Banerjee’s photographs—a constellation of snow geese feeding on cotton grass; a migrating herd of Porcupine caribou forming a black-dotted line on white snow; tracks of a polar bear mother and her cubs leading to their den in the snow; a Buff-breasted Sandpiper frolicking in the snow; Capitate lousewort pushing through summer snow; moose rummaging for fodder; a male and female loon swapping places on their nest to share the duty of tending the eggs—instead showed that the land of perceived nothingness is replete with life. And that it could be endangered by oil and gas exploration. (In the Seventies, drilling was allowed in parts of Alaska’s Prudhoe Bay. With the US administration leasing land to oil majors, exploration will start soon in other parts along the Arctic Ocean.)

Far from being remote, says Banerjee, the Arctic is the most connected place on earth. “It is a metaphor of the interconnectedness of our planet,” he says. Hundreds of millions of birds migrate from all corners of the world to the Arctic in the summer, he says, including the Bluethroat from Bharatpur, Rajasthan and the Yellow Wagtail from Kolkata and Hodal, in Haryana. The Arctic is also the world’s poison dump. Toxins emitted from oil refineries and other industrial units all over the world are carried by wind and ocean currents to the region. Industrial chemicals have found their way into the food chain, points out Banerjee. “In fact, such is the extent of poisoning that the breastmilk of a woman in Greenland is more toxic than a woman in Kolkata,” he says.

... contd.