Josephine Condemi
The new US federal plan to combat rising sea levels requires more mangroves and no concrete walls. It is precisely from the mangrove as a social metaphor that the work of eco-artist Xavier Cortada, who for decades has been working to enable citizen action against climate change through public art initiatives, started: here is how
The sea level in Miami continues to rise: more than 8 inches since 1950, and another 11 inches until 2040.1 At this rate, in the next 40 years almost 60%2 of the main country, Miami-Dade, comprising more than 2.6 million residents3, will end up underwater. The US federal government’s first counter plan, which called for the construction of concrete walls up to six metres high4, was replaced by new guidelines5, co-designed with the county and submitted last August for a different feasibility study: $7 million until 2027 for nature-based solutions, such as enhancing mangrove ecosystems and coral reefs. «When faced with ecological problems, people often become paralysed: they think they have no solution,» says eco-artist Xavier Cortada.
«But each one of us can take action, like a mangrove that comes along, takes root and creates an island where before there was a sandplain».
The mangrove as a social metaphor
For decades, Cortada has been using the creative power of art to raise awareness regarding the link between everyday behaviour and environmental problems, between society and ecology. As an eco-artist and lecturer at the University of Miami, Cortada has more than 150 works to his credit, including installations, murals and collaborative projects. Some of his works are exhibited at the White House and the World Bank and in numerous national and international museums.
«I am the son of refugees, my father lived in a small fishing village on the northern coast of the island of Cuba» he says. «I was born in New York in ’64, and three years later we moved to Miami: my father would take me to the beach and through the mangroves and that tropical landscape so similar to Cuba he would tell me about himself. Many years later, in 2003, to celebrate Hispanic Heritage Month, I painted the mangrove as a symbol of the migrant’s journey and integration among different identities».
The mangrove seedlings grow while still attached to the mother tree, then release themselves into the water and float with the tide until they settle and take root elsewhere. «As the roots come together, they strengthen the whole» Cortada explains, «just as each immigrant can make a society better and stronger». The following year, Cortada set up the Miami Mangrove Forest with 800 volunteers, decorating the highways in several neighbourhoods of the city with paintings of mangrove seedlings. It was a metaphoric reforestation. «Again, the mangrove was a social metaphor» Cortada recalls. «The more you give yourself to the community and create cohesion, the more the plant grows».
And painting is sometimes not enough: «One afternoon, I was driving from Miami to the Florida Keys and I saw that to widen the roadway and make it three lanes they were uprooting the few remaining mangroves. They were going to destroy 18 miles of it. 18 miles! Suddenly I realised that I was still painting metaphorical mangrove forests, in a place where they used to be, and I wanted to do something more concrete: thus in 2006 The Reclamation Project was born».
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More than 20 years of The Reclamation Project
The Reclamation Project was and still is a form of social mobilisation through art. «In the beginning, I organised walks with volunteers inside the small mangrove forests still present in Miami, which are usually ignored or considered inaccessible places,» Cortada recalls. «A mangrove forest is a cathedral of nature: the way the light filters through the leaves is similar to that of stained glass windows, with the bonus of water under one’s feet. It was a kind of integration ritual. Then I explained to them the importance of mangroves in protecting the coast from hurricanes. Ultimately, we collected the propagules for the art installation».
Decades ago, before concrete, even South Beach, Miami’s tourist beach, was full of mangroves. «I was inspired by the urban grid to install grids of clear water-filled cups on the windows and storefronts of the main street,» says Cortada. «On scheduled days, I met the people volunteering at 10 a.m.: I gave them the bucket full of mangroves with some brochures and they went and asked the owners of the houses and shops for permission to install the grid. From human beings to human beings».
Once permission was obtained, the volunteers put a mangrove propagule inside each clear water-filled cup, bringing nature back to where it had been destroyed. «Anyone passing by was attracted by the growth of each seedling, followed it and began to want to inquire, to know more» Cortada recalls. «At first, people didn’t want to participate, but slowly we grew to 2500 mangroves in the whole of Miami Beach in the first year alone». Once grown, the mangroves were removed from the grid and planted by each volunteer in an optimal location, reciting, after planting, the formula: «I hereby reclaim this land for nature».
«People started to fall in love with the mangroves as I did, and the creative process moved with their roots,» Cortada says. The installations spread to The Bass Museum of Art and the Frost Science Museum in Miami, then to universities and schools. The Museum of Science for the occasion created the Museum Volunteers for the Environment6, a voluntary environmental awareness programme that became permanent. Year after year, the project expanded to 25 acres of reforestation and involved hundreds of thousands of people.
«The aim was not just to plant new mangroves, but to enable action, individually and collectively, towards climate change: we all have the power to change and if everyone takes this responsibility, they will plant their roots». The project is ongoing: in 2022, the Cortada Foundation published a toolkit7 to replicate it worldwide. «There are schools in Miami that are putting installations in their windows,» Cortada says. «Over the years, social awareness has been created about the importance of mangroves: they have become a symbol of the city, now they are present inside City Hall, the county seat, but above all in people’s minds».
Mangroves as a living shoreline
Xavier Cortada is an eco-artist and lecturer at the University of Miami. He has been carrying out climate change awareness projects for decades, which he develops with the foundation of the same name.
The reclamation projectFind out more
The UnderwaterFind out more
In 2018, Cortada founded the Underwater Homeowners Association8 to help fellow citizens become aware of rising sea levels through street paintings and monthly meetings. The following year, with the Plan(t) project, he invited them to plant a mangrove in their front yard with a white flag marking the home’s elevation to prepare for saltwater intrusion into groundwater and grow salt-tolerant trees.
«There is no more space in this county, there is concrete everywhere: off Biscayne Bay, there are already walls preventing mangroves from growing, now we are planting in Broward County to the north», Cortada explains.
Climate change causes glaciers to melt, which raises the sea level: it only takes a few extra inches to cause several-foot-long storm surges during a cyclone with proportionally greater damage. Even without hurricanes, the entire region of Florida, where Miami is located, is composed of porous rocks that allow the ocean to infiltrate, creating significant flooding and threatening aquifers and septic tanks: the longer the floods last, the more pollution increases and damages the ecosystem, in a vicious circle. «Miami will have many ecological problems in the decades to come. We need to create an army of citizens who understand the problem and take responsibility for it», Cortada emphasises.
The population of the Miami metropolitan area, which includes three counties, Miami-Dade, Broward and Palm Beach, increased by more than 660,000 people from 2010 to 2020 (Florida Department Transportation9, 2021), a total of more than six million. «Miami, like Singapore and Dubai, is a city deeply affected by global economic flows,» explains Cortada. «Finance has been here for decades, the tech industry is coming».
The $6 billion federal plan to build a six-mile wall parallel to the coast and 20 feet high along Biscayne Bay, in the city’s financial heartland, found cross-party opposition, from environmentalists to the real estate industry. The first draft of the new feasibility study with nature-based solutions is scheduled for 2025. «We continue with the public awareness work for a living seashore through mangroves,» Cortada emphasises. «It costs a lot of money to replace the concrete and the sea-front properties do not want to have mangroves in front of them. And certainly, continuing to finance fossil fuels does not help to combat climate change». Since 2023, The Underwater project has expanded with a series of interactive installations in all 287 Miami-Dade County parks in collaboration with the county government, The Cortada Foundation and the University of Miami.
«Art is the pebble that can break through public opinion, open up the prospect of a different way of thinking and integrating collectively,» Cortada points out. «It is a very human thing». Like finding solutions together with other people to survive together. Before it’s too late.
- Sea Level Rise Technical Report (2022). ↩︎
- CBS Miami. (2022, September 15). Miami-Dade will be 60% underwater by 2060, warns Univ. of Miami Scientist. ↩︎
- U.S. Census Bureau QuickFacts: Miami-Dade Country, Florida. ↩︎
- Mazzei, P. (2023, June 22). A 20-Foot sea wall? Miami faces the hard choices of climate change. The New York Times. ↩︎
- Jacksonville District, Miami Dade Back Bay Study Design Charrette. ↩︎
- Volunteer with MUVE. (2023, August 16). Frost Science. ↩︎
- Cortada, X. (2022). Reclamation Project Toolkit. ↩︎
- Cortada, X. (2022, March 22). Underwater HOA – Xavier Cortada. ↩︎
- Florida Department of Transportation. ↩︎
