Pulitzer Center Grantees Champion Mekong Region Conservation Through Photos, Films

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‘Mekong Discovery Days’ featured photos and films documenting landscapes, livelihoods, and protection efforts along this biodiversity hotspot

With over 200 million acres, the Mekong region is a biodiversity hotspot, an important carbon sink, and an essential source of livelihoods for communities who live in this region of Southeast Asia. But, growing human activities such as illegal logging, wildlife trade, climate change, and hydropower development pose a threat to conservation.

This is why the Pulitzer Center partnered with the Cambodia International Film Festival (CIFF) to bring “Mekong Discovery Days” during the festival’s 12th edition held between May 31 and June 1, 2023, at the Olympia Mall in Phnom Penh, Cambodia. 

“Mekong Discovery Days” featured an exhibition of photos and films focused on the culture, lives, and livelihoods of Indigenous peoples from Cambodia and Indonesia. The theme of the photo exhibition was landscapes, biodiversity, and territory protectors. The Pulitzer Center selected 35 photos from three artists: grantees Anton L. Delgado, Andy Ball, and Le Quynh.

During the event, Delgado, a Pulitzer Center’s Rainforest Investigations Fellow, also led a session in which he talked about his experience photographing areas within Cambodia—Virachey, Phnom Tnout, Phnom Aural, Phnom Tamao, and more—that are hotspots of rich biodiversity and home to many Indigenous communities.

With the topic “Lessons From Documenting Cambodia’s Protected Areas and Endangered Wildlife,” Delgado presented his lessons and stories behind his documentation journey in Cambodia to an audience of 60 high-school students. Delgado also discussed endangered wildlife and Indigenous communities as territory protectors to raise awareness and inspire participants to help preserve Mekong’s rainforests and biodiversity.

“Through the session, I learned many new things, especially about the Indigenous people in Cambodia, their ways of living with natural resources and forests,” said Chorn Sereyvuth, a student from Hun Sen Serey Pheap High School in Krong Ta Khmau, Cambodia. “As the younger generation, we should protect resources that our ancestors have left us and use them in a way that can ensure prosperity in the long run.”

More than 260 students participated in “Mekong Discovery Days” across the two days of the event.

These photos were also exhibited digitally in the Olympia Mall, once the film festival concluded. The photos continued to be showcased in Bophana Center, also located in the Cambodian capital, for a few more weeks under another exhibition titled “The Indigenous Life and Culture.”

The CIFF began in 2010 and has grown to be one of the most prominent film festivals in South Asia. The festival focuses on cinema that transcends the realm of entertainment to catalyze positive change and civic engagement for a better future. In 2015, CIFF introduced a special “Beautiful Planet” program focused on the environment, Indigenous communities, sustainable development, and biodiversity.