Winners of 15th Greenstorm Global Photography Festival to emerge on Earth Day
Winners of the 15th Greenstorm Global Photography Festival will be announced on Earth Day, Monday, 22 April 2024. With an estimated 100 million hectares of productive land degraded every year (an area about the size of Egypt) and at least 3.2 billion people impacted negatively, the festival themed “Beautiful Landscapes” draws attention to land restoration as an affordable, nature-based solution that both keeps our landscapes beautiful, healthy and productive and builds their resilience to rising disasters, such as flash floods, droughts, wildfires and biodiversity loss that threaten our survival.
The prize pool of USD30,000 for the three photography categories (mirrorless camera, mobile phone and students) and the top award of USD10,000 for the winning picture in the camera category are both unprecedented in photography competitions. The 13 winning entries are selected from the 17,716 stunning images submitted from 153 countries.
The international community has pledged to restore one billion hectares of degraded land by year 2030. The G20’s ambition is to reduce degraded land by 50 percent by 2040. Greenstorm Foundation, which hosts environment-related photo competitions, teamed up with the G20 Global Land Initiative Coordination Office at the United Nations Convention to Combat Desertification (UNCCD) to spotlight land restoration as an affordable way for households, communities and nations to make their landscapes more resilient to extreme and disastrous weather events.
The festival kicked off on 1 September 2023, and in 75 days attracted nearly 18,000 submissions of stunning landscapes from 153 countries. A jury composed of renown photographers shortlisted 54 images for the award. The shortlisted photos were displayed online for a month, in February 2024, for a public vote. The 13 winning images got the highest marks from the combined ratings of the jury, which accounted for 70 percent, and the over 33,000 votes, which account for the remaining 30 per cent.
