The 2025 Earth Partner Prize Winners Celebrate Eco Warriors of the World

The first thing you might notice about Apah Benson’s photography is his use of striking primary colors—a rich blue enveloping a child’s face or golden-yellow painting the sky. Now, those commanding and colorful images are first-place winners: pieces from his series, The Last of Us, have gained the Nigerian photographer the gold in the 2025 Earth Partner Prize.

Every year, global creative agency Art Partner collaborates with the Global Environment Facility (GEF) on the Earth Partner Prize (formerly known as CreateCop) to award young artists who create work that comments on climate change and the environment. The goal is to generate awareness, start conversations, and promote action on the critical issue—and to do so ahead of the 2025 United Nations Climate Change Conference, which takes place this month in Belém, Brazil. This year, the Prize received a record number of submissions from artists between 14 and 30 years old, and hailing from over 110 countries.

“The Earth Partner Prize showcases imaginative voices from communities whose experiences are vital to understanding and addressing environmental challenges,” said the GEF Chairperson and CEO Carlos Manuel Rodríguez in a statement.

In Benson’s winning shots, a person splashes around, perhaps joyfully, in water—but the crimson overlay adds an ominous touch. That was likely the point. Benson’s images, shot on the Niger Delta, illustrate the effects that oil spills have on the local Okpare people.

When the artist initially submitted his series to the Prize, he had no expectations. “My intention was simply to create more visibility for the work and, hopefully, gain the support needed to continue it,” Benson tells W over e-mail. His participation in the Prize has shifted his perception of these works greatly. “The experience expanded my understanding of how our collective efforts as artists can shape the wider cultural and environmental conversations we are part of.”

Benson—who won $10,000 thanks to the first-place honor—is joined by two second-place winners, five third-place winners, and 20 artists who received honorable mention for their work. Tianxiao Wang, a British-Chinese artist, was among the third-place winners. His photo series, The Sea Sustains Us, captures the inhabitants of Lembata Island in Indonesia. A community defined by whale hunting for generations, the locals are now grappling with modernization and a decline in the mammal’s population, which threatens their way of life. Like Benson, Wang also felt a perspective shift as a result of the prize.

“When I was creating these projects, my focus was primarily on documenting and understanding the communities and environments I was photographing—immersing myself in their stories, traditions, and challenges,” he says. But the contest forced the photographer to reflect on the work “from a broader perspective: not just as personal experiences, but as work that can engage global audiences.”

Many of the projects awarded showcase small communities, bringing enduring traditions to the forefront of a global conversation. Ruby Okoro—another third-place winner—for example, photographed the people of Isale Akoka in Lagos, who transform waste from the surrounding lagoon into various products. Circular Heroes, as the series is called, showcases and celebrates the circular economy that has developed from this environmentally friendly practice. As Okoro puts it, participation in the Prize transforms art projects into agents of change, turning “local initiatives into something with global relevance.”