Sustainable Solutions to the Climate Crisis

Kiliii Yuyan

Featured artists: Sarah Fretwell, Kiliii Yuyan, Giacomo d’Orlando

Others include: Carolyn Monastra, Roberto Nistri, Lauren Owens Lambert, Mark Phillips, Chris Trinh

The Spring 2022 issue of ZEKE Magazine features these three photographic projects exploring sustainable solutions to the climate crisis.

Kiliii Yuyan

Indigenous Fire, United States

Fire-lighting, rather than fire-fighting, has proven to be an exceptional weapon against apocalyptic wildfires raging across the American West. The Indigenous Peoples Burning Network is training people in this ancient technique of ecological restoration, which is to safely light low-intensity fires in wet seasons that remove the small fuels on the forest floor.

Giacomo d’Orlando

Nemo’s Garden, Italy

Nemo’s Garden in Italy is the world’s first underwater greenhouses of terrestrial plants. The microclimate conditions within the biospheres are optimal for plant growth and crop yields. The encouraging results, where more than 40 different species of plants have been successfully cultivated, give us hope that we have found a sustainable agricultural system that will help us tackle the new challenges posed by climate change.

Sarah Fretwell

Permagarden Refugees, Uganda

African Women Rising’s (AWR) Permagarden Program works with refugees to use existing resources — seeds, rainfall, limited land, and “waste” — and together build an agriculture system designed to help the environment regenerate and strengthen as it matures. Radical in its simplicity and effectiveness, the success of AWR’s Permagarden Program has tremendous implications for refugees and humans worldwide.

Artist Bios

Sarah Fretwell

Sarah Fretwell is a journalist, climate activist, and political scientist. She works as a multimedia storyteller. Her work focuses on the intersections of the environment, people, and business with one question: “What if the new bottom line was love?” Her award-winning photojournalism explores the lives of everyday people with extraordinary stories, and creates the human connection that engages people on a personal level — offering individuals a voice for justice, insight for solutions, and the encouragement needed for international engagement. Some of her notable work and clients include the BioCarbon Fund, the United Nations, USAID, the Africa Prize for Engineering Innovation, World Bank Group, and the Tara Ocean Foundation.
Kiliii Yuyan

Kiliii Yuyan illuminates stories of the Arctic and human communities connected to the land and sea. Informed by ancestry that is both Nanai/Hèzhé (East Asian Indigenous) and Chinese American, he explores the human relationship to the natural world from different cultural perspectives and extreme environments, on land and underwater. Yuyan is an award-winning contributor to National Geographic, TIME, and other major publications. He is one of PDN’s 30 Photographers (2019), a National Geographic Explorer, and a member of Indigenous Photograph and Diversify Photo. His work has been exhibited worldwide and received some of photography’s top honors.
Giacomo d’Orlando

Giacomo d’Orlando is an Italian documentary photographer focused on environmental and social issues. In 2015, he moved to Nepal and then Peru to enter the world of photojournalism, working alongside local NGOs focusing on social issues. His subsequent time in Australia and New Zealand inspired him to concentrate on the environment, particularly the possible future scenarios caused by climate change. His projects have appeared in the Washington Post, Der Spiegel, Paris Match, El Pais, Geo France, De Volkskrant, D – La Repubblica and Mare Magazine, among others. Today, his work looks at how the increasing pressures brought about by climate change are reshaping the planet and how present-day society is reacting to the new challenges that will characterize our future.

Organizations

Social Documentary Network (SDN)

The Social Documentary Network (SDN), founded in 2008, is a global community of documentary photographers, editors, curators, NGOs, journalists, and others, who believe in the power of visual storytelling to build understanding and appreciation for the complexities, diversity nuances, wonders, and contradictions that abound in the world today.

Since our founding, the SDN website has featured more than 4,000 exhibits by nearly 3,000 photographers from all corners of the globe.

Our flagship publication, ZEKE: The Magazine of Global Documentary, is printed twice a year in print and year-round in digital, and features the most successful projects from the SDN website.

We also create gallery exhibitions, educational programs, lecture series, award programs, and portfolio reviews.

Recent stories on SDN and in ZEKE have explored sustainable solutions to the climate crisis, the war in Gaza, migration from Central America to the U.S., the war in Ukraine, the COVID-19 pandemic, the rising seas of Antarctica, life in Iran, asylum in America, teen mothers, and many other global themes.