3 December 2010: The UNFCCC Secretariat has announced the winners of the 2010 Clean Development Mechanism (CDM) International Photo and Video Contests, which were launched with the theme “CDM Changing Lives.”

The contests aimed at raising awareness of the CDM to help the world learn about its value. The winners in this year’s contest were announced by UNFCCC Executive Secretary Christiana Figueres on 1 December 2010, at the UN Climate Change Conference in Cancun, Mexico. The first, second and third place winners of the photo contest are, respectively: Boris Bronger, for the photo titled “Installing Energy-Efficient Light Bulbs in India,” which shows women working to replace incandescent light bulbs with energy-efficient lighting in domestic households in India; Júlio Alberto Pavese, for the photo titled “Learning to Change,” showing children growing vegetables using biomass ashes as fertilizer; Christos Anagnostopoulos, for the photo titled “The Farm Behind the Dunes,” showing the Zafarana wind farm in Egypt.

The first, second and third place winners of the video contest are, respectively: Olivier Diamant, for the video titled “Landfill Project in Pasto, Colombia,” a short animation of how waste can be used to generate electricity; Hector Tapia and Juan Martínez, for their video titled “Luz Verde in Puebla, Mexico,” which tells the story of the Luz Verde project that involved the delivery of one million compact fluorescent lamps to households in the Mexican city of Puebla; and Lalit Ajgaonkar and Sidharth Singh, for the video titled “Changing Lives in Gorai,” which tells the story of the transformation of the Gorai dumpsite in Mumbai, India, into a expanse of green, through the Gorai Landfill Closure and Gas Capture Project. [Contests’ Website]