The global smartphone video challenge project, Earthbeat, received 77 entries from 31 countries around the world. The video challenge was shown during the climate conference at COP26. It revealed the local effects of the mining industries and industrialized agricultural on the habitat of indiginous people. Changes in their ecosystem, floods, disrupted food chains, pollution that kills food resources, expropriation of their lands, expelling people, unjust land ownership, criminality etc are all crimes against humanity and our planet. It is not just these minorities that suffer. They are a prelude of the problems that spread as a blanket of destruction across the entire world. The question arises: Who is to blame? The miners or farmers? The capitalist greed behind it all? Or is the modern western “consume it all” addictive culture? Is the politics to blame that supports this all out of electorial self interest?

We can only conclude that we are all to blame. Our consumerism feeds the capitalists that just want more and take the resoures where they can find them. Our politicians depend on the taxable money streams to finance the status quo. It is a spiral of greed and destruction that somehow needs to be stopped. In the end it is nature itself that probably pulls out the plug. Humankind seems to have wrapped itself into this spiral without escape other than self destruction. Have a look at some of these short locals Earthbeat reports made by local with their smartphones…