AFP Among Winners Of Covering Climate Now Awards

Covering Climate Now, a global media project devoted to reporting on global warming, on Wednesday honored Agence France-Presse among the winners of its first journalism award.

"The road over the Bidwell Bar Bridge seemed to run straight into the heart of the flames," AFP photographer Josh Edelson said AFP / JOSH EDELSON

"The awards celebrate work that sets a standard of excellence for journalists everywhere to emulate as newsrooms increase their coverage of the climate story," the consortium of over 400 media outlets said in a statement.

The 12 winners chosen from nearly 600 entries included a multimedia piece by The Guardian, which lets the audience listen to the sounds of icebergs melting in the Antarctic, and a long-form piece by ProPublica documenting migration caused by global warming.

The Alisal Fire in Santa Barbara County has grown to more than 15,000 acres. In photo: Firefighters battling a fire north of Lake Oroville in California in September 2020. AFP / JOSH EDELSON

Josh Edelson, an AFP photographer based in California who specializes in covering wildfires, won in the photography category for his series "Heart of Fire."

In the series, shot in September 2020, Edelson documented the wildfires burning in California, capturing "the overwhelming size of the inferno and its emotional impact on both firefighters and the displaced," the consortium said.

"In ten years covering wildfires in California, I've never seen anything like what this year brought," Edelson wrote in an essay that accompanies his photo series. "The new normal now seems to be that every fire season brings a new surprise."

"I am transfixed and fascinated and passionate and also humbled by the power of these events and super-driven to continue telling these stories so people can see what's going on inside the fire line," Edelson wrote.