By Shipra Prakash
18 November 2008 [MEDIAGLOBAL]: In one of the two pictures that fetched $2,200 – the highest bid – at the auction in the Harvard Club in New York last week, a man holds an umbrella turned inside out, revealing a painted world on the inside. Meanwhile, the real world surrounding the man threatens to steal the umbrella from him.
When 13-year-old Charlotte Sullivan from England created this picture, she meant to tell more than one story. The umbrella is meant to depict a world turned inside out. The man’s precarious grip on the umbrella represents the ‘idle’ hold over the world of government and global businesses. The surrounding world – which is a rich mix of colors – purple, white, red, orange, and yellow – represents the warming of the planet. Sullivan’s message is: those that have the power to act use the umbrella for shelter instead of taking action against climate change.
“I entered the contest one year ago. What inspired me to enter it was my doing recycling at home,” Sullivan told MediaGlobal.
The auction was organized by the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) and the Natural World Museum. 27 pictures illustrating climate change – painted by children the world over – were up for auction, and they collected a total of $21,000 for the United Nation’s Children’s Fund (UNICEF).
Last year, Save the Children UK said that approximately 175 million children were affected by climate change induced natural disasters every year for the next decade. UNICEF will spend the funds raised from the auction on such disasters.
The auction was part of the Paint for the Planet event, which launched the global UN campaign ‘UNite to Combat Climate Change.’ The campaign supports the call for a meaningful agreement at the culmination of the climate change talks – which will focus on establishing a comprehensive global climate system after 2012, when the first commitment period of the Kyoto Protocol expires – due to be held at Copenhagen in Denmark in December of 2009.
Before the auction, Sullivan and five other children – 14-year-old Daniela Malendez from Colombia, 14-year-old Joseph Nindorrera from Burundi, 15-year-old Andrew Bartolo from Malta, 9-year-old Katherine Liu from California in the United States (US) and 13-year old Gabrielle Medovoy from Illinois in the US – were chosen as artist-ambassadors and took part in the Paint for the Planet exhibition at UN headquarters, where another 26 paintings were on display.
The selection of paintings at the auction and exhibition were chosen from a pile of nearly 200,000 entries to the UNEP’s International Children’s Painting Competition.
During a press conference that took place prior to the opening of the exhibition, Adam Steiner, Executive Director of the UNEP, said that with half the world’s population under the age of 25, the engagement of young people by the UN is important.
One way UNEP has acted to engage the youth is through the International Children’s Painting Competition and the Paint for the Planet event. Another way has been the UNEP and GlobeScan’s survey of five countries – Brazil, India, the Russian Federation, South Africa, and the US – of young people’s views on climate change. The results of the survey showed that although young people rated climate change as an important issue, it was not always their number one priority. Understandably, it was the financial economic crisis that was most paramount on their minds.
Steiner remarked that the results of the survey raised an important point – that global crises should not be polarized. Instead, he advocated moving toward a ‘green economy,’ which would integrate all global crises and consequently answer the climate change, financial crisis, food and fuel challenges.
But the most important point the survey made, Steiner said, was the degree to which young people were engaged in global issues.
Indeed, of climate change, Sullivan said, “We need to do something before it is too late.”
Sullivan is not the only one. The number of paintings entered for the International Children’s Painting Competition bears testimony to the fact that young people across the world are engaged in global issues. Those in Copenhagen next year would be wise to heed their call.
As Bartolo put it at Paint for the Planet’s exhibition opening: “A child’s view of the world is essential to open the eyes of those in power…and make them find new ways to repair and protect that which a child treasures so much – his or her home.”