UN Habitat’s City Resilience Profiling Programme hosted the exhibition “Where will we go?” in the Sant Pau Art Nouveau Site, in Barcelona, Spain. The audio-visual production by renowned photo-journalist Kadir van Lohuizen ran from February 17th through March 17th, 2017 and explored the plight of people permanently displaced as a result of the impact of a changing climate.

The opening of the exhibition took place on 17th of February and was led by Kadir van Lohuizen, with Dan Lewis, Head of the UN Habitat’s global Risk Reduction and Resilience programmes, and Arnau Queralt i Bassa, Director of the Advisory Council for Sustainable Development of Catalonia (CADS).

Where Will We Go? Is a visceral and visual statement on the plight of people confronting the loss of their land and livelihoods as a result of sea level rise and coastal erosion.

Image: Sant Pau Art Nouveau. City Resilience Global Programme.

Where will we go? Provides vivid visual coverage of how climate change is already affecting places where people live, Greenland with its melting glaciers, Kiribati, Fiji, the Carterets Islands in Bougainville, Bangladesh, the Guna Yala archipelago in Panama, the United Kingdom and the United States. Before the sea floods land permanently, sea water intrudes at high tides, making once-fertile land no longer viable for crops and water undrinkable. The exhibition shows people who still live in affected areas, but also those who have already moved to safer ground.

Where will we go? Highlights both the immense complexities associated with the forced displacement of people, as well as the implications for their human rights.