Gloria IP Tung, a fourteen-year old from Hong Kong, is the winner of the United Nations Environment Programme’s 2008 International Children’s Painting Competition. Gloria received her award on World Environment Day from UNEP executive director Achim Steiner and New Zealand prime minister Helen Clark at a ceremony in Wellington (New Zealand), along with the two global runners-up and five of the regional winners.
Achim Steiner, UN under-secretary-general and UNEP executive director, said, “The impact of climate change on Earth is one of the biggest challenges the international community faces, and the inspiration provided by these children is wonderful to see.”
As part of Wellington’s World Environment Day celebrations, 64 of the paintings submitted from around the globe are being shown at the city’s Te Papa museum before touring other venues around the world. New Zealand prime minister Helen Clark said, “Art is a way for ideas to be expressed and thoughts provoked. In the past, art has inspired great changes in the world. So it is superb to see that so many young people around the globe have been inspired to give us their impression of actions we must take to reduce the impact of climate change.”
The painting competition was organised by UNEP, the Japan-based Foundation for Global Peace and Environment, and Bayer and Nikon. Since the annual competition began in 1991, more than 190,000 paintings from over 100 countries have been entered in the contest.
Kawai Yoshimichi, director, member of the board and executive officer at Nikon Corporation, said, “During the three years since Nikon first participated as a co-sponsor of this competition, climate change has come to be recognised as an increasingly big issue in every part of the world. In these urgent circumstances, we seriously consider these works sent from all over the world as important messages of children who will shoulder Earth’s future, and we should take appropriate action to respond them.”
Michael Schade, Senior Vice President of Bayer AG, said, “The children’s pictures are giving one common message to all other people, safeguard our planet Earth. We are very happy about the great popularity of the painting competition which is one of the important projects of Bayer’s partnership with UNEP. Sustainable development is an integral element of Bayer’s corporate policy and with our social commitment we strive to contribute to a good future for ourselves, our children and the coming generations.”
Ms. Tomoko Yano, secretary general of the Foundation for Global Peace and Environment, said, “Children’s paintings always reflect the state of the crisis of the environmental destruction, expressing their sorrow with unique and creative ideas. At the same time, they show us various kinds of ways, what we should do or what we can do to preserve our Mother Planet for the future generations. We deeply wish that their genuine messages will move much more people around the world to take actions together for confronting our common threat, Climate Change.”
The 14-year-old global winner, Gloria IP Tung, said, “News on global warming is frequently seen, which shows that the problem is getting serious. Recently on the news they said that there won’t be any winters in the future, which really frightened me. I have therefore taken the responsibility to work with others to save the Earth. I participated in the children’s painting competition to express my thoughts on how we can do this.”
Tung, who wants to become a professional artist or designer one day, added, “In my painting I illustrated different ways for people to ‘save’ the world, such as use of public transport instead of one’s own car and the three Rs (Reduce, Reuse, Recycle). My parents also taught my sister and me to be environmentally friendly when we were small. So we both know that we have a really important ‘mission’ to protect the environment. I hope we are able to solve the problem of climate change.”
Colge Tejas Neel, a 12-year-old, from United Arab Emirates, West Asia regional winner, said, “Every other day I hear about global warming on TV channels, in newspapers, etc. I wanted to do something about preventing climate change, and I got a chance to express my inner feelings and thoughts about climate change through my painting.”
Neel, whose ambition is to become an automobile designer, intends to pursue studies in automobile engineering and improve and implement techniques to create new eco-friendly vehicles.
