Inaugural competition attracted more than 1,000 entries, with winning photo depicting Bangladesh residents at a symbolic funeral for dried earth
A series of powerful images depicting the human cost of climate change were celebrated last night as the winners of the 2015 Photographic Award held by the International Chamber of Commerce (ICC).
More than 1,000 photographers - amateur and professional - submitted entries to the inaugural ICC competition, centred on the theme "Our Climate". Winners were picked by a panel of judges including the UN's top climate official Christiana Figueres and renowned environmentalist David Mayer de Rothschild.
Bangladeshi photographer Huzzatul Mursalin won the top prize for An Unusual Funeral, capturing a group of people paying their respects to dried earth and dead trees on the Bangladeshi island Kutubdia. Indian photographer Bipayan Bhar won second prize with his entry The Effects of Climate Change, showing children playing in a parched landscape of cracked earth.
China's Qingshan Wang won Young Photographer of the Year for The Earth Triptych, displaying a trio of black and white close-ups of different surfaces, from a stone wall to a human hand.
John Danilovich, secretary general of the ICC and chair of the judging panel, said the judges were impressed with how the entrants captured the scale of the climate crisis. "Entries to the award powerfully captured the scale and human dimension to the climate challenge. We hope that the Award visibly demonstrates the need to take urgent action to tackle the defining issue of our time," he said.
Click through the gallery above to see the winning images and a selection of the shortlisted entries.
This article is part of BusinessGreen's Road to Paris hub, hosted in association with PwC.