Havre de Grace Maritime Museum and Environmental Center Art Shows for Climate Week New York
The Havre de Grace Maritime Museum & Environmental Center Art Shows for Climate Week New York
Our planet is 71% water, supporting every ecosystem imaginable. Water is life. It doesn’t matter what other elements you have; nothing survives without water for long. Water is fundamental to life on our planet.
The increasing human demand for water, as well as pollution and climate change, are having a direct impact on the availability of clean water and the conservation status of many plants, fish and migratory birds. As the unpredictable effects of climate change march on across the world around us, each and every one of these species faces a greater challenge than ever before. The warming of our earth is having an impact on biodiversity which is key to the stability of the ecosystems such as forests, rivers, grasslands, fish, coral reefs, and birds that we rely on for ecosystem services – food, arable land, clean air and water. Losing species is the same as taking bricks out of wall, one by one – eventually, the wall will collapse, the ecosystem will die. To humanity, the collapse of ecosystems means loss of fisheries, fertile land and drinkable water. This will impact the cyclical nature of bird migration with varying migration periods in the northern and southern hemispheres.
Havre de Grace Maritime Museum & Environmental Center Director Jennifer Sim explains, “Havre de Grace and our museum are located at the head of the Chesapeake Bay– a national treasure where over 41 million acres are connected through the waters that flow to and through– where the Susquehanna River flows into the Bay. We see bald eagles, osprey, and blue heron nearly every day. This area is a hot spot for migratory birds passing through at different times of the year.” Havre de Grace among other biodiversity treasures is a year round bird sanctuary. There are Cerulean Warbler in spring and summer, Yellow-throated, Kentucky, and Prothonotary Warblers, Louisiana Waterthrush, Baltimore and Orchard Orioles, and Warbling Vireo, and terns and gulls in vast numbers. As fall edges toward winter, there are a steady influx of Bald Eagles. Migrants in September when Climate Week New York and Auckland Climate Festival take place include warblers, Chipping Sparrow, thrushes, flycatchers, woodpeckers, Ovenbird, Eastern Wood-Peewee, Carolina Wren, Indigo Bunting, Red-eyed and Yellow-throated Vireos, Red-tailed Hawk, night-herons, and Great Blue Heron.
For this reason, Jennifer Sim says that the museum is pleased to exhibit award winining artists Selva Ozelli, Fatma Kadir, Gunsu Saracoglu, Ilhan Sayin and Mehmet Sinan Kuran’s art shows at Climate Week New York that draw attention to the fact that healing in the oceans have begun with Nations agreeing to develop a legally binding agreement on reducing plastic pollution by 2024. And also agreeing on the historic High Seas Treaty to place 30% of the world’s oceans into protected areas by 2030 per the UN biodiversity conference COP15. With these art shows the Havre de Grace Maritime Museum and Environmental Center intends to link London Climate Actions Week, New York Climate Week and Auckland Festival through art shows across the world.