The Grantham Prize for Environmental Journalism

Bill Blakemore

ABC News Correspondent

Bill Blakemore has been a reporter for ABC News for more than 35 years, covering a wide variety of stories. Based in New York since 1984, Blakemore has continued to travel widely as a domestic and foreign correspondent covering stories of conflict and politics, the arts, nature and science – and now climate change and other narratives involving the love-hate relationship between nature and man. Blakemore was ABC’s Vatican correspondent throughout the reign of Pope John Paul II, has covered 12 wars, six major political assassinations and eight hostage sieges, seven earthquakes, more than a dozen commercial plane crashes, two volcano eruptions, the long-range effects of the Exxon-Valdez oil spill in Alaska, and reported live from ground zero before the trade towers fell on September 11, 2001.

Blakemore has also reported on many intercultural stories in the arts, including Yo-Yo Ma’s crossover music and ongoing Silk Road Project. He reported on a full solar eclipse from the medieval Persian city of Isfahan, on Halley’s Comet from Eastern Australia, and from Western Australia on the America’s Cup ad on the human-regimenting dolphins of Shark’s Bay. He was also the chief science correspondent for the ABC-Discovery Channel weekly science show – for which he anchored the live landing of the Mars rover.

Blakemore has spearheaded ABC’s coverage of climate change, traveling from the tropics to polar regions to report on the impacts and dangers of climate change, as well as possible solutions for it.  Blakemore helped create ABC’s new multiplatform exploration of global warming in TV, Internet, podcast, radio and print formats. He continues to cover a wide variety of science stories, focusing on the nature of intelligence and brain function and on nature conservation and the extinction crisis.

In addition to his regular coverage of climate change, his current interests, as seen in his Nightline report on new discoveries about the mental health of refugees around the world, include the “psychological literacy” of today’s journalism.

Dr. Jane Lubchenco

Under Secretary of Commerce and Administrator of NOAA

Dr. Jane Lubchenco, under secretary of commerce and administrator of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), is a leading marine ecologist and environmental scientist who has been actively engaged in teaching, research, synthesis, communication and application of scientific knowledge. Her scientific expertise includes oceans, climate change, and interactions between the environment and human well-being.

A former president of the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS), the International Council for Science and the Ecological Society of America, she served 10 years on the National Science Board (Board of Directors for the National Science Foundation). From 1999-2009 she led PISCO, a large 4-university, interdisciplinary team of scientists investigating the large marine ecosystem along the coasts of Washington, Oregon and California. She has a special interest in Arctic ecosystems, with recent work in Svalbard, Greenland and the Alaskan arctic.

Dr. Lubchenco has provided scientific input to multiple U.S. Administrations and Congress on climate, fisheries, marine ecosystems, and biodiversity.  Dr. Lubchenco served on the first National Academy of Sciences study on ‘Policy Implications of Global Warming’, providing advice to the George H.W. Bush administration and Congress. In 1997 she briefed President Clinton and Vice President Gore and Members of Congress on climate change. 

Her scientific contributions are widely recognized. Eight of her publications are “Science Citation Classics” and she is one of the “most highly cited” ecologists in the world. Dr. Lubchenco co-founded three organizations that communicate scientific knowledge to the public, policy makers, the media and industry: (1) The Leopold Leadership Program (teaches environmental scientists to be effective communicators), (2) COMPASS (the Communication Partnership for Science and the Sea, communicates marine sciences); and (3) Climate Central (a non-advocacy source of understandable scientific information about climate science and solutions).

Dr. Lubchenco is an elected member of the National Academy of Sciences, the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, the American Philosophical Society, and the Royal Society.   She has received numerous awards including a MacArthur (‘genius’) Fellowship, nine honorary degrees, the 2002 Heinz Award in the Environment, the 2005 AAAS Award for Public Understanding of Science and Technology and the 2008 Zayed International Prize for the Environment.