By Joyce Chimbi
NAIROBI, May 27 2024 – Carbon trading has gained growing popularity on the African continent and is considered by many governments as a viable way to achieve their climate targets while building communities. IPS takes a look at what’s behind the carbon market.

What is carbon trading and where did it come from?

During the United Nations Climate Change Conference in 2015, 196 nations agreed to an internationally binding treaty on climate change known as the Paris Agreement. The agreement was a commitment to limit global warming to 1.5°C by the end of this century. 

A significant rise in global temperatures is a significant threat as it increases the effects of climate change, such as prolonged and severe droughts and deadly floods, like those experienced in Kenya recently, killing people and animals and destroying crops and critical infrastructure.

One of the biggest contributors to global warming or a dangerous rise in temperatures are greenhouse gas emissions, which include carbon dioxide, methane, and nitrous oxide. Carbon emissions are particularly dangerous. These gases are emitted as human beings go about their day-to-day living and business activities, such as driving a vehicle or running factory machines using coal-generated electricity.

The Paris Agreement, therefore, requires that nations make significant efforts to reduce carbon emissions. One of the solutions laid out was carbon emissions trading—those who reduce emissions would receive a financial reward and those that emit would bear a financial responsibility.

Simply put, carbon emissions trading allows you—who is unable to reduce carbon emissions to the required limits—to pay someone who is not only successfully limiting their own carbon emissions but has also gone a step further to remove additional carbon from the atmosphere. A similar approach was deployed in the 1990s to successfully remove sulphur from the atmosphere.

How does carbon trading work?

One of the best ways of removing carbon from the atmosphere is by mangrove trees, as they capture 3–5 times more carbon from the atmosphere compared to other types of trees.

Kenya has various projects that remove carbon from the atmosphere and receive money for doing so through projects such as the Mikoko Pamoja (Swahili for Mangroves Together) and the Vanga Blue Forest. Mikoko Pamoja project was the first in the world to trade in carbon from planting mangroves.

The Mikoko community plants mangroves and successfully removes at least 3,000 metric tonnes of CO2 from the atmosphere per year. The project started in 2013 and it will continue to capture carbon for trading until 2033, generating an annual revenue of about USD 130,000 from selling all the carbon captured annually.

Internationally recognized scientific methods exist to calculate how much carbon a certain business, activity or project emits and how much carbon a project, like the Mikoko Pamoja, captures in a year.

One tonne of carbon dioxide emitted into the environment is equivalent to one carbon credit. A carbon credit is a permit to emit carbon dioxide. For example, in line with the Paris Agreement, when company X in Europe is unable to reduce their emissions by say 3,000 metric tons, they can ‘artificially’ reduce them by paying for carbon credits from a community in Kenya that is able to reduce emissions and go a step further and remove an additional 3,000 metric tonnes from the atmosphere.

The community is allowed to sell the excess amount of carbon captured, in this case, 3,000 metric tonnes. The principle of selling and buying carbon credits is that the Kenyan community is already living below their emissions, have no obligation to make additional carbon emission reductions, but have been incentivized to remove more carbon from the atmosphere for money.

Company X is therefore punished by having to pay for the carbon they are releasing but at the same time rewarded by having their own carbon emissions wiped off by the carbon removal activities conducted by the Kenyan community.

What is a carbon market?

There are many carbon markets around the world. The kind of exchange of carbon emitted for money described above is conducted through a carbon market called the Voluntary Carbon Market. The community in Kenya planting mangroves to capture carbon uses a middleman or broker to find a market for their carbon and negotiate the best price on their behalf.

The money is deposited into the community’s bank accounts for the community’s development projects. For example, Kenya’s Vanga Blue Forest spans over 460 hectares and is expected to avoid emissions of over 100,379tCO2-eq over a 20-year period.

In sub-Saharan Africa, an estimated 65 percent of carbon credits issued are in the Voluntary Carbon Market, concentrated in just five countries: Kenya, Uganda, Ethiopia, Zimbabwe, and the Democratic Republic of the Congo.

The government of Kenya can enter into a carbon trading arrangement with another government and this bilateral approach is much more lucrative compared to the voluntary approach. The World Bank estimates that one ton of carbon dioxide or one carbon credit would cost between 40 and 80 USD, in line with the Paris Agreement.

Remember, if you—from anywhere in the world—pay for one carbon credit from the Mikoko Pamoja project, you are essentially buying a permit to emit one ton of carbon dioxide.

In 2020, the Vanga Blue Forest received USD 48,713 in exchange for the carbon captured that year.

The voluntary carbon trading sector has grown exponentially and was valued at USD 2 billion in 2022. The players in the voluntary market gathered in Kenya in June 2023 for the world’s largest carbon credit auction event where more than 2.2 million tonnes of carbon credits were sold.

This auction worked the same way as a painting auction works—only that carbon is an intangible commodity. Emitters haggle for the best prices to buy carbon credits or permits to help them wipe off their own emissions—they pay for the permit to emit.

What are the advantages and disadvantages of carbon trading?

Heavy carbon emitters are in the global north. Africa for instance, emits about 3.8 percent of global carbon emissions. Kenya’s alone accounts for less than 1 percent of global carbon emissions.

Some say carbon trading systems are fraudulent—the global North buys the ‘permission’ to continue polluting and the global south receives financial crumbs to wipe off the former’s harmful emissions. They also say carbon markets are a new form of colonialism and a distraction as heavy emitters continue to emit without making strides to reduce their own emissions. Human Rights Watch has also expressed a concern about the rights of an Indigenous community in Cambodia as carbon trading continues.

For others, carbon markets are increasing carbon removal projects while providing the money that developing countries need to accelerate growth and development.

IPS UN Bureau Report

This feature is published with the support of Open Society Foundations.

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By Alison Kentish
ANTIGUA, May 27 2024 – “This year has been the hottest in history in practically every corner of the globe, foretelling severe impacts on our ecosystems and starkly underscoring the urgency of our predicament. We are gathered here not merely to reiterate our challenges, but to demand and enact solutions,” declared Antigua and Barbuda Prime Minister Gaston Brown at the opening of the Fourth International Conference on Small Island Developing States on May 27.

The world’s 39 small island developing states are meeting on the Caribbean island this week. It is a pivotal, once-a-decade meeting for small states that contribute little to global warming, but are disproportionately impacted by climate change. The Caribbean leader reminded the world that SIDS are being forced to survive crises that they did not create.

“The scales of equity and justice are unevenly balanced against us. The large-scale polluters whose CO2 emissions have fuelled these catastrophic climate changes bear a responsibility—an obligation of compensation to aid in our quest to build resilience,” he said.

“The Global North must honor its commitments, including the pivotal pledge of one hundred billion dollars in climate financing to assist with adaptation and mitigation as well as the effective capitalization and operationalization of the loss and damage fund. These are imperative investments in humanity, in justice, and in the equitable future of humanity.”

Urgent Support Needed from the International Community

United Nations Secretary General Antonio Guterres told the gathering that the previous ten years have presented significant challenges to SIDS and hindered development. These include extreme weather events and the COVID-19 pandemic. He says SIDS, islands that are “exceptionally beautiful, exceptionally resilient, but exceptionally vulnerable,” need urgent support from the international community, led by the nations that are both responsible for the challenges they face and have the capacity to deal with them.

“The idea that an entire island state could become collateral damage for profiteering by the fossil fuel industry, or competition between major economies, is simply obscene,” the Secretary General said, adding, “Small Island Developing States have every right and reason to insist that developed economies fulfill their pledge to double adaptation financing by 2025. And we must hold them to this commitment as a bare minimum. Many SIDS desperately need adaptation measures to protect agriculture, fisheries, water resources and infrastructure from extreme climate impacts you did virtually nothing to create.”

Antigua and Barbuda Agenda for SIDS (ABAS)

The theme for SIDS4 is Charting the Course Toward Resilient Prosperity and the small islands have been praised for collective action in the face of crippling crises. Their voices were crucial to the establishment of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change and the landmark 2015 Paris Agreement.

Out of this conference will come the Antigua and Barbuda Agenda for SIDS (ABAS). President of the UN General Assembly, Dennis Francis, says that programme of action will guide SIDS on a path to resilience and prosperity for the next decade.

“ The next ten years will be critical in making sustained concrete progress on the SIDS agenda – and we must make full use of this opportunity to supercharge our efforts around sustainability,” he said.

The SIDS4 conference grounds in Antigua and Barbuda will be a flurry of activity over the next four days. Apart from plenaries, there are over 170 side events hosted by youth, civil society organizations, non-governmental organizations, and universities, covering a range of issues from renewable energy to climate financing.

They have been reminded by Prime Minister Gaston Browne that this is a crucial juncture in the history of small island developing states, where “actions, or failure to act, will dictate the fate of SIDS and the legacy left for future generations.”

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By Julia Conley
NEW YORK, May 27 2024 – A widely respected humanitarian law expert who has resisted using the term “genocide” for Israel’s killing of tens of thousands of Palestinians in Gaza—a word used “sparingly” in the international human rights movement, he noted—said he has concluded a genocide is indeed taking place, evidenced particularly by Israel’s blocking of humanitarian aid.

Aryeh Neier, who co-founded Human Rights Watch in 1978, served as its executive director for 12 years, and also led the American Civil Liberties Union and the Open Society Foundations, noted in an essay in The New York Review of Books that his organizations have used the term “genocide” to describe few mass killings.

Neier was not convinced of South Africa’s genocide claim against Israel when it argued its case with the International Court of Justice (ICJ) in January, even though he was “deeply distressed” by the human impact of Israel’s relentless U.S.-backed bombing campaign in Gaza.

The 2,000-pound bombs being used against Gaza’s population of 2.3 million Palestinians were “clearly inappropriate,” wrote Neier in the magazine’s June 6 issue. “Yet I was not convinced that this constituted genocide.”

Neier wrote that he believed at the time that Israel’s retaliation against Hamas for the October 7 attack it led in southern Israel could “include an attempt to incapacitate” the Palestinian group, necessitating the wide-scale assault on Gaza, where it operates.

“I am now persuaded that Israel is engaged in genocide against Palestinians in Gaza,” wrote Neier, whose family escaped Nazi Germany as refugees when he was an infant. “What has changed my mind is its sustained policy of obstructing the movement of humanitarian assistance into the territory.”

Israel’s intent to block aid—and to treat Gazans as “collectively complicit for Hamas’s crimes”—has been clear since shortly after the October 7 attack, when Defense Minister Yoav Gallant said: “There will be no electricity, no food, no fuel, everything is closed. We are fighting human animals and we act accordingly.”

“I am now persuaded that Israel is engaged in genocide against Palestinians in Gaza. What has changed my mind is its sustained policy of obstructing the movement of humanitarian assistance into the territory.”

The result of that policy, wrote Neier, has been the deaths of at least 28 Palestinian children from starvation, according to numbers released by the Gaza Health Ministry in April.

“That number could multiply many times over if reports on food insecurity are valid,” he wrote, citing warnings from U.S. Agency for International Development Administrator Samantha Power and World Food Program Executive Director Cindy McCain that famine has already taken hold in parts of Gaza.

Under the “complete siege” ordered by Gallant and Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, noted Neier, Israel has severely restricted the number of aid vehicles allowed into Gaza, where the population relied on deliveries from about 500 aid trucks per day before the current escalation. Trucks have been subjected to “time-consuming and onerous inspections,” with shipments turned away for including items like children’s medical scissors and maternity kits.

Neier also cited Israel’s killing of more than 200 aid workers and its persuading of international donors to stop funding the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East (UNRWA)—based on unproven allegations that a dozen of its 13,000 Gaza-based staffers had connections to Hamas—as evidence that Israel is taking numerous steps to stop aid from getting to Gaza’s starving population, while killing at least 35,173 Palestinians.

Jameel Jaffer, executive director of the Knight First Amendment Institute at Columbia University, said in response to Neier’s essay that “no one has more authority among human rights advocates than” the author.

“Aryeh Neier is an immensely respected—and not at all politically radical—figure in the human rights community who can’t be credibly accused of having any sort of obsession with Israel,” said writer Abe Silberstein.

Neier wrote that after working to protect human rights for more than six decades, “there is much about [Israel’s attack on Gaza] that is deeply depressing, including how difficult it is to find a way to give victims any hope that justice will eventually be done.”

“I myself hope that the frequent citation of international humanitarian law as the standard for judging the conflict will have a positive effect,” he wrote. “Whatever else emerges from this war, and whatever judgment comes from the International Court of Justice (ICJ), it is evident that Israel has done itself as well as its Palestinian victims long-term harm.”

The ICJ is currently considering South Africa’s claim that Israel is committing genocide, having issued a preliminary ruling in January that the case was “plausible” and that Israel must take steps to prevent genocidal acts. (Since then, ICJ has delivered its judgment)

Although the ICJ does not have jurisdiction to adjudicate war crimes or crimes against humanity charges, wrote Neier, “if it ultimately finds that Israel has committed genocide, that will be a resounding defeat for a state that was born in the aftermath of a genocide that many of its founders had barely survived.”

Julia Conley is a staff writer for Common Dreams.

Source: Common Dreams

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By Charles Mpaka
BLANTYRE, Malawi, May 27 2024 – Malawi is increasingly pitching carbon trading as a source of revenue it needs to bolster the economy, which is suffering from foreign exchange shortages caused by a large trade imbalance and being buffeted by several shocks, including the climate crisis.

Presenting the 2024–25 national budget in Parliament in February, Minister of Finance Simplex Chithyola Banda listed increased and more efficient carbon credit revenue generation among the strategic initiatives in the government’s economic recovery blueprint. 

“We want to make sure that Malawi considers carbon trading as one of the sectors where we can get revenue and boost the economy,” Chithyola Banda said.

With Malawi’s carbon potential estimated to be around 19 million metric tons annually, local climate lobbyists and economic analysts agree that Malawi can count on carbon offsets for revenue.

Julius Ng’oma, National Coordinator of the Civil Society Network on Climate Change (Cisonecc), says carbon trading can also boost Malawi’s biodiversity conservation drive and strengthen its contribution to the reduction of greenhouse gas emissions.

“Carbon trading can provide incentives for managing trees and forests and all other initiatives that enhance carbon sequestration and are aimed at avoiding reducing greenhouse gases,” he says.

However, among the experts, issues of transparency and accountability in carbon trading are an increasing concern.

In 2012, the Department of Environmental Affairs in the Ministry of Natural Resources and Climate Change evaluated 15 projects with an estimated carbon reduction potential of around 2 million tons.

More firms have entered the market since then.

Today, these questions remain: How many credits have these carbon projects thus far produced? How much revenue has been generated from those credits? How much and in what way has that revenue been shared with communities that are at the coalface of implementing the carbon projects?

Ng’oma’s view is that Malawi has not benefited as much as it should have from such projects, “as the money realized mostly benefited the international project developers.”

He says concerns about global carbon trading are generally focused on the determination of prices for carbon credits and accounting mechanisms.

“Very few people understand these arrangements and they favor mostly experts in the Global North,” he says.

Minister of Natural Resources and Climate Change, Michael Usi, tells IPS that most of the projects that were under evaluation in 2023 were implemented under the Clean Development Mechanism and REDD+ as one way for Malawi to unlock resources from multilateral and bilateral donors for different development projects.

After the evaluation, Malawi registered 11 projects and accessed about USD 40 million in socio-economic development financing, he says.

However, Usi admits that there were no formal procedures for implementing these carbon initiatives, meaning that Malawi has not had a way to count credits and track revenue generated in an efficient way.

Most of those carbon projects were largely about the distribution of improved cooking stoves. According to the ministry, these stoves have been effective in stemming the tide of deforestation in the country and therefore reducing carbon emissions because “we believe they help in reducing the over-reliance on natural resources, especially wood.”

Among the early firms in the distribution of cook stoves as a carbon project in Malawi is the United States-headquartered C-Quest Capital, which is active in 21 countries, including Tanzania, Kenya, Burundi, Zambia, Mozambique, Zimbabwe, and parts of Southeast Asia.

C-Quest Capital’s Chief Executive Officer, Jules Kortenhorst, says the company, established in 2008, has issued up to 9 million credits on the voluntary carbon market and has invested more than USD 40 million in Malawi since it started its projects.

For Kortenhorst, questions over transparency and accountability in the carbon market are not invalid. Part of the challenge, he says, is that many countries have not had internal administrative systems to be able to monitor and regulate the carbon market.

“When the Paris Agreement was negotiated, there was Article 6—the idea that countries would establish carbon markets among themselves—but setting up internal administrative systems has been hard because they didn’t know what the rules were.

“Unfortunately, it has taken forever for negotiators to make progress in creating a rulebook for Article 6. This has been a very large frustration—until lately,” he tells IPS.

Having administrative structures in place would help to organize carbon credit transactions and enable global South countries, like Malawi, to sell credits in places such as Switzerland or Singapore.

He believes that developing countries and projects, such as improved stove distribution, have the potential to have a strong impact on cutting greenhouse gas emissions.

According to Kortenhorst, the historical responsibility for reversing climate change lies with developed countries because the carbon footprint per capita in countries like Malawi is small, particularly as compared to countries like the Netherlands or the United States.

“But the good news is that everybody can make a small contribution. Worldwide, the emissions associated with the lack of clean cooking are around 2 to 3 percent. This is not huge but it is not insignificant.

“But also, we know that if we have to remove carbon dioxide from the atmosphere, we can use the beautiful invention of Mother Nature—trees. Looking at nature-based solutions, countries like Malawi have tremendous opportunities to combine better agriculture and restoration of ecosystems—all of which can contribute to the removal of greenhouse gases from the atmosphere while the country also generates money. So it is a win-win-win situation,” he says.

But to achieve all this, there is need for a mechanism to count credits in an appropriate manner.

“That’s where transparency and efficient verification systems come in. That’s not easy because we are still learning the technology to do that. But we are getting better at it,” Kortenhorst says.

The Ministry of Natural Resources and Climate Change acknowledges that without proper systems and procedures in place, Malawi has been facing difficulties in the reporting and declaration of carbon credits.

The government has now finalized the formulation of the Malawi Carbon Trading Regulatory Framework. Through this framework, the government hopes to have better oversight over the design, implementation, monitoring, and management of carbon markets.

The instrument focuses on project formulation, implementation, assessment of credits generated and benefits for the country and communities at large.

In addition, the National Determined Contributions (NDC), which the government updated in 2021 and whose implementation plan it launched in August 2022, provides a platform for carbon trading project developers to design projects that support Malawi’s targets in mitigation as part of reducing greenhouse gas emissions.

In June last year, the government launched the Malawi Carbon Markets Initiative (MCMI). The institution will champion the implementation of the frameworks, action plans, and ongoing programmes that support carbon markets.

Through these efforts, Malawi is confident that it is taking carbon trading operations in its stride.

“With the coming in of organized structures and a regulatory framework for carbon trading, we have embarked on a journey to formalize and transition [earlier] respective projects into carbon trading,” Usi says.

The initiatives also inspire hope in campaigners like Ng’oma, who says the regulations and guidelines could maximize the benefits of carbon trading to local communities and Malawi in general.

The Ministry of Natural Resources and Climate Change is now moving to commission a study to assess the carbon potential of Malawi and the corresponding value in terms of money.

The expectation is that the assessment will provide a good estimate of the number of carbon credits that could be generated from different activities and a range for the value of those credits.

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By SWAN
NORMANDY, France, May 27 2024 – On a clear, chilly evening, the words of African American poet Maya Angelou filled the air in the centre of Rouen, as a vivid light show played across the façade of the French town’s imposing cathedral, and as a bright full moon rose in the sky.

Images of explosions, falling debris, a cheetah fleeing in the darkness – all sent a message that the world is in a precarious situation on many fronts and that urgent restorative action is needed.

Yet, along with the tangible sense of angst, the show seemed to call for hope, with the intoning of Angelou’s famous line: “But still, like dust, I’ll rise.”

The 25-minute projection, by Texas-born experimental theatre artist Robert Wilson, forms part of the massive Normandie Impressionniste festival, now in its 5^th incarnation and this year celebrating the 150^th anniversary of impressionism, the art movement that scandalized critics when it emerged in the late 1800s.

Running until Sept. 22, and with a head-spinning 150 events taking place throughout Normandy – the region most closely associated with famous impressionist artists such as Claude Monet – the festival comprises exhibitions, installations, theatre pieces, concerts, and other shows.

Running until Sept. 22, and with a head-spinning 150 events taking place throughout Normandy – the region most closely associated with famous impressionist artists such as Claude Monet – the festival comprises exhibitions, installations, theatre pieces, concerts, and other shows
It features both renowned and emerging artists, from across France as well as from countries including India, Japan, China, South Africa, the United States and Britain … all “in dialogue” with impressionism, and history, according to festival director Philippe Platel.

“We wish to show what’s happening now, to update the view of art, even as Normandy remains central,” Platel said in an interview.

The 1874 Paris exhibition that sparked the term impressionism (from the Monet painting Impression, soleil levant) was met mostly with disdain as conventional painters and critics opposed the breaking of academic rules. But the movement, with its focus on a different way of seeing and capturing light, would go on to have global impact.

Still, while the impressionists were seen as radicals, their first shows featured just one woman artist, Berthe Morisot. Now, the festival has made it a point to include almost as many contemporary women artists (47 percent) as men, said Platel – although it’s clear that the “blockbuster” exhibitions centre on male painters.

The Wilson / Angelou show, titled Star and Stone: a kind of love…some say” is presented as one of the highlights of the festival, and Platel emphasises that Angelou (who died in 2014) was an “immense feminist poet”.

Her words are transmitted in the original English and in French translation (read by French actress Isabelle Huppert), alongside music by composer Philip Glass. (Wilson and Glass have previously collaborated, most notably for the opera Einstein on the Beach.)

With its moving, intense images, Star and Stone evokes historical atrocities, including slavery and two world wars. It recalls the damage inflicted on Normandy during World War II, but it also reflects current brutal conflicts. (During the projection on May 22, a woman strode past, and, obviously angered by the visuals, or mistaking the show for a demonstration, shouted out the word “anti-Semitic” several times, to the apparent bafflement of spectators.)

Some of the projected scenes, especially against the full-moon backdrop on this particular night, conjured Monet’s iconic paintings of the Rouen Cathedral, works that themselves hang in an exhibition opening May 25 in Le Havre.

The harbour town, which saw entire neighbourhoods flattened in World War II bombardments, has over the past decades embarked on a cultural and architectural renaissance, and it hosts an impressive museum of modern art (MuMa) which is showcasing 19^th-century photography in Normandy, as part of the festival.

Photographier en Normandie: 1840-1890 juxtaposes photographs and impressionist paintings, giving an idea of the medium’s development and the concerns of artists at the time: the rapidly changing landscapes caused by the industrial revolution, for instance.

It pulls together several iconic paintings of landmarks and the sea, while the photographs too capture marine scenes, daily life, and environmental transformations brought on by the building of railway lines during the 19^th century. The show caters to both painting and photography buffs, or anyone interested in early picture-taking processes and their global impact, not least on artists.

Back in Rouen, another highlight of the festival is an exhibition by 86-year-old English artist David Hockney, who has been living and working in Normandy since the Covid-19 pandemic. His show Normandism at Rouen’s Musée des Beaux-Arts offers a different kind of impressionism, mixing pop art with the quality of light so important to his predecessors.

Here, vibrant greens, yellows and blues pull spectators into the landscapes for which rainy Normandy is famous, and the exhibition also features striking portraits as well as paintings that Hockney has created via iPads.

The latter record his individual technique and take viewers on a journey from the first line traced to the colourful completed work.

In the “dialogue” between contemporary artists and the impressionists, a main theme is water – the sea, ponds, rain – with echoes of climate change. In one standout show, Oliver Beer, a British painter and musician, reinterprets Monet’s famous Water Lilies series, transforming soundwaves into visual depiction on huge azure canvases.

In another, renowned French artist Marc Desgrandchamps incorporates human forms into his portrayal of water and landscapes, suggesting fragility as well as the need for environmental protection.

While these artists have consciously accepted the call to use impressionism in their shows, the impressionists themselves drew from others, especially from Japanese artists, whose work Monet collected. The festival highlights these international links with an exhibition set to begin June 22 in Deauville: Mondes flottants: du japonisme à l’art contemporain / Floating Worlds: from “Japonism” to Contemporary Art.

Meanwhile, Tokyo-born, France-based artist Reiji Hiramatsu will hold a solo show, Symphonie des Nymphéas / Water Lilies Symphony in Giverny, the town where Monet lived, painted and created his water gardens. The exhibition starting July 12 will comprise 14 screens, inspired by certain Monet works… which themselves were inspired by Japan.

Other international artists include Shanta Rao (Indian-French), with an exhibition titled Les yeux turbides / Turbid Eyes in the commune Grand Quevilly, where she invites viewers to see how objects change with light; and South African Bianca Bondi who uses mounds of salt to create luminous landscapes for a show in Le Havre.

With the emphasis on light and dialogue across the festival, the words of Maya Angelou almost seem to form a refrain, calling out from Rouen, to rebut oppression and exclusion: “Leaving behind nights of terror and fear / I rise / into a daybreak that’s wondrously clear“. –