When did the issue of climate change get personal for you? 

Chinaecherem: In Christopher Nolan’s Interstellar set in the year 2067, David Oyelowo’s character is confronted by the movie’s protagonist for ruling his son out of college and thereby “sentencing” him to be a farmer. In response, Oyelowo as the Principal says, “We didn’t run out of planes and television sets. We ran out of food.”

For all the concerns about the possible consequences of climate change, the potential inability to grow food needed to sustain human life is, for me, the most crucial. In the movie, the Principal is villianized, but I recognize his representation of what is possibly the third world’s primary concern in the midst of all the climate change debate. I even found Oyelowo’s casting in the role a little symbolic. Because the truth is, we need food before we need anything else. And if, in Africa, in Nigeria, we have not solved a present food crisis, it is bleak to imagine what a food crisis would look like in an unsecured future.

The realization that Africa has been set up to suffer the biggest consequence of climate change without being a major contributor to the damage led me to become invested in the topic of climate change, with an interest in imagining into reality a cleaner, more bountiful world.

There is a strong presence of nostalgia in your story. Could this sense of nostalgia be of loss or hope? 

Chinaecherem: Anytime I write with my lens focused on the past, it is usually a way of affirming the inevitability of a future, whatever form it takes. It is like creating a nostalgia for the future. And no one feels nostalgia for loss, that would be called trauma instead. In fact, the very act of imagining is an act of hope, the theme of the imagination notwithstanding. I employ nostalgia to create an element of hope, hope that the evolution of the human race doesn’t have to culminate in self-destruction and extinction.

What inspired your story for The Green We Left Behind nonfiction anthology? 

Chinaecherem: Two things!

One, I’ve lived a lot in places that are largely still in development. This means that I’ve witnessed a lot of deforestation and sights of concrete structures eating up vegetation. Such losses of entire habitats still shock me. But one time, I noticed a sapling come to life, got invested in watching it grow. Instead, I watched it die. The experience got me thinking about how it lived and left without a mark.

Then I remembered a short story I wrote about a futuristic Nigeria where deforestation is a major issue capable of triggering major unrest. I felt we don’t have to wait for such a future, and decided to contribute to the topic’s present sense of urgency using a new nonfiction story.

As an artist, how are you able to merge beauty in language with such a dire theme on climate change?

Chinaecherem: For all the concerns associated with climate change, there is still an inevitable beauty associated with the exploration of nature and her properties. This fact seems to sustain even when you’re writing about the deterioration of natural elements. It is therefore an organic process trying to marry this beauty with the language of literary expression. Language, in its prehistoric form, arose from our need to tame our environment, and so it has been a very long time of nature influencing language.

As you release your story to the world, what is your wish or hope for the story?

Chinaecherem: I hope it makes someone have a second thought about felling that one tree. Makes someone try to build around nature instead of building against it. I hope someone reads it and develops an interest in helping to take care of our planet in whatever capacity they can.

Aside writing, how else do you intend to contribute towards curbing climate change?

Chinaecherem: So, I have taken up the responsibility of managing my father’s compound recently. And there are a number of trees in it. Whenever, for some reason, a tree has to be cut, I plant two in its place. I dread the thought of living in a place with not enough trees, and I can’t imagine what it’d be like for the earth.

Biography

Chinaecherem Obor reads and writes letters that try to make a sense of humanity’s place in the universe. His works appear in Brittle Paper, Saraba Magazine, Prufrock, Arts Lounge and in the Selves Afro Anthology of Creative Nonfiction.