In 2009, Switzerland’s Rhone Glacier was overlaid with vast thermal blankets that could offer some protection against intense solar radiation blasting the snow, due to global warming. In the winning photograph, the white blankets, bathed in dim moonlight, appear to be shredding and tearing as if ripped by the scissors of a murderous criminal. “Today these coverings hang in tatters, like the torn skin of a dying beast,” described Liam Man, the photographer behind this photograph. The photo became the winner of the Royal Geographical Society - Climate of Change Award.
Plunging nearly 1,000 meters (3,300 feet) into the Earth, the Chuquicamata mine in Chile is a classic metaphor of how brutally the miners with voracious appetites for precious metals end up encroaching on nature’s beauty. In a deathly-looking black-and-white photo, photographer Lorenzo Poli (@lorenzopoli.photography) captured the grim reality of the mining industry through Chuquicamata, the second-largest open-pit copper mine in the world by excavated volume, and one of the deepest. The photo became the Overall Winner of the Earth Photo Awards 2025.
Deep inside the corridors of the Peruvian Amazon rainforest is a 500-year-old Celiba tree that tells the unfortunate tale of receding floodwaters. The tree has witnessed hundreds of rainstorms, but now the waterlines streaked on its bark say that the rains are no longer bountiful. Standing in a cranny carved out by the tree’s bark, a Ticuna man gazes sideways, probably reflecting on why this is happening to them. Against a bark where his shoulder rubs, the waterlines peek from behind, secretly murmuring the stories of the good old times when the monsoons were generous. Snapped by Mateo Borrero (@mateoborrero), the photo grabbed the Forestry England Forest Ecosystem Award.
Shorbanu Khatun is one of the “tiger widows” of Sundarbans, the largest mangrove forest in India and Bangladesh. With rising sea levels, violent cyclones, and saltwater intrusion, she has been forced to come across an unforgiving reality. She needs to get out into the jungle to fetch water and honey for her starving children. Her husband was killed by a tiger, and she feels frightened each time she puts her jingling feet into a boat, paddling towards the forest. Tigers are killing her people. Despite all odds, she ventures on the daring adventure. Her story (@fabehamonir) won the Earth Photo 2025 Moving Image Award.
Once bubbling with groves of dense trees of oak, pinyon pine, and Eucalyptus, the forest in Larache, Morocco, is now a lifeless wasteland ravaged by wildfires stirred primarily due to climate change. “Once a sanctuary of biodiversity and calm, its charred remains now stand as a stark reminder of what we risk losing,” Issam Chorrib (@tsiwrat__), the photographer, said. His photo records a startling contrast of human activities and the deterioration of this lush forest-scape. The photo became the winner of the David Wolf Kaye Future Potential Award.
The winning photographs were shortlisted from a batch of over 1,582 entries by a judging panel of photography and environmental experts. The Earth Photo 2025 exhibition is now open at the Society in London!
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