With the world seemingly (and oftentimes literally) on fire, it sometimes can make you feel overwhelmed. We’re dealing with an ongoing pandemic and a global movement that lays bare the police violence and anti-Black racism that exists all over the world. With our bandwidth more or less at full capacity, it’s difficult to keep in mind that there’s another looming threat which is of great importance: the health of our rainforests, and with that, the health of our planet. To date, we have lost more than half the planet’s rainforests and climate researchers agree that, at our current rate of deforestation, the Amazon rainforest’s ecosystem could collapse in the next 50 years.
To spotlight this issue, this week the Rainforest Foundation has introduced a new nonprofit organisation, UNITY, which brings together artists from around the world with the mission of raising funds to help protect the Amazon Rainforest and the indigenous communities and organisations who serve and defend this vital land. Contributing artists include Paul Mpagi Sepuya, Rafael Pavarotti, Wolfgang Tillmans, Pieter Hugo and nearly 50 others.
By inviting artists to contribute a work that reflects their own relationship to nature, trees and forests, UNITY offers the opportunity for supporters to purchase works of art and aims to provide education on environmental justice, climate change, and the ecological destruction running rampant throughout the Amazon. Posters are priced at £50 and prints at £150, all proceeds go directly to the Rainforest Foundation to help tackle deforestation, aid forest communities in gaining land rights, support them in challenging logging companies and assisting them in managing their forests and protecting their environment.
The project launched this week, but will continue to sell prints throughout the season. Visit here for more information.
