Scramble Island

The New Scramble For Africa

Adam Hanieh | Climate And Capitalism | 11th August 2024

Carbon offsetting commonly involves protecting land from deforestation, equating to a certain quantity of carbon “credits”. This is greenwashing. Buyers who purchase credits gain the right to pollute now; it takes hundreds of years for emissions to be reabsorbed. With a debt crisis, African countries are under pressure from international development organisations to commodify their land through offsets (2,900 words)

The Many Lives Of Null Island

Alan McConchie | Stamen | 23rd July 2024

Imaginary island at a real place: the coordinates of zero degree latitude and zero degree longitude, in the Atlantic Ocean off the African coast. It is a nuisance for cartographic work: anything from errors to missing data can send the coordinates to Null Island. A long-running inside joke among cartographers, it has inspired many whimsical histories — “the island that doesn’t exist but lives on maps” (5,500 words)