10 ancient giants lie strewn around London’s most iconic pub­lic space. These strik­ing vis­it­ors bring the real­it­ies of defor­est­a­tion and cli­mate change from the rain­forests of Ghana right into the UK’s urban heart.

Wit­ness an extraordin­ary sight this week, in the centre of one of the world’s mega­cit­ies: in the dis­tance, the fam­ous clock tower rises out of West­min­ster, mir­ror­ing Nelson’s Column, as in the fore­ground monu­mental tree stumps stretch out along the ground, and com­plex bundles of roots reach toward the sky. The massive scale of these nat­ural giants seems to dwarf the man-made struc­tures that usu­ally define this space.

The trees that lie around Tra­fal­gar Square would have reached a height of 50 metres — the height of Nelson’s Column — in their nat­ive Ghanaian rain­forests. Ghost Forest by Angela Palmer | Pho­tos by The Good Agency.

Ghost Forest may shock view­ers, and that may be the point: to take the abstract and give it an unfor­get­table phys­ical form.

Artist Angela Palmer cuts through the eco-fatigue to com­mu­nic­ate mes­sages about envir­on­mental destruc­tion, pol­lu­tion and cli­mate change in a visu­ally power­ful way. For dec­ades, we have heard about foot­ball fields of rain­forest being lost every second, and now in the lead up to the Copen­ha­gen cli­mate change sum­mit we hear our national lead­ers debat­ing per­cent­age points and trad­ing schemes as they creep towards agree­ment on car­bon emissions.

Ghost Forest by Angela Palmer in Tra­fal­gar Square

The fig­ures on defor­est­a­tion are shock­ing, but like many of the stat­ist­ics that col­our dis­cus­sion about the con­sequences of unsus­tain­able devel­op­ment, they don’t have the imme­di­acy of an image, par­tic­u­larly when that image is thrust into our daily lives. By pla­cing these fallen giants in Tra­fal­gar Square Palmer brings the story home to urban dwell­ers, and draws a con­nec­tion between the destruc­tion of trop­ical rain­forests and cli­mate change — about 20% of global emis­sions are the res­ult of deforestation.

Palmer sourced the trees from Suhuma forest in Ghana, a coun­try which has lost 90% of its primary rain­forests in the last 50 years alone. It’s a story that is echoed around the globe: less than 50% of the world’s rain­forest remains stand­ing, cov­er­ing only 6% of the world’s sur­face. The mag­nitude of the loss is even greater when you real­ise that over 40% of the world’s spe­cies reside in these lush and diverse hab­it­ats. It is estim­ated that 137 plant, animal and insect spe­cies are lost every single day due to rain­forest defor­est­a­tion — that’s 50,000 spe­cies a year. At present rates of destruc­tion, it’s thought the world’s remain­ing rain­forests will dis­ap­pear in less than 40 years.

Ghana is one coun­try now tak­ing pos­it­ive action to pre­serve their remain­ing forests, enter­ing into a vol­un­tary part­ner­ship agree­ment with the EU (the first coun­try in Africa to do so) to out­law illegal log­ging. Where rain­forest log­ging con­tin­ues, it is select­ive, and man­aged in order to main­tain the forest can­opy. This pro-active approach is actu­ally cre­at­ing local eco­nomic oppor­tun­it­ies. In one way, then, the mes­sage Ghost Forest sends is about the step bey­ond the shock, doom and gloom of real­ising the per­il­ous pos­i­tion our “global lungs” are in: it’s about find­ing oppor­tun­ity in the need to change our ways.

Artist Angela Palmer with her install­a­tion, Ghost Forest, in Tra­fal­gar Square Lon­don | Pho­tos by The Good Agency.

It’s good to know, then, that Ghost Forest will also haunt the pub­lic spaces of Copen­ha­gen dur­ing the upcom­ing UN Cop15 Cli­mate Change Con­fer­ence in December.

One of the biggest chal­lenges gov­ern­ments and the cor­por­ate sec­tor face is chan­ging their mind­set as approach the fun­da­mental changes required by cli­mate change. The dis­cus­sion needs to shift 180 degrees: from restric­tions on log­ging and devel­op­ment being a neg­at­ive to be over­come, to a pos­it­ive oppor­tun­ity to encour­age a new kind of devel­op­ment. I, for one, hope the ghosts of these fallen giants raises the spectre of what could be as those del­eg­ates debate the shape of our com­mon future.

An inter­view with artist Angela Palmer will be added to the site shortly – stay tuned for more.

Ghost Forest Art Install­a­tion:
Tra­fal­gar Square, Lon­don, U.K. 16–22 Novem­ber 2009
Thor­vald­sens Plads, Copen­ha­gen, Den­mark 7–18 Decem­ber 2009