Landscape 2nd Place

Brazil saw its hottest year in 2024. Although the high temperatures affected all regions of the country, three biomes were especially impacted, with drought, fire and deforestation transforming the landscape into apocalyptic scenes. In the Amazon, extreme drought turned some of the planet's most powerful rivers into sand deserts. This also fuelled forest fires, with 134,979 fires recorded in the region in the first 11 months of the year – the highest since 2007. The Pantanal, the largest tropical wetland on the planet, also faced a historic drought due to human activity and climate change, while the Cerrado – considered the most biodiverse savanna in the world and the birthplace of most of the country's river basins – experienced increasingly high deforestation rates driven by agribusiness.

Lalo de Almeida is a Brazilian documentary photographer focused on socio-environmental issues, especially in the Amazon region.
He received the prestigious Eugene Smith Grant in Humanistic Photography for his ongoing project ‘Amazonian Dystopia’, which has documents the destructive impact of human occupation on the Amazon rainforest over the past 15 years. ‘Amazonian Dystopia’ also earned him a World Press Photo award in 2022. Since 2024 he is a National Geographic Explorer.