Innholdsfortegnelse for January 2022 i National Geographic Magazine

The 2021 “Year in Pictures” issue, our second, feels very different from the first. Many people have called 2020 their most challenging year ever: a pandemic worldwide, racial and political strife in the United States. Yet well into 2021, problems of all kinds persisted; the political rancor and climate crisis did not abate. On the other hand, vaccines and other medical advances, along with behavioral shifts, began to rein in the virus and raise spirits. You’ll see that glint of optimism reflected in many of the photographs we chose to represent this whipsaw year. Yet as we looked through the more than 1.9 million images added to National Geographic’s archives in 2021, we couldn’t settle on one photo that captured the year. So we created four covers, each reflecting a…

INDIA • DISTRICT OF COLUMBIA • INDONESIA • TAIWAN • TEXAS • ISRAEL • COLOMBIA • PERU Opportunities Lost: New strains of the virus and uneven responses to vaccines delayed the world’s return to normal. IT WAS SUPPOSED to be a triumphant year, the year we defeated COVID-19. Revolutionary vaccines—developed at breakneck speed from genetic technology decades in the making—were rolling out, ushering in the largest global immunization campaign in history. Lockdowns, isolation, masking, and sparsely attended funerals would give way to open borders, family reunions, and rebounding economies. In 2021 life would return to normal. What we didn’t know, though, was that the vaccination drive would falter. In the United States, millions spurned vaccines despite a deadly winter surge followed by another in the summer. Scientists making discoveries and…

AFGHANISTAN • NEW YORK • DISTRICT OF COLUMBIA • ETHIOPIA • ISRAEL • TEXAS • MYANMAR • OKLAHOMA • MINNESOTA Strife and Resilience: As conflicts old and new raged, the stories of survivors were poignant reminders to learn from history. SECRETARY-GENERAL of the United Nations António Guterres called for an immediate global ceasefire when the pandemic began. “It is time to put armed conflict on lockdown and focus together on the true fight of our lives,” he said. His plea went unheeded. Even during a public health catastrophe—one that threatened everyone on the planet—conflicts raged. Two years into the pandemic, dozens of ongoing conflicts blaze around the world. The Armed Conflict Location & Event Data Project reports that since 2016 more than 100,000 people have died each year in tens…

Jaguar crossings A National Geographic Explorer captured rare video of a young jaguar, dubbed “El Bonito,” on the U.S.-Mexico border. Hunters wiped out U.S. populations, but conservation efforts in Mexico are boosting their numbers, with some returning to U.S. habitats. Grasshopper sparrow soars The most endangered bird in the continental U.S. was also the first sparrow successfully bred in captivity and released in the wild. The new Florida Wildlife Corridor, supported by the National Geographic Society, protects habitats for both sparrows and panthers. Cloning comeback Elizabeth Ann was cloned from the cells of another black-footed ferret preserved for more than 30 years. Overseen by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, the cloning was the first successful replication of a wild, endangered species in North America.…

THE PHOTOGRAPHY OF National Geographic is extraordinarily multifaceted, and therein lies its magic. A single image can spark our curiosity or influence our collective consciousness. I’ve known this since I was a little girl in Iowa, leafing through the pages of National Geographic magazine in my elementary school’s library. To this day, I vividly remember the impact of the iconic image of King Tutankhamun’s funerary mask on this March 1977 cover. It was a passport to an ancient dynasty, a visual journey of archaeological discovery that ignited my imagination. Photography was published in National Geographic for the first time in 1889, the year after the National Geographic Society and the magazine were created. It’s been a tremendous honor to build on this legacy during my first year leading the Society—a…

Contagion All viruses replicate. Some are highly transmissible, having evolved efficient methods to spread. Human behavior also contributes to local and travel-related transmission. ORIGINAL STRAIN DELTA VARIANT Vaccine equity Lower income countries, facing challenges getting and distributing vaccines, have lower vaccination rates. Until most of the world is immune, public health measures such as testing and masking will remain vital. SHARE OF PEOPLE WHO HAVE RECEIVED AT LEAST ONE DOSE 6 BILLION VACCINE SHOTS GIVEN Cooperative global efforts are under way to distribute vaccines more equitably and to boost this number much higher in 2022.…

BRAZIL-GUYANA BORDER • KENYA • BOTSWANA • TEXAS • YEMEN • EGYPT • SUDAN • ENGLAND Bright Spots in a Dark Year: Successes in preservation showed a respect for the past, present, and future of our world. AS THE FAMILY of 16 Asian elephants started moving north, no one knew where they were heading, or why. At first, no one thought much about it. Elephants sometimes stray beyond the boundaries of Xishuangbanna National Nature Reserve, in southwestern China’s Yunnan Province, but they always return. Not this time. Over the course of 16 months they crop-raided, mud-bathed, and road-tripped 300 miles north to the provincial capital of Kunming, a sprawling city of eight million people. Along the way they became global celebrities—and presented a conundrum for government officials. The elephants were…

Lynsey Addario A Pulitzer Prize winner, Addario has focused on COVID-19 death rituals in the U.K. and consequences of climate change for women. Pages 2, 54, 74, 92 Juan Arredondo In Colombia, Arredondo has looked at how former rebel fighters are reintegrating into society. Page 46 Javier Aznar González de Rueda His work showcases the significance of lesser known animals such as reptiles and insects. Page 118 Dan Balilty As Israel confronted the pandemic, Balilty trained his lens on images of daily life and the country’s push to vaccinate residents. Page 44 David Chancellor With a focus on Africa, Chancellor scrutinizes the ways humans and wildlife intersect. Pages 57, 114 Alejandro Chaskielberg Based in Buenos Aires, Chaskielberg has photographed places hit hard by natural disasters. Page 16 Alessandro Cinque In…

UNITED STATES • ARGENTINA • AFGHANISTAN • DEM. REP. CONGO IN JULY 2021 the Indonesian photojournalist Muhammad Fadli drove with his cameras to a cemetery on the Jakarta outskirts and understood, again and more profoundly, how wrong he had been. Over a stretch of weeks during March and April, Fadli had let himself believe that life as he knew it was righting itself: He saw a nationwide inoculation campaign, markets starting to bustle again, malls reopening. But no. It was like that lull in the horror movies, the brief fake serenity before the thing roars up again. Now in this new burial area, one of six commissioned when the pandemic filled the city’s main public cemetery, earthmoving machinery was clearing more ground even as mourners bent over fresh graves. At…

CALIFORNIA • KENYA • INDONESIA • ANTARCTICA • AUSTRIA • COLORADO • ETHIOPIA • SOUTH AFRICA • PERU ‘We Just Need More Hands’: Climate change’s effects are ‘horrifying,’ but two experts see promise in public action. DURING THE decades-long struggle to forestall climate change, some moments looked like watersheds at the time. In 1992, with much fanfare, the world’s nations signed a treaty in Rio de Janeiro promising action; in 2015, after contentious negotiations, they pledged in Paris to adopt national plans to limit greenhouse gas emissions. Yet global carbon emissions from fossil fuels kept rising—until 2020, when they fell as much as 7 percent as a result of lower fossil fuel usage during COVID-19 lockdowns. But in 2021 emissions started rising again, and the public conversation about climate change…