UNDP Resident Representative, Ms. Ahunna Eziakonwa-Onochie has officially handed-over a prize to a Mosotho photographer who won 3rd (third) place in 2009 in an Africa-wide global photo contest entitled Picture This: Caring for the Earth. The competition involved capturing direct human action in bringing about real change to mitigate the present and future effects of climate change and environmental degradation. The winner, Hlompho Letsielo, is a professional photographer in the media fraternity.
 

A Sick Landscape Given Therapy A community works to fill eroded ditches with stones in Lesotho.

The photo contest was organized by the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) in partnership with Agence France-Presse Foundation (AFP Foundation) and Olympus Corporation and it invited works that profile ordinary people working to reduce the effects of climate change. The competition was launched in June 2009 and opened for entries through the end of September 2009. It was open to both professional and amateur photographers who had lived in a country of Africa for 12 months between January 2007 and August 2009.

The contest was part of a number of awareness raising initiatives in the run up to the UN Climate Change Conference in Copenhagen, Denmark, in December 2009, which saw a gathering of 15,000 officials from 200 countries. The aim was to raise the visibility of solutions and to illustrate the importance of local action even as the world focuses on national and global solutions.

Protecting the environment and working to mitigate the effects of climate change lie at the heart of the mandate of the UNDP, which says that effects of climate change are already evident in Africa as seen in the increasing occurrence of drought and desertification, and in the rise in crop failures and health risks associated with temperature changes.

The people of developing countries are often the first to feel the effects of environmental degradation and climate change. This is especially true in Africa where water scarcity, crop failures and health risks associated with temperature changes are already being seen. But the three sponsoring organisations believe ordinary people should not always be seen as helpless. They also need to be seen for who they are: the stewards of their environment. They are the true experts and potentially the most powerful advocates for protecting the environment

Hlompho is only 20, but already he has made photography his career. He grew up in the rural town of Mafeteng, Lesotho, a place, he said, that has been highly affected by climate change. After graduating from high school, he went to college to study graphic design, but had to drop out after the college closed. In 2008, he joined a local newspaper called the Public Eye News, where he now works full time as a cartoonist and a photographer.

“To me, photography is portraying the true identity of a subject in a precise way while simultaneously recognizing its importance,” Hlompho said.  

Hlompho photographed the community of Ha-pena pena in Maseru, Lesotho. After years of helplessly watching as their land was gradually degraded by irresponsible farming, they “decided to take the bull by the horns,” Hlompho said. The community is now advocating for a ban on illegal and irresponsible cultivation along the river bank. They have also begun a land rehabilitation programme in partnership with Lesotho’s Ministry of Forestry and Land Reclamation. Here, we see community members filling dongas, or eroded ditches, with stones