Art and environmental crisis: an introductory note

Abstract

In the middle of one of the most devastating pandemics ever experienced, leaders of nearly 200 countries met recently in Glasgow to discuss climate change at the 2021 United Nations Climate Change Conference, nicknamed COP26. Long due and with great anticipation and press coverage, it was the third installment of a series of meetings that resulted from the 2015 Paris Agreement and the 1997 Kyoto Protocol. But why now? – plainly, because the planet and all its peoples cannot wait. The world is experiencing intense tornadoes in North America, severe floods and landslides in Europe, and scalding Canadian and Australian heat waves; the Brazilian Amazon and many other places are burning, while the oceans and weather patterns are convulsing. The urgency also resides in the rise in average global temperatures and the pressing need to maintain it reasonably by reducing global carbon dioxide emissions and drastically limiting other greenhouse gases in the near future. We are in the midst of a worsening environmental crisis and people on various fronts are asking what can be done. In particular, how is art responding to the environmental crisis? Members of art communities everywhere are also joining in to face this crucial problem, in a vast movement that is reshaping the face of art itself. This special issue of World Art emerges out of this movement, and is concerned about what artists and critics have to say and do in the matter. Many initiatives and actions in the domains of art and visual culture have been to denounce the destruction of the environment; they also highlight and suggest solutions to what, without our intervention, will be a world catastrophe without precedent. If progressive forces are