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Iceland / Svínafellsjökull Glacier
An EIS team member provides scale in a massive landscape of crevasses on the Svínafellsjökull Glacier in Iceland. Photograph © James Balog |
Serving as Witness to Environmental Change
by James Balog, Fellow, International League of Conservation Photographers (iLCP), August 29, 2011
The world is seeing gargantuan change the likes of which people haven’t experienced since the dawn of agriculture 8,000 years ago. Changing temperatures, rapid loss of ice and snow in arctic and alpine regions, water and drought stress, increased forest fires, and the loss of plant and animal species are no longer due to natural forces alone – and are certainly not the result of natural variation. Current conditions on spaceship Earth are increasingly the product of humankind’s world-altering pressures to sustain lifestyles, access natural resources and make room for our ever-expanding population.