Environmentalists have many tools for looking after Momma Earth — and now, in remote villages in the southwestern Chinese province of Yunnan, one of them is a Kodak camera. Through a project designed and funded by the Nature Conservancy, about 100 people in the region have been given cameras and training to help them take photos documenting how three minority groups — Naxi, Yi, and Tibetan — relate to their environment. To that end, the project participants take pictures of everything from illegal logging activity to trends in footwear; each photo is accompanied with a description of what the photographer hoped to communicate about the environment and the changing world by taking it. The project is designed to give local people and their concerns a place at the conservation table: “You can’t solve environmental problems unless you have the social and economic context,” said project founder Ann McBride-Norton.
