West African photo project maps climate change solutions

A photography project in West Africa is using images to help coastal communities adapt to climate change — and hopefully prompt locals to lobby their leaders for support. The project in Côte d’Ivoire, Ghana, and Nigeria uses imagined climate-adapted photos of areas that have already been hard hit by sea-level rise, flooding, and coastal erosion. The work, based on three years of research, includes designs of man-made groins or mangrove forests that locals could employ to help stave off the ill-effects of climate change over the coming decades. “We could speak to communities, but if there’s no visual, people can’t really connect,” Adolphus Opara, the photographer behind the project, told Semafor. He hopes the images will empower residents to push politicians or future investors to consider the science-backed climate solutions depicted. The initiative, led by the University of Ghana, the University of Lagos, and Harvard University, has also been collated into a photobook that toured the affected communities as a temporary exhibition.

— Paige Bruton