Fabrice Monteiro travelled to the most polluted places in Africa and created terrifying characters who roamed their midst dressed in eerie debris. They are spirits, he says, on a mission to make humans change their ways. Informed by Africa’s environmental problems, Fabrice Monteiro’s photographs aim to highlight urgent ecological issues all over the world. His series “The Prophecy” is on show at Photo Basel 2017 until 18 June. (Photo by Fabrice Monteiro/Photo Basel 2017/Mariane Ibrahim Gallery/The Guardian)

In this Friday, January 7, 2011 photo, people carry baskets of coal scavenged illegally at an open-cast mine in the village of Bokapahari in the eastern Indian state of Jharkhand where a community of coal scavengers live and work. The world's biggest coal users – China, the United States and India – have boosted coal mining in 2017, in an abrupt departure from last year's record global decline for the heavily polluting fuel and a setback to efforts to rein in climate change emissions. (Photo by Kevin Frayer/AP Photo)

Garbage, including plastic waste, is seen at the beach of Costa del Este, in Panama City, on April 19, 2021. Every two weeks, Marine Biology students descend about five meters in the sea to take care of a coral nursery of the staghorn species (Acropora cervicornis) in Portobelo, Panama, with which they aim to restore reefs damaged by climate change and pollution, as part of the Reef2Reef project. (Photo by Luis Acosta/AFP Photo)

A woman peels potatoes for sale at a market located along a railway line in West Jakarta, Indonesia March 1, 2016. (Photo by Garry Lotulung/Reuters)

A woman worker prepares her stall at Tanah Abang textile market in Jakarta, Indonesia January 11, 2017. (Photo by Fatima El-Kareem/Reuters)

A Rohingya migrant who arrived in Indonesia by boat cries while speaking on a mobile phone with a relative in Malaysia, at a temporary shelter in Kuala Langsa in Indonesia's Aceh Province May 16, 2015. Nearly 800 migrants were brought ashore in Indonesia on Friday, but other vessels crammed with them were sent back to sea despite a United Nations call to rescue thousands adrift in Southeast Asian waters with dwindling food and water. Thousands of Rohingya Muslims fleeing Myanmar and Bangladesh are stranded on boats as regional governments block them from landing. (Photo by Roni Bintang/Reuters)

A farmers carries baskets of salt during a harvest in the the salt production process August 13, 2009 in Sumenep on Madura island, Indonesia. (Photo by Ulet Ifansasti/Getty Images)

Mount Sinabung releasing volcanic ash, on February 04, 2017 Karo, North Sumatra, Indonesia. (Photo by Albert Damanik/Barcroft Images)