Giving Compass' Take:

• Olivia Kestin,  Joe McCarthy, and Erica Sanchez report that five photographers are recording the world's environmental crisis in unique ways. 

• How can funders support impactful art like this? What are the benefits and limits of this form of activism? 

• Learn how donors can address environmental issues. 

Plastic junk filling the oceans. Once vibrant forests reduced to flatland. A city on the brink of drying out.

These are some of the narratives brought to astonishing life by the Union of Concerned Photographers in a collaborative project with WeTransfer.

Five different photographers with different passions and specialities were tasked with illuminating different environmental problems.

The question asked of them was stark — people know that the world is in crisis, but what does it look like?

Joel Redman showed how Cape Town, South Africa, has been gripped by a water emergency for the past several years.

Earlier this year, the city imposed a daily limit of 50 liters of water per person per day and threatened to cut off household water lines. HIs photos show people lining up for water with big, plastic jugs, dessicated landscapes, and depleted reservoirs.

Ami Vitale took a more optimistic approach to an urgent problem. The world is currently in the sixth mass extinction event of all time and animals everywhere are facing unprecedented threats.

Vitale depicted some of the efforts being taken to protect different species and the simple beauty and tenderness of animals to show what would be lost in their absence.

Luca Locatelli, meanwhile, showed the ways in which humans are using technology to reverse ecological decline.

Read the full article about photographing environmental crisis by Olivia Kestin,  Joe McCarthy, and Erica Sanchez at Global Citizen.