Picture This: Environmental Sustainability in Pictures!

Last week, UNDP, Olympus and AFP partnered to launch Picturethis, an Africa based photo competition designed to highlight the work of African natives to negate and reverse the effects of climate change. The competition aims to demonstrate the people of Africa as ‘stewards of their natural environment’.

The contest is inspired by the upcoming UN Climate Change Conference in Copenhagen, which will bring together over 15,000 officials from 200 countries to address climate change and explore options to extend the Kyoto Protocol’s treaty’s into the future.

The contest is exclusively for those who have resided in Africa for 12 months and has amateur and professional categories. The entries can be either single photographs or a series and are expected to display how the local population is working together toward MDG 7- Environmental Sustainability. The contest also looks to depict the role that women play in protecting their environment.

UNDP Administrator, Helen Clark said recently “the developing world stands to lose the most from the effects of climate change and environmental degradation”. With this in mind, the competition seeks to demonstrate how even the smallest of projects can have a positive impact on the surrounding environment.