Visions of Green and Blue: A picture is worth a thousand words...

Photo by: Alice Smeets

This beautiful, yet terrifying image was awarded 'Unicef's Photo of the Year Award, 2008'. The image titled "Surviving Haiti" was taken by 21 year old, Belgian photographer Alice Smeets. The picture presents us with a young girl in Port-au-Prince, wearing a clean white dress with matching ribbons in her hair, wadding barefoot through filthy water and trash.

This photo not only gives us a glimpse into the horrid conditions in which Port-au-Prince residents live, but is also a visual warning for those lucky enough not living in a slum of what could happen. Landfills and 'developing nations' can only hold so much trash, what will happen when we have filled them?

Alice Smeet's blog: http://blog.alicesmeets.com/2008/12/19/the-unicef-photo-of-the-year/

There are some other fantastic Unicef contest images worth checking out: http://www.unicef.de/foto/2008/english/index_engl_2008.htm

Books of '09

• Silent Spring. By, Rachel Carson
• Sea Sick, the Global Ocean in Crisis. By, Alanna Mitchell
• The world without us. By, Alan Weisman
• Bottomfeeder. How to eat ethically in a world of vanashing seafood. By, Taras Grescoe
• Life in 2030: Exploring a Sustainable Future for Canada. By, John B. Robinson
• The Whale Warriors. The battle at the bottom of the world to save the planet's largest mammals. By, Peter Heller
• In a perfect ocean. The state of fisheries and ecosystems in the north atlantic ocean. By, Daniel Pauly and Jay Maclean
• The end of the line. How overfishing is changing the world and what we eat. By, Charles Clover