In a corner of the world most people are unaware exists, a young man dared to use his love of hip hop and talent for rapping to speak truth to power and raise awareness among the youth about the need for social change. The Mozambican rapper, social activist, and revolutionary known as Azagaia was found dead in his home in Mozambique on Thursday, March 9th, 2023. He was 38 years old.

Azagaia was born Edson da Luz in May 1984, in Namaacha, less than 80 kilometres from the capital city of Maputo. Namaacha is a border town, in the area where the three countries of Mozambique, South Africa, and Eswatini meet. The first President of independent Mozambique, Samora Machel, was killed in a plane crash that landed some 20 kms from Namaacha, across the border in South Africa, the cause of which continues to be a subject of debate and suspicion.

Edson da Luz adopted the stage name "Azagaia" after an African spear. In true form, Azagaia’s music 

 a weapon urging the people of his country to consider social, political, and economic inequalities and their disproportionate effects on poor and vulnerable. Azagaia believed that his music could shed light on the evils of society that he saw around him and catalyse positive action. His lyrics critiqued colonialism and slavery, but also held our current African leaders’ feet to the fire.

Azagaia’s raps were all in Portuguese, the colonial language of Mozambique. There is very little written about him in English. This is a loss for those who don’t understand Portuguese (the vast majority of the world of course), but who appreciate the progressive roots of hip hop, who love the music of Dead Prez, Tupac Shakur, Michael Franti and Spearhead, the Roots, the Fugees, Public Enemy, Talib Kwali, A Tribe Called Quest, and so many other visionary rappers with a systemic critique.

This invisibilization is not surprising. Between and even within countries, there are clear hierarchies of whose lives matter and whose stories are told. So many people within our countries, especially in Africa, are invisible, evoking pity when a deadly cyclone hits, but forgotten a week later. But these stories are important. Many of our obscure places are lightning rods, harbingers of what is to come, the canary in the coal mine, lessons for the rest of the world.

In Azagaia’s song "As Mentiras" (The Lies), he raps (translated to English):

It’s a lie that you’re independent
That you take your continent forward
You didn't break the chain
You're nothing but an unconscious slave
500 years of slavery
And the Europeans took 36 million slaves and only 16 survived
Now you call the European, the American or god knows who
To suck your oil and set up their homes here
But they don't set up factories here, they just buy the barrel
On the mainland or in the diaspora
Independent Africans who impoverish our Africa

Mozambique is one of the poorest countries in the world. The Portuguese colonial government held on to its colonies the longest. The country only gained its independence in 1975, the year that the Vietnam War ended. 

 shows that Mozambique’s Human Development Index ranks at 180 out of 189 countries and territories. Over 60% of the people of Mozambique live under the poverty line, and 80% of the people are food insecure. It is also one of the most vulnerable countries to the climate crisis.

Colonialism robbed and impoverished the country, like so many in Africa. The current ruling political party found its own way to enrich themselves and continue looting the land and peoples, but there are effectively only two political parties in the country to choose from. Azagaia once said in an 

“nao existe democracia com apenas dois partidos politicos”

 (there can be no democracy with just two political parties). Readers in the US might find this sentiment familiar.

In the same interview, he was asked if he feared for his life because of his progressive music. He replied that he is not interested in material possessions, he is not taking any of that with him. Instead, it is important to him to make his life count, to focus on safety for his family and to leave his ideas behind. How many rappers speak like this today?

His other songs include "Quem vendeu a minha patria?" (Who sold my homeland?), about the leaders selling off the country’s land and other resources; "Os Vampiros" (The Vampires), denouncing those who profit off of the labour of the people; "As Mentiras da Verdade" (The Lies from the Truth), about how the media and the powerful control the narratives of truth and lies; and "Povo no Poder" (Put the People in Power), a call to action for the people of his country to organize themselves.

Azagaia was a musician with a value system. His lyrics were harsh but his manner was soft. His mischievous eyes sparkled even as he spoke about the evils of colonialism and the need for revolution. Azagaia earned the wrath of the government, the wealthy and powerful few in Mozambique whose injustice and impunity he often critiqued. In 2008, he was ordered to appear before the Attorney-General’s office and was accused of inciting violence. He was boycotted by the government and companies who wouldn’t cover him on air and actively hindered his participation in big cultural events. But he kept producing the music he loved—and the youth of Mozambique loved it right back.

One of Azagaia’s last songs is called "Vender o Pais" (Sell the Country), where he sings (translated into English):

"Your people can't take it anymore, Lord
In exchange for oil and gas they sell our country."

It references one of the largest oil and natural gas fields in the world found off the coast of northern Mozambique which has 

Mozambican organization Justiça Ambiental (JA!), with whom I have worked since 2011, is fighting the gas rush in northern Mozambique. In end 2019, while the UN climate negotiations called COP 25 were taking place in Madrid, JA! organised a climate justice event in Maputo to raise awareness. The event was held in a park where local artisans sell their wares. Azagaia agreed to sing at the event and captivated the audience completely.

In "As Mentiras da Verdade" (The Lies from the Truth), he rapped (translated to English):

you can kill me
but you can’t kill the truth

, Azagaia was asked if he feels threatened by the government. He responded (translated to English):

My life as a Mozambican is itself a threatened life. Unreliable transport and healthcare—people go to the hospital but they don’t know if they will even get seen—this is a threat, we live under threat, we are used to living under threat, so when the politicians threaten me, it’s just another threat on top of all the others. Life is so difficult and precarious for so many on the planet.

The circumstances of his death are strange. The family has attributed his untimely demise to his epilepsy. Regardless, Azagaia already knew that those in power did not want him to stick around. He was a thorn in the side of the self-serving political and corporate elites of Mozambique. In 2014, he posted on his Facebook account (translated to English):

“Mozambican youngsters, if I lose my life, there will be many explanations that I died of epilepsy or something else, which might lead people to think that no one is to blame, that my death was an accident, natural and justified. This could happen within or outside Mozambique. If this happens, I only urge you one thing. Do not weep. JUST CONTINUE TO DO THE WORK WE TALKED ABOUT! Put the People in Power!”

His death may not be nefarious at all. But it is a reminder that, in one of the poorest countries in the world, where everyday life is already difficult and basic needs are unmet, exposing corruption and empowering the dispossessed attracts scrutiny and violence. In my experience as an activist for over two decades, those in power try to bribe you, to shut you up, to intimidate you. The day they realize you can’t be intimidated, they try to get rid of you. But killing a dissenter or social activist outright is now a dangerous game for African governments. It risks creating a martyr. It risks upsetting the Americans and Europeans who hold slightly higher pretenses about how they treat their own dissenters. So the new trick is to feign an accident. That may not be what happened with Azagaia but a disturbing trend none the less.

Nólia Macajo was a community leader whose village was being devastated by coal mining in central Mozambique. For many years, she organized her community to resist. Justiça Ambiental has worked to support Nólia and other coal mining affected communities for long over a decade. In their Annual Report of 2019, they wrote:

The coal companies built a road right thru Benga, cutting off the main part of the community to the river and once the main bridge linking Moatize got damaged by floods, this road became the main route for traffic. It caused major loss of livestock and numerous people from the community were victims of hit and run car accidents, especially children. On the morning of 26 September, 2019, Nólia was standing near the road when a truck veered off the road and crushed her. We don’t know if the driver fell asleep at the wheel, or got distracted, or whether it was intention, because he never stopped, he just turned back onto the road and continued driving, leaving her to die.

Many Azagaias, many Nólias are constantly lost to the struggle. Activists and their communities are worn down and constantly diminished by those in power.

Several thousands of people showed up for Azagaia’s funeral in Maputo on March 14th. In a country where street protests are highly controlled, it was a rare sight to see so many congregated in the streets. The police showed up in riot gear and made use of their tear gas bombs. “State linked media appear to have boycotted the event,” 

 Zenaida Machado, a Mozambican activist working with Human Rights Watch. On 18 March, protests were called for in major Mozambican cities in honour of Azagaia. As of this writing, the police is responding with scary and unnecessary brutality. As reported by 

, police stopped the march in the central city of Beira even though it had been authorized, while police in Maputo used tear gas to disperse protesters.

Speaking with my friend and colleague, the Mozambican artist, photographer, and Deputy Director of Justiça Ambiental, Mauro Pinto, I can hear his heartbreak. Artists of conscience in Mozambique are a rarity and rely on one another for support. A few months ago, Mauro’s photos of the human cost of coal mining, what Nólia Macajo’s community is fighting against, were displayed in Maputo. Azagaia was there to support.

I asked Mauro how it feels right now to have lost his friend and fellow artist and if he could talk to Azagaia, what would he say. Mauro responded:

“Great Azagaia, you leave us with a great responsibility that we always discussed when we were together. We're going to have to die so that our great-grandchildren can have a better future. Our country needs to change course and now is the time. We are in a bankrupt state and a fake society. But I don’t feel frustrated because I know that we leave behind our art, our work, our messages. The fight for justice is urgent. Power to the people!”

I remember the first time I met Azagaia, somewhere in 2011 at the Maputo airport, on the eve of my wedding. He was heading to Angola for a concert. I had just moved to Mozambique, to be with my partner. I didn’t speak Portuguese yet and I didn’t understand his lyrics. But having become part of a Mozambican activist family, I knew about the "rapper of the people." I was completely tongue-tied as I was confronted with his stature and the scale of his genius. I think I blabbed out some words in English, thanking him for his music. “We have a lot of work to do together, let’s keep fighting,” I remember him responding, his kind eyes sparkling with graciousness.

This is the rallying cry Azagaia left for every single one of us. POVO NO PODER! (Put the People in Power!)

East Africa

Death of a Rap Revolutionary

On the evening of March 15, 2020, Michael Spencer Phillips sat alone in a hotel room looking out onto the quiet streets of Paris. The cafés were shuttered and the doors to the Louvre and Museé d’Orsay were closed—it was a sullen night in the City of Lights. Michael was dealing with a nasty bout of COVID. He was low, having felt like a shell of himself on stage earlier that evening while performing with Rioult Dance in Paris. To make matters worse, later that night he found out that the remaining Paris shows had been cancelled along with the rest of the dates for company’s Spring season. Long simmering doubts started to creep in and he began to wrestle with reality: he might never dance for Rioult again.

Hard days and nights followed Michael back to New York. He spent a lot of time wondering if he would ever get on stage again. Would he end up playing one of the older roles in a company? How would his body react to the rigours of modern dance if he took too much time off? Had he 

 been delivered to his professional executioner at the pinnacle of his career? It felt cruel and unjust, and yet here he was facing the real possibility that the pandemic might mark the death knell of his twenty-year career.

“You hear all these famous quotes that prolific dancers and artists have said throughout the years,” Michael confesses. “Then you realize that 

 grown old, and it hits you hard.” The irony is that “just when you feel like you have more to say as an artist, your body has less to give.”

The world of professional dance is unapologetically transactional—it takes as much as it gives and leaves in its wake liberation and triumph among the damaged bodies and broken dreams. Michael agonized over whether it had taken all it ever would from him. He heard the echo of Martha Graham’s timeless prophecy. “A dancer dies twice,” the matriarch of modern dance famously lamented, “once when they stop dancing, and this first death is the more painful.”

For Michael, the pandemic and the cruelties of aging had colluded in this proverbial death. Covid had come at the worst time—just as he was staring down the wrong side of forty. “You’ve reached this stage of life where you’ve experienced death, disappointment, people around you sharing love,” he says as if flipping through chapters of his life in New York. “You feel like 

 is my time to express the physical and emotional depths of myself as an artist.” Then suddenly, it begins to slip away.

At the height of the pandemic, Michael and his husband Dino packed up their apartment and left New York for Michael’s parents’ house near Traverse City, Michigan. Tuning out the vacuous eschatological musings foretelling the demise of the art world, it stood to reason that large gatherings weren’t likely to resume any time soon. So Michael and Dino, a South African architect, said: "Fuck it. There's nowhere to go but up. Let’s give it try." Dino could work remotely and his job was secure due to the construction industry being deemed an essential industry. They’d be fine in the short term.

Dino has a way of artfully, if brusquely, getting right to the point. There were other considerations on his mind. “I wanted him to focus on making his own work, rather than simply executing the ideas of another choreographer—to be the ‘architect’ of his creations rather than the contractor.” The plan was for Michael to make the transition from dance into the fashion world as a movement director, and to make his own choreographic works for the stage.

They weren’t settled in long when the Traverse City Dance Project commissioned Michael to make a dance film and paired him with Darian Donovan Thomas, a young composer he had never met. When he wasn't choreographing movements in his childhood backyard, he and Dino were driving all over the Old Mission Peninsula scouting landscapes for the dance sequences. The day trips brought them to windswept shortgrass prairies, Sleeping Bear Dunes, Grand Traverse Bay. The landscapes were so magnificent, so expansive, there was no other way to capture the enormity of the scenes they were envisioning other than with a drone. Dino gifted Michael one on his birthday and the two spent the next few weeks laboring over their new toy, traveling to shooting locations, and experimenting with videography, lighting, and framing. Meanwhile, Michael was trying to figure out how to choreograph dance sequences in nature that would inspire a narrative.

One summer afternoon, Michael’s father joined them on a reconnaissance mission. The plan was for him to tow Michael 500 feet offshore on a jet ski and leave him there to float above the drop-off. Dino, who had been christened producer-cinematographer for this sequence, prepared the drone, while Michael and his father took off toward a hazy arc of discoloration where the turquoise waters of the sandy bay give way to the midnight blues depth of glacial Lake Michigan. They cut the engine and suddenly it was just father and son rocking on the gentle waves above a yawning watery chasm. For a moment it was as if time had relented and returned to them a sliver of all that was good in the past.

Back on shore, Dino gave the thumbs up and Michael instructed his father to take the jet ski far enough away that it wouldn’t be in the frame, and dove into the water. He’d signal his father when he needed to get picked up. Unsure how far he was meant to take the jet ski (or how sound the risk management plan was), Michael’s father bobbed on the fringes of the frame while Dino gesticulated wildly from shore to indicate that he should keep going. By the time the shot came together forty minutes later, Michael’s father was nowhere in sight. Too far, at least, to see his son signaling to be picked up. “I was out in like forty feet of water,” Michael laughs. “Eventually I got Dino’s attention on the drone and let him know to tell my father to come get me.”

Michael's description of the origin story of "Site-Specific Dances" and the culmination of his 30-year journey reveals the unmistakable arc of the 

: the boy must die so the man can be reborn. For Michael, the proverbial death was not unwelcome. The 11-year-old boy ultimately returned to his parents' home, on a path of 

 only to experience his unexpected creative rebirth as a 42-year-old married man in his childhood backyard. A profound sense of equilibrium and serenity bleeds from an image Dino took of Michael floating alone in Lake Michigan, buoyant above the abyss, arms outstretched, having completely surrendered to the great lake of his youth. I was reminded of a hymn by William Blake: 

"To see a world in a grain of sand and heaven in a wild flower. Hold infinity in the palm of your hand and eternity in an hour.

When filming wrapped in Michigan, Michael reached out to Emma Kazaryan, a former dancer, now multimedia journalist, to help edit the early cut. “When Michael sent me the footage, I suggested he split it into colors,” she recalls. “He filmed in white and blue, and it was named 

. That was the premise of the film.” Emma soon realized that working on a non-narrative film came with a lot of unknowns. “You’re telling a story without telling a story. So you have to go with what you feel and add shots that make sense to the viewer.”

Without a template or many precedents to draw from, Michael began exploring ways to tell stories silently, solely through movement. “When I started working with the drone, I asked myself: Can a landscape dance? Can all these elements of nature be a protagonist and not just a backdrop? How can a tree be a character in the story I’m telling? Dance is an art form without words: how can I tell a story about environmental issues using a language that doesn’t have words?”

, the production moved to Sedona, where Michael intended to film a sequence of movements on the precarious, tiered cliffs of Bell Rock. Emma remembers: “We were following the natural contours, filming 11 or 12 dancers moving forward on the uneven surface, when they instinctively started walking toward the sun. It became a moment of unity and magic. I think it was a testament to the fact that Michael was going in the right direction.”

Dressed in loose, blindingly white cloth, a dozen dancers positioned themselves on crumbling terraces hundreds of feet above the red rock desert floor, performing movements of subtle precision. The drone rose from beneath them, capturing a scene of such fluidity that it seems as if the dancers became one with the wind itself fluttering across the face of the ancient crimson cliff. The effect was a mesmerizing, sensuous, silent elegy, reminiscent of Kurosawa’s 

“There is no better theatre than the natural world,” Michael affirms. “No film, no stage, no concert hall is ever going to match standing on what feels like the edge of the world dancing to a sunset.”

But Dino and Michael needed the imagery to say more, to communicate their message more cogently, to be more provocative. “It was imperative they weren’t just dancing in front of pretty backdrops. We wanted to advance the art of dance. We all build up certain walls or barriers to our creativity due to our disciplinary training. When you embark on an interdisciplinary project, something from 'outside' can help you rethink aspects within your discipline beyond your training—to produce something that might be new or innovative.” Seeking a new aesthetic that was more than just a form of dance, they began to envision something more akin to 

In the late summer of 2021, we flew out to California and drove down the peninsula from San Francisco to a family compound tucked away in the mountains west of Los Gatos, where the third of Michael’s "Site-Specific Dances" had begun filming. We turned onto an unpaved road and passed a few houses slowly collapsing under their own weight, before parking at a locked gate next to four dancers dressed in full-body, cinnabar-coloured leotards. Beyond the locked gate, we followed a shady dirt road deeper into the forest and came upon a lost commune of one-bedroom hovels covered in graffiti, clinging desperately to the steep ridgeline as if hanging onto the sins of their past. The path continued on shielded by a hundred-foot canopy and ended at a perfect circle of redwoods that eerily resembled the set of a Manson Family home video.

Michael emerged within the circular copse dressed like Ken Kesey or a character in an early Hemingway novel who’d just escaped from a logging camp in the Upper Peninsula. Dressed in a flannel shirt and shorts while sporting a stout, manicured mustache, Michael had been busy sweeping leaves and branches away from the centre of the clearing, noting any hidden knots, roots, or holes in the soil to Emma and the dancers who’d just arrived. He was dealing with another problem: the redwoods in this 

 had risen shoulder-to-shoulder, and the drone operator was finding it impossible to get a clear shot between the trees. The two were tromping through poison sumac, maneuvering the tiny helicopter in and around the sealed fortress of tree trunks, looking for angles and light.

, the dancers were moving through sequences, improvising, perfecting their positions and foot placements across the uneven “stage.” It had been easier to dance and film in the Sierra Nevada Mountains among the sequoias, where the climate is drier and the protean trees dominate the entire ecosystem. Among the shady, humid redwood groves, the undergrowth is thicker and there is little negative space. And yet it is these limitations imposed by nature that came to define 

 visual and creative leitmotif. Everything from lighting and framing to the specific dance techniques and narrative arc of the film was designed in response to and in concert with distinctive elements within the natural environment, leaving no performative separation between the actor, the story, and the stage.

Dino recalls a day when they were filming in Sequoia National Park. Many of the sequoias were charred and some had fallen, and they decided to do an experiment. “We looked for four distinct elements in the landscape and asked the dancers to develop a movement study of an interaction with their landscape. So Jaime started sliding down this massive log he was standing on.” Dino was struck by the resemblance to Michael tumbling down the sand dunes just one year earlier at Sleeping Bear Dunes. But what he saw wasn’t just the interplay between dancer and natural environment; he realized that if you could “systematize it, it can become a new language borne out of an interaction with the landscape.”

was envisioned and produced in such a way that the protagonists—nature, forest fires, climate change, the dancers—are at once the chorus, actors, stage, and backdrop. Within this construct, the audience finds itself allied with a bitter, ugly antagonist. The audience is, after all, humanity—with all our insatiable greed and unmitigated narcissism. This is where 

 is most audacious. It lays our willful ignorance, our addictions, our entitlement, our sense of propriety over the earth completely bare, and without needing to splice in a single scene of a smokestack, or a trash heap, or a cityscape. It’s all revealed in a human body tumbling gracefully down the charred trunk of a fallen sequoia.

“But our main work,” says Michael, “is finding the intersection of dance, music, community, site analysis, interviews, and performance art in the context of land stewardship. I hope a scientist will come and see our performance and be opened up to the possibility that arts and sciences can merge. How dance can be a beautiful art form 

 a useful partner to scientists, or vice versa.”

is political and it’s partisan. But it’s also a rejection of the hostile Right-Left binary that divides the American political landscape. The narrative of the film is driven by experts from unrelated, yet increasingly entwined fields of knowledge who help illustrate the complex, symbiotic relationship between humans and their environment. The audience hears the accounts of Indigenous representatives from communities along the Pacific Coast, wilderness firefighters, ecologists, loggers, park rangers, and longtime residents whose homes or property have gone up in flames.

Spending a year and a half making an experimental documentary film-based artwork that blends modern dance, environmental science, field reportage, and the wordless narrative of Nature was not part of the plan when Michael and Dino left New York early on in the pandemic. He admits, “I dove out of the plane head first with a parachute that 

 partially works.” Michael could not have known at the time that he'd land on two feet and find himself contributing to a new form of magical realism.

United States

In the Grove of Magical Realism

Walking down the shaded dirt path of dilapidated houses covered in graffiti clinging to the edges of steep, wooded mountain slopes, one wonders if this was once a hag-out for the Manson Family. Halfway through what appears to be an abandoned hippy commune, the visitor finds a warning written in white lettering on a wooden slat hammered into a post: “I’d turn back if I were you.” After a momentary pause, we continue around the bend in the path to a clearing carved around a circle of imposing redwood trees. Four figures clad in burgundy robes move in ritual patterns, swirling leaves on strings, a fairy ring quartet.

“Surrendering to the dirt,” is how Miche Wong describes this communing beneath the sacred canopy of nature’s tallest sentinels. A means to bridge the persistent disconnect between human beings and the natural environment, as nearby wildfires rage on. “When they die, other trees feel it far away.” No different from the mourning we experience, she purports. “As dancers we are are a medium for an emotional connection with nature,” engaging the “environment as a partner….to excite people to discover nature.” And in discovering it, to revere and protect it.

Choreographer, Michael Spencer Phillips, created 

 with this driving intention while recruiting local dancers to participate in his latest multi-media experiment in environmental activism. As his partner and producer, Dino Kiratzidis explains, 

frames “the environment as protagonist,” one with, “inherent theatrical potential.” Most simply, the work places the human body in relation to the extraordinary beauty of the natural world, while pointing to our unfortunate, tenuous relationship with it. “A return to primordial expression…to see ourselves as part of the ecosystem,” not separate from it. A repudiation of American individualism, the hubris of extractive capitalism and the immeasurable destruction its structures and systems have wrought.

, the third in the series of site-specific dances, during last year’s lock down as the worst recorded wildfires in history raged across California and the Pacific Northwest. Frustrated that the news defaulted to scientific objectivity and sensationalizing the unfolding manmade disaster in terms of impact on humans and their property, framing the fire as a malicious, unprovoked antagonist, Phillips decided to take his choreography from the studio in to the wild.

Wong sees this collaboration as a challenge to the conception that solving climate change as an individual rather than mass, collective effort. “Artists reimagine, change spaces, give a glimpse of what can be different. Another world to live within.” Through the process of creating the otherworldly, the dancers experienced their own physiological and emotional transformations––a series of surrenders––and the realization that fire is not the enemy. In fact, fire is a necessity for the maintenance of forest ecosystems. While the climate once dictated the scale and movement of forest fires, forest fires now dictate the gravity of their own impact. These are the meta-terrestrial reverberations of violent extractive capitalism, the result of human intervention in weakening, if not entirely destroying, forest ecosystems and depleting our only protection from the brutality of the unfiltered sun.

No rational person is arguing that there aren’t external factors at work, or that climate change is not in and of itself a naturally occurring phenomenon. But human recklessness coupled with a blind eye to the gross mismanagement of its repercussions has turned the earth into a powder keg. This time around, there is no convening of celestial deities or malignant asteroids to blame. We did this and it is now irrevocable. “Surrendering to the dirt,” may now be our only option as living fossils.

Living Fossils

Inspired by the fragility of natural world and the desire to push the limits of interdisciplinary performance, 

 is the brainchild of choreographer Michael Spencer Phillips and architect Dino Kiratzidis. Following the pandemic, the co-producers set off for northern California's majestic redwood and sequoia forests to create an immersive multi-channel performance installation that juxtaposes the grandeur of the ancient groves against the increasing of naturally-occurring wildfires in scenes that are at once sumptuous, prophetic and troubling. 

Phillips' choreography and Kiratzidis' attention to detail leaves the audience with the impression that the film to unfolds in a single movement, like one long breath. 

 is neither a documentary nor performance art, but a visual stimulant that draws us into its nook, shares its stories in whispers and acknowledges our sorrow.

 features music composed and arranged by Polina Nazaykinskaya for all ballet sequences. Immersive soundscapes were created by Darian Donovan Thomas.

Megaflora

On 14 February, 2020, thirty years after the Voyager 1 space probe turned around on the edge of the solar system and captured an image of Earth from 6 billion kilometres away, human civilisation found itself plunged into the Covid-19 pandemic and on the cusp of environmental calamity. To Carl Sagan, who designed the Pioneer Plaque and the Golden Record for the Voyager missions, the photo was an emotional reminder that this planet, this tiny speck of space dust in the galaxy, is our only home and we must take care of it:

Look again at that dot. That’s here. That’s home. That’s us. On it everyone you love, everyone you know, everyone you ever heard of, every human being who ever was, lived out their lives. The aggregate of our joy and suffering, thousands of confident religions, ideologies, and economic doctrines, every hunter and forager, every hero and coward, every creator and destroyer of civilization, every king and peasant…

In early November 2021, the eyes of the world were on global leaders gathered in Glasgow, Scotland for the 26th Conference of the Parties to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change. But not to be outdone, a rag tag group of global environmental activists showed up and did their very best to shake things up.

While world leaders including Boris Johnson, Joe Biden, Narendra Modi and Jair Bolsonaro were on hand to negotiate for their own interests, Xi Jinping and Vladimir Putin were conspicuously absent, preferring to show their disinterest by sending members of their attaché.

Flanked by giant inflatable Pikachus, Friends of the Earth Japan issues a statement demanding that Japan end funding for fossil fuel projects in Southeast Asia. Pop culture is a powerful vehicle for proliferating messaging––this scene also 

. © Hanae Takahashi/Friends of the Earth Japan.

It is important to note that Boris Johnson's government did its very best to curate the 

 COP ever. Many participants from the Global South were denied visas, while vaccine issues and constantly changing quarantine requirements prevented many others from attending. Boris Johnson’s government attempted to make travel as difficult as possible for Global South participants, specifically those from progressive civil society.

Wielding a giant banner, activists played recorded messages from those of us who could not access the COP. This action was held once outside the conference centre entrance as delegates walked in, and again inside the halls of power from which broader civil society was excluded.

Climate justice activists who made it to Glasgow responded with a big, bold action and a battle cry: “Nothing about us without us!” © Hanae Takahashi/Friends of the Earth Japan.

As activists, we know the deck is severely stacked against the vast majority of peoples on this planet. But we show up anyway, whoever can make it, to be a thorn in the side of world leaders and to speak hard truths within those echoing chambers of power. Our weapons of choice are art installations, props, flags, banners, and our loud, indignant voices amplifying stories from grassroots movements across the globe.

It was freezing in Glasgow on the evening of

 10 December, when a group of international activists gathered to commemorate

 the 26th year anniversary of the murder of Nigerian poet and activist, 

 and the "Ogoni 8," who were killed for opposing an oil extraction project in Ogoniland in the Niger delta. A banner reading “Fossil Fuels, Not Here, Not Anywhere” was placed near the convention centre entrance next to images of coastal Nigeria.

We brought to Glasgow statements from the fight against fossil fuel extraction in Mozambique, Togo, Ghana, Indonesia, Canada, Uganda and elsewhere. These are not isolated struggles against fossil fuels. We are collectively challenging the entire logic of the extractivist "dirty" energy system. © Hanae Takahashi/Friends of the Earth Japan.

Earlier in 2021, we released a report titled 

Chasing Carbon Unicorns: The deception of Carbon Markets and “Net Zero”

. The report called out developed countries and polluting corporations who peddle "false solutions" to the climate crisis. “Net zero” pledges, carbon markets and offsetting, 

Beyond the clever titles, the solutions are in fact little more than sophisticated shell games negotiated by Global North countries to allow the world's worst polluters to continue polluting as long as they pretend to reduce carbon emissions elsewhere. What they offer are reforestation campaigns, financial remuneration the form of carbon credits, and hollow commitments of future unproven technologies that they claim will "suck" carbon out of the atmosphere. The quest to offset carbon emissions not only fails to reduce fossil fuel emissions at the source, it poses grave harm to communities in the Global South that often fall prey to violent land grabbing and unchecked human rights violations.

A giant carbon unicorn joined the rally for climate justice on Glasgow Green, 6th November 2021. © Hanae Takahashi/Friends of the Earth Japan.

Scotland’s national animal is the mythical unicorn, so what better symbolism could there be than an almost 2-meter-tall carbon unicorn head, sporting an oil rig as its horn. The unicorn made its first appearance at the Global Day of Action on the 6 November alongside nearly 150,000 people marching in the rainy streets of Glasgow.

The unicorn exhaled plumes of blue smoke, billowing alongside flags that read: ‘Dismantle Patriarchy Not the Planet’, ‘Climate Justice Now’ and ‘People Power Now’. The carbon unicorn 

made it into a visual story run by the BBC

, helping spread the narrative that carbon markets are like chasing a carbon unicorn; it may sound useful but it doesn’t exist!

Her Royal(like) Highness ceremoniously turned off the faucet to a raucous crowd of environmental activists and onlookers gathered on the streets of Glasgow, Scotland. © Hanae Takahashi/Friends of the Earth Japan.

To mark the 46th anniversary of the Queen turning on the UK’s first oil pipeline, activists staged a mock ceremony on the 3 November outside Glasgow's Royal Concert Hall in an attempt to persuade MPs in the UK to vote against new drilling in the North Sea Cambo oil field. Activists erected a life-sized caricature of the UK’s most prized possession, Her Royal Highness the Queen, who made a cameo to “Turn off the Tap.”

The final outcome of COP26 is nothing short of scandalous. While many delegates from the Global South struggled to attend or make their voices heard, fossil fuel corporations were present in full force, with 

. It will be remembered as another betrayal of the Global South, who see their plight as having been abandoned by high carbon-emitting OPEC countries and left to deal with costly transitions to clean energy, economic loss and environmental damage without essential resources or support.

The last days of COP26 saw a disappointing outcome emerge from the negotiations. Civil society mobilized to fight it. We took over a plenary hall to hold a "Peoples Plenary," in contrast to the planet-wrecking negotiations unfolding in the room across the building. Over 

800 people performatively paraded out of the conference venue 

carrying lines of red fabric, representing the red lines that were being crossed by those in power. © Hanae Takahashi/Friends of the Earth Japan.

Perhaps it is no surprise that this was the moment a deal was finally forced through on carbon markets. At COP25 in Madrid in 2019, Friends of the Earth and our allies in progressive civil society mounted a fierce attack on Article 6 of the Paris Agreement (which allows for carbon markets), which prevented a regressive agreement from getting enshrined there. At COP26, the UK government 

. Disgracefully, rich countries opted for the Glasgow COP-out while hanging developing countries out to dry.

There are real solutions to the climate crisis, and people power is the key to unlocking them. We need a value system that prioritizes the centrality of life, not greed nor profit. People are doing this everywhere already. They are building 

clean, socially-owned renewable energy solutions

, transforming our food systems and supporting peasant agro-ecology, protecting forests through community forest management, and building an economic system that prioritizes and redistributes care work. People with all their creativity, acting in community, from a sense of love, solidarity and justice can move mountains. As Carl Sagan waxed poetically in the 

…every young couple in love, every mother and father, hopeful child, inventor and explorer, every teacher of morals, every corrupt politician, every “superstar,” every “supreme leader,” every saint and sinner in the history of our species lived there––on a mote of dust suspended in a sunbeam.

Our planet is facing an integrative and compounding climate crisis: 

rising global temperature, warming oceans, shrinking ice sheets, glacial retreat, rising sea levels, extreme events, and ocean acidification

 represent clear and present dangers to humanity. Many have painted climate change as an issue for future generations, but it is an issue for all generations and all peoples. What is often left unsaid is that the climate crisis is inherently unjust—affecting the poorest, most vulnerable peoples the hardest, even though they are least responsible for this crisis. An example of this inequity are the coastal communities of 

Mozambique, who were battered by Cyclone Idai in 2019

, the deadliest tropical cyclone ever recorded in the South-West Indian Ocean basin, even though Mozambique produces 

0.02 percent of the world carbon emissions

We activists are often labelled as trying to save the Earth, but we are doing nothing of the sort. We 

 do anything of the sort. The Earth will be fine. The planet was here long before us and will be around long after us. We're the ones in trouble. Our goal is to support humanity's continued existence on this planet, especially that of the poor and vulnerable who didn’t create these crises. We do it because they will be impacted first and most deeply. If we have any hope of stopping the demise of our civilization, we must listen to the communities who have the most to lose. They have a lot to teach us about what we must value.

Some may say that our vision is grand, but the alternative is terrifying.

Global

The Great COP-Out

Field reports highlighting humanity's devastating impact on the Earth and the struggle to catalyze societal and environmental responses that can restore humans symbiotic relationship with Nature in the 21st century.

The Anthropocene