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An in-depth look at issues surrounding climate change.

13/08/2025

NEWS DIGEST | Could legal personhood help save the Great Barrier Reef?

Yirrganydji traditional owner Gary Singleton has spent more than 12 years patrolling the reef, as warming seas, sediment runoff, pollution and overfishing steadily erode its resilience.

With coral coverage at record lows, a growing legal movement known as the ‘rights of nature’ is asking: what if the reef had the same legal rights as a person?

From the Whanganui River in Aotearoa New Zealand to the Atrato River in Colombia, ecosystems around the world are being recognised as legal entities with the right to exist, thrive and continue their vital cycles. Could this model give the Great Barrier Reef a voice – and guardians to speak on its behalf?

Read the article via the link in bio, written by Rosamund Brennan for the .

07/08/2025

FEATURE | Becoming Ocean: a social conversation about the Ocean

The ocean is alive but slowly choking — plastic pollutes shores, coral reefs bleach, seafloors are destroyed by bottom trawling. Who is accountable for the health of the high seas beyond national jurisdiction?

Becoming Ocean explores urgent questions around ocean protection: how do we protect life below water? Who decides? And what role can culture play in shaping accountability?

Co-produced by TBA21 Thyssen-Bornemisza Art Contemporary and Tara Ocean Foundation, in collaboration with Schmidt Ocean Institute, and presented at Villa Arson, Nice, the exhibition positions art as a catalyst for systemic ocean change.

More than 20 international artists take part through critical, documentary, sensory, poetic and speculative approaches. The exhibition is part of the programme for the Nice Biennial of Arts and the Ocean, produced within the wider framework of the United Nations Ocean Conference (UNOC3), held in Nice from 9–13 June 2025.

Following the conference, Icarus Complex writer Linda Förster interviewed Lea D’Auriol, founder of Oceanic Global – a partner of the UN Ocean Decade – to explore what meaningful ocean protection looks like: how to move beyond symbolic commitments, how art reveals what data can’t, and what long-term stewardship requires.

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Becoming Ocean is on view:

📅 8 May–24 August 2025
📍 Villa Arson, Nice

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Featured artworks:

Anne Duk Hee Jordan, Ziggy and the Starfish (2016–2022)

Sonia Levy, We Marry You O Sea as a Sign of True and Perpetual Dominion (2023)

Diana Policarpo, Cigua Tales (2022) .policarpo

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What does real protection look like? Share your thoughts in the comments below.

03/08/2025

NEWS DIGEST | The hidden threat of ‘zombie’ fires

As the Arctic warms, wildfires aren’t just seasonal—they’re becoming year-round. So-called zombie fires smoulder underground through winter, hidden beneath the surface, only to reignite when conditions warm.

Fueled by dry peat and thawing permafrost, these fires pose a growing threat to global carbon cycles and public health.

‘They can burn for a long time at a very slow rate. We call them “zombie” because the fires continue burning during winter and re-emerge in the spring.’ says Patrick Louchouarn, Professor of Earth Sciences at The Ohio State University.

These fires are hard to detect, difficult to fight, and capable of travelling across continents through toxic smoke and particulate pollution.

As Louchouarn notes: “Wildfires are no longer a local problem... They could be hemispheric problems.”

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Read the article ‘The Tricky Problem of “Zombie” Fires’ via the link in bio 🔗

Interview by Steve Curwood, Living on Earth – Inside Climate News

02/08/2025

ARTICLE | Buildings That Breathe

What does it mean to truly listen to the land before building on it?

For architect Mona Doctor-Pingel, designing the SAIL Centre on the outskirts of Surat meant refusing to erase a marshy site—and instead transforming it into a water-harvesting, heat-buffering lotus pond.

Completed in 2024, the building challenges dominant ideas of ‘usable’ land and ‘efficient’ construction. With locally made bricks, passive cooling strategies, and minimal concrete, it offers a grounded, context-sensitive model for public architecture in a time of climate urgency.

‘The most practical solutions to making buildings sustainable are always a little bit messy – simple, but messy.’

Words by Rupal Rathore
Photography by Ishi Sitwala

Read the full story via the link in bio.

30/07/2025

Eastern Ladakh, 2021.
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‘Through projects like The Silent Disaster, I have worked closely with nomadic communities in Eastern Ladakh to document the lived realities of climate change. My work also emphasizes the deep role of women as cultural anchors and seeks to build visual narratives that not only preserve but actively advocate for the communities I engage with.’

As a documentary photographer, Siddharth Behl’s practice is dedicated to exploring the profound interconnections between communities, cultural memory, and fragile ecosystems. He focuses on long-form visual narratives that illuminate the often-unseen resilience of people living at the frontlines of environmental and social change.

Read our February photo story The Silent Disaster via the link in bio 🔗

28/07/2025

GLACIAL TIME | Speculative Geologies

Melting ice is more than a symbol. It’s memory, rupture, water insecurity, and cultural loss.

Speculative tools help us feel these shifts. Through sound, augmented reality, and sensor-driven storytelling, they translate climate data into experiences—allowing us to sense what is vanishing and imagine how we might relate differently.

They are not predictions or fixes—but provocations. Cultural, scientific, poetic, and political tools that ask us to slow down, listen, and reframe our ecological relationships.

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Contributors:

Ugo Nanni is a glaciologist and seismologist who uses vibration sensors to listen to the inner movements of ice. His sonic tools make glacial change audible—translating seismic signals into sound to reveal what escapes the eye.

Justin Brice Guariglia is an American artist whose work explores the relationship between humans and the natural world.

Tega Brain is an Australian artist and environmental engineer whose work spans ecology, data, and infrastructure—crafting digital systems and speculative interventions that question how we engage with climate systems.

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What tools do we need to make sense of a changing planet?

24/07/2025

DOCUMENTARY | Until the River Breathes

Join us for the Cape Town premiere of Until the River Breathes, a new documentary produced by Icarus Complex. Set along South Africa’s Liesbeek River, the film traces the intersecting struggles for ecological preservation and Indigenous land rights, spotlighting the activists, cultural workers and spiritual guardians at the heart of the resistance.

The screening will be followed by a conversation with special guest speaker Dr Zach Bush.

🗓️ Tuesday, 29 July 2025 | 10.00 am – 1.00 pm
📍 Guga S’thebe, Cape Town, South Africa

Directed by Lucy Martens
Produced by Madeleine Bazil
Executive Producer Afsaneh Angelina Rafii
Edited by Clementine Malpas
Animation by Gordon Bakkes

Featuring Barry Ellman, Tony Elvin, Tauriq Jenkins, Tozamile Mnapu

Archival images courtesy of Barry Ellman
Special thanks to Dave Child

23/07/2025

Palestine’s National Flower & the Struggle for Ecological Belonging

The Faqqu’a Iris (Iris haynei) represents more than botanical rarity – it is a mark of rootedness, cultural continuity, and resistance.

Endemic to the mountain range of the Jordan Rift Valley, the flower blooms each year across a landscape increasingly fragmented by the Israeli separation wall. For the people of Faqqu’a, including local author and steward Mufid Jalghoum, the iris symbolises an unbroken relationship between land and community – one threatened by violence, yet enduring through care and reverence.

Photographer Wahaj Bani Moufleh visited Jalghoum to capture the stunning blooms, but not without risk – Israeli forces have targeted and killed Palestinians walking among groves of olive trees and prickly pears near the fence.

In the iris’s bloom, we see the resilience of people and place bound together. To protect such ecologies is to defend a people’s right to remain, return, and flourish.
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21/07/2025

NEWS DIGEST | Torres Strait Islander leaders lose climate case in federal court

In a devastating landmark ruling, Torres Strait Islander leaders lost their federal court case seeking protection from climate change, as the court found no duty of care owed by the Australian government, prompting urgent calls from environmental lawyers and advocates to reform the legal system and enshrine responsibility for climate protection into law.

Read the article ‘Torres Strait leaders lost their landmark case. How can governments be held to account on climate?’ by Lisa Cox for The Guardian

19/07/2025

ARTICLE | Grassroots Economics: Prospering economies built by thriving communities

What if money wasn’t the only measure of value? In Kenya and beyond, Grassroots Economics Foundation is helping communities revive and reimagine systems of mutual aid, commitment pooling and decentralised finance – rooted in cultural memory and powered by trust.

These alternative economies are not hypothetical; they are lived, practiced, and adapted to meet real-world challenges like food insecurity, drought and economic instability.

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Read the full article by Madeleine Bazil via link in bio.

Grassroots Economics: Reflection and Practice by William O. Ruddick is also available now as a physical book, digital eBook (PDF), or audio book 🔗

18/07/2025

Assam’s climate and geography add another level of precarity: flooding and erosion of the Brahmaputra River have become increasingly unpredictable and extreme due to climate change.

Photographer and visual artist Zishaan A Latif has spent several years making numerous trips to Assam, documenting the Miya community’s existence and their ongoing struggle to navigate these cycles of environmental and political displacement.

Our previous photo story The Edge by Zishaan A Latif can be read via the link in bio.

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