Qahtani, an environmental journalist at the Presidency for Meteorology and Environmental Protection (PME), has won the prize of the International Organization for Marine Environment Protection for creativity and distinctiveness in the field of environmental journalism. Dr. Abdul Rahman Al-Awadhi, PME Secretary General, said that the purpose of the prize was to honor creative people working in the field of environmental journalism as well as to upgrade the standards of the organization in the region's countries. He pointed out that a specialist committee studies nominations presented to it and selects prize winners according to international criteria and professional standards. Hussein Al-Qahtani published the first book on environmental journalism in Arabic and won the prize for the best journalistic work in the 2007 Haj season. This is the second consecutive prize he has won and he is the first Saudi to win the prize twice consecutively.
