Creators for the Planet is a global year-round engagement program set up by Sony Pictures and the United Nations Foundation, developed in collaboration with Creo. Creators for the Planet aims to mobilise and inspire people to Act Now through photography and film.

Sony World Photography Awards and Sony Future Filmmaker Awards

As part of Creators for the Planet, Sony and Creo developed the Sustainability Prize, a program that invites photographers and filmmakers passionate about communicating key themes linked to the Sustainable Development Goals.

Set up to amplify the smaller stories exploring these social and environmental issues, the initiative spotlights one series from the Sony World Photography Awards Series competition and one short film from the Sony Future Filmmaker Awards.

The Sustainability Prize winners each receive $5,000, plus a range of Sony digital imaging equipment. The winners will be revealed through a digital announcement across the Sony Future Filmmaker Awards and World Photography Organisation websites and social media channels.
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SONY WORLD PHOTOGRAPHY AWARDS

2026 Winner
Tommy Trenchard | The Great Green Wall

Tommy Trenchard, United Kingdom, Winner, Sustainability Prize, Sony World Photography Awards 2026.

Tommy Trenchard is an award-winning British photographer and writer based in Cape Town, South Africa.
He works in both text and photography for clients including The New York Times, The Guardian, National Geographic, the Sunday Times Magazine, the Washington Post, Le Monde, Harper's Magazine, the BBC and NPR among many others. He also works regularly as a photographer for some of the world’s leading NGOs.
Tommy has been based in various parts of Africa for the past 13 years, documenting a broad range of topics from across the continent and further afield, from stories of conflict, crisis and environmental destruction to the stories of people and organisations trying to change the world for the better.

2025 Winner
Kasia Strek | Repairing the Earth

2024 Winner
Kathleen Orlinsky | America's First Wilderness

2023 Winner
Alessandro Cinque | Atrapanieblas (Fog Nets)

Discover more about the Sony World Photography Awards

SONY FUTURE FILMMAKER AWARDS

2026 Winner
Mariah Wilson

Bear Guardians
Deep in Cambodia’s forests, rangers rescue a snared sun bear and bring it to Phnom Tamao Wildlife Rescue Center—a sanctuary for sun and moon bears saved from trafficking and injury. At the heart of this refuge are Mr. Heng, who has raised more sun bear cubs than anyone in the world, and his daughter, Sorphea, a dedicated wildlife veterinarian. As they care for bears like Lakota and Trinity, both permanently maimed by snares, their intertwined stories reveal a profound bond—not only between humans and animals, but between a father and daughter devoted to conservation and healing.

Mariah is a documentary filmmaker with a focus on wildlife and conservation whose work has taken her to six continents.
For twenty years Mariah Wilson has produced content for outlets like PBS (Nature, History Detectives), Netflix (Human: The World Within), National Geographic (Doomsday Preppers, Lockdown), Amazon, A&E (Intervention), Al Jazeera, Investigation Discovery, (Hate In America) Animal Planet, Discovery Channel, History, Weather, Cooking Channel, and MSNBC.

2025 Winner
Kirsten Slemint

Burnt Country

2024 Winner
Solmund MacPherson

Wildmen of the Greater Toronto Area

2023 Winner
Pedro Furtado (Brazil)

The Good Dolphins

Discover more about the Sony Future Filmmaker Awards

Sustainable Development Goals

The Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) are the blueprint to achieve a better and more sustainable future for all. They address the global challenges we face, including poverty, inequality, climate change, environmental degradation, peace and justice. In 2015, world leaders came together and made a historic promise to secure the rights and well-being of everyone on a healthy, thriving planet when they adopted the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development and its 17 SDGs. The Agenda remains the world’s roadmap for ending poverty, protecting the planet and tackling inequalities.

LEARN MORE ABOUT THE SUSTAINABLE DEVELOPMENT GOALS HERE

Act Now For Our Common Future

Creative storytelling has the power to inspire a new way forward to take care of our planet. Every one of us can help limit global warming by making choices that have less harmful effects on the environment. We don’t have to wait for the future we want—we can create it right now. Be part of the solution and join in the United Nations campaign for individual action on climate change and sustainability: Act Now.