffer to protect the land.

The time factor is a huge problem. Bangladesh is one of the only countries to have embarked on a huge master plan to protect coastal regions, called the Delta Plan 2100. It’s an interesting plan that not only protects the construction of the dike and the land, it’s also where it’s looking. people should relocate, and if they have to relocate, you have to give them new livelihoods. It is very interesting.

I didn’t get involved in the project in the Netherlands at first, because it was urgent because I was looking for regions or countries in the world and the streets of Amsterdam aren’t crowded. With the climate crisis, we always think it’s not going to be as bad as we anticipated, but there’s no single reason why that’s correct, because every scientific report that comes out is painting a darker picture.

I often ask myself, how is this possible? And the answer to that is that maybe we’re in the comfort zone, right? As the economy grows and we are confident that your children will have a better life than we do. We have to make some sacrifices that none of us like. So, you know, taking a step or two back and committing to making sure the next generations are okay is a very difficult concept for us.