The African Carbon Trust (ACT) and the Two Oceans Aquarium announced in Cape Town today, the launch of the ‘State of Our Environment Competition’ in which members of the public are invited to submit photographs, videos, art or any other medium to highlight their personal experiences of environmental degradation and loss.
ACT Managing Director, Nils Flaatten, said “The aim of this competition is to give ordinary citizens an opportunity to show how their environment is being threatened or destroyed. Every year the government brings out a very important State of the Environment Report that highlights the pressures being placed on our natural ecosystems, but most people don’t get to see this report and are therefore unaware of how their livelihoods are being compromised. Together with the Aquarium, we decided to ask citizens to help compile a visual report of these pressures. We hope that this grassroots effort will improve awareness among people and send a message that they too can play a role in the protection of our natural heritage.”
The competition seeks to draw out incidences of environmental damage that often lie buried from public attention in scientific journals, academic studies, and NGO files, and make them available to the public by means of an exhibition which will be hosted in the Aquarium. “The point of the competition is to get people to think about what they value about their environment, to have a platform from which to voice these concerns and to ultimately document the extent of the damage which human activities are having on the environment. This will create a hard-hitting, sensory impact, which will drive home the urgency of why we need to address environmental threats,” said Flaatten.
“For too long we have tended to think about the environment as being something ‘out there’ and that environmental issues are someone else’s problem i.e. the government or conservation agencies. We hope that this competition will make people realise that the environment is actually on their front doorstep and that it belongs to them,” said Helen Lockhart, Communications & Sustainability Manager for the Aquarium. “The environment is integral to our survival - what we do to our environment, we do to ourselves”.
Lockhart said, “Although the subject matter is of a serious nature we also hope to generate excitement among people, especially among school learners. These children are inheriting a degraded environment and we need to empower them so that they feel they can do something to make a difference”.
ACT and the Two Oceans Aquarium intends to push the agenda of taking action against unsustainable development by looking at how they can facilitate partnerships to begin to address some of the problems which are highlighted by the competition entries. This will indicate the need for public-private and civil partnerships in order to deal with the issues at hand.
The competition closes on 15 October 2009, and the winners will be announced at a prize evening and exhibition launch at the Two Oceans Aquarium in November. Main prizes are a luxury weekend for two at environmentally sustainable Spier Wine Estate, and a dive with the sharks in the Aquarium’s I&J Predator Exhibit. Other prizes feature sustainable products from ‘green’ companies – Hemporium, Wild cards from SANparks, The Green Shop, Backsberg Wines, Penguin Books, Kyoto Clothing, Enchantrix and others.
More information about the prize rules and terms and conditions can be found at http://www.africancarbontrust.org/ or by mailing competition@africancarbontrust.org.
For further information, contact:
Alexis Scholtz
African Carbon Trust
082 739 8687
021 465 9966
alexis@africancarbontrust.org
Helen Lockhart
Two Oceans Aquarium
021-418-3823
helen.lockhart@aquarium.co.za
