Under Jharia’s crust, lies one of the largest coal deposits in India. But for the people who live above an inferno, Jharia is a condemned place. For almost a century, fires have burned uncontrolled in the mines beneath Jharia, polluting the air with poisonous fumes and splitting the ground with dangerous fissures.

For the impoverished residents of Jharia, stealing coal to sell and picking through collapsed buildings for salvageable material is a dangerous way of life. And now, with the earth literally collapsing beneath their feet, they face an ecological disaster.

The oil sands of Alberta, Canada, represent the second largest source of crude oil in the world, behind Saudi Arabia. Beneath an area the size of Greece are an estimated 170.4 billion barrels of crude oil. Unlike conventional crude oil, which is pumped from deep within the earth, oil sands are a mixture of sand, clay, water and bitumen, found near the surface.

Mining and refining the oil sands is an expensive process, but with the rise in the price per barrel of oil, it has become profitable?very profitable indeed. The small town of Fort McMurray, known to its residents as Fort McMoney, has exploded with the influx of oil patch workers from around the globe, and Canada’s coffers have swelled with billions in royalties. But there is a downside. Oil sand mining degrades the landscape, pollutes the water and with its associated refining industries accounts for 5 percent of Canada’s total greenhouse gas emissions.

In a photo reportage called “FROM DARFUR TO YAMAL | GLOBAL WARMING WITNESSED BY 9 OF THE WORLD’S BEST PHOTOGRAPHERS” Russian Reporter magazine showcases the Consequences by NOOR photographic project on climate change, with a special focus on the stories from Russia produced by Yuri Kozyrev.”

“This weather does not belong to us. It belongs to someone else. If we don’t have ice, we are going to die.” With this prediction, an Inuit hunter sums up the dire situation for the indigenous peoples who live in northern and eastern Greenland. Nowhere on Earth, perhaps, is the evidence of climate change more apparent.

The ice that covers 80 percent of the world’s largest island is disappearing at the rate of 7 percent a year, a rate that has accelerated substantially in recent years. In some places, the ice shelf is already too thin to permit the Inuit to travel to traditional hunting grounds. The permafrost is also melting, producing a land that is boggy, unstable for buildings and difficult to cross by the traditional sleds. Worst-case scenarios predict that the carbon released by the melting permafrost could equal all the carbon already in the Earth’s atmosphere. The Inuit, who survived for centuries by hunting seals and whales, are watching their way of life disappear before their very eyes.

Since 2004 at least 300,000 people have died in Darfur, Sudan, the victims of fighting, slaughter, starvation, malnutrition and disease. Two to three million people have been forced from their homes to wander a landscape withered by drought. Widely seen as a genocide perpetrated by the Janjaweed, armed partisans from the mostly Afro-Arab herding tribes in the north, upon the non-Muslim Fur, Zaghawa and Masalit farmers, the fighting in Darfur is about scarcity as much as ethnicity. As U.N. Secretary General Ban-Ki Moon told The Washington Post, the conflict in Darfur “grew at least in part from desertification, ecological degradation and a scarcity of resources, foremost among them water.”

The rainforests of the Brazilian Amazon, the most biologically diverse place on Earth, are shrinking by tens of thousands of square kilometers a year. About 60 to 70 percent of that deforestation occurs as rancher cut, burn and bulldoze trees, often illegally, to create pastures for the country’s burgeoning cattle industry. In recent years, Brazil has become the largest exporter of beef and, not coincidentally, one of the largest polluters in the world.

Fires from the burning forests and the ovens that heat the wood into charcoal fill the skies. The cattle, too, are responsible for methane gases. “Every year in the dry season, the rainforest is burning. If it’s not the rainforest, it’s the pastures,” says Lohuizen. Even nature preserves, such as Terra do Meio, are not safe from the illegal deforestation.

©2009 Jan Grarup/NOOR

His name is Dahir Farah Warsame, and he is 70 years old. When the family’s camels started to die from the lack of water, the family got very scared. When the camels cannot survive, then they know the drought is very bad. They left Ethiopia to go to Somalia where they thought the situation would be better. That was not the case.

They were more than 30 days on the road walking towards better conditions, with the consequence that Dahir got sick and is now dying of his illness. His oldest daughter is trying to make him a bit more comfortable as he is lying on the ground, dying slowly. Their attempt to reach safety did not work. Drought and sickness has taken another toll. Dahir is only one of thousands dying due to the situation in the horn of Africa.

To inquire about Jan’s portfolio of images photographed in Somalia just days ago,
email NOOR.

©2009 Philip Blenkinsop/NOOR

In just a few short weeks, seven NOOR photographers along with managing director Claudia Hinterseer will be in Copenhagen to discuss the climate change issues documented for Consequences by NOOR.

As the eye’s of the world focus on climate change and the United Nations Climate Change Conference, NOOR will hold talks and artist presentations.

Presentation Schedule

Monday 7 December
The Danish newspaper Information produces 50,000 free copies of a fully picture driven English issue dedicated to Consequences by NOOR (20,000 copies to be distributed inside the Summit Center and 30,000 copies will be available at metro and train stations, and other public spaces)

Consequences by NOOR posters will be up all over Copenhagen in non-commercial spaces. The Consequences by NOOR street exhibition will last until the end of the Climate Summit. (Postcards will be freely distributed.)

5:00 pm – Enjoy a reception – open to the public – at Reputation, a centrally located advertisement agency that dresses its windows with Consequences by NOOR imagery. Posters and T-shirts will be for sale (Bredgade 15, 1260 Copenhagen)

Tuesday 8 December
5:00 pm – Consequences by NOOR gallery show at DASK Gallery, voted “best cultural experience in Copenhagen”, organizes an opening reception. 45 images will be exhibited and collectors’ prints will be sold along with a selection of books by the photographers.(Flaesketorvet 24, 1711 Copenhagen). The gallery show lasts until 12 January 2010.

Wednesday 9 December
6:30 pm – Opening event of the Consequences by NOOR exhibition inside Greenpeace’s 12-meter high exhibition-globe placed in front of the Bella Centre, the closed area of the Climate Summit, takes place. The exhibition will only be open to official delegates, but a large screen showing Consequences by NOOR multimedia productions will be visible to the general public (all 12 days of the Climate Summit).

Consequences by NOOR goes on tour in 2010 and is available for booking; an educational packet and exhibition schedule is being developed. Contact Consequences by NOOR for more information.

Nikon Europe BV is proud to be working with NOOR on its Consequences campaign. High quality images possess the power to convey lasting and opinion changing messages around the most significant environmental and humanitarian issues of today in a way that words cannot.

As an organization that believes strongly in the importance of protecting the environment for future generations, Nikon is committed to supporting NOOR on projects such as Consequences and working with the world’s very best photographers undertaking such challenging assignments.