In the NewsHuck MagMay 23, 2019

The shocking human cost of the climate crisis in India

In his project Five Degrees, Italian photojournalist Federico Borella turns his lens on a lesser-known consequence of the climate crisis: the mental health of Indian farmers. “For me, it was important to photograph something invisible, but extremely real and concrete,” Borella tells Huck. While researching for his project, he came across a study that revealed a positive correlation between climate change and suicide. The study – published in the scientific journal PNAS by Berkeley University researcher and Lab associate Tamma Carleton – analysed climate data from the past 47 years, and compared the figures with the number of farmer suicides in the same period. The research concluded that changes in temperatures which have been occurring since the ’80s, have played a role in the decision by thousands of farmers to take their own lives.