A mountain and an island. Mongolia and Tuvalu. In vastly different locations and environments, these two landscapes are considered principal sites of the amplified effects of the global climate crisis. Rising sea levels are overtaking coastlines and islands, desertification is ravaging mountain plains, and increasingly, residents with nowhere to go are labeled climate refugees.

We began with two images staged by photographers in separate efforts to depict the current environmental crisis in each of these two regions. We deconstruct the realities of Mongolia and Tuvalu within the context of the nameless ‘climate crisis.’ The climate crisis—of sea level rise and desertification—can be deconstructed, layer by layer, and traced back to the same source: the legacies of colonization and imperialism. Colonization imposed a static Western ideology onto inherently fluid regions, undermining their ways of living based on change and adaptation. Once a way of life and its landscapes are changed, it cannot revert to its original state.