In a five-part series that ran in March 2009 on ClimateWire, an environmental news service, reporter Lisa Friedman described the potential impact of climate change on Bangladesh, which some scientists see as ground zero for a likely wave of climate-induced mass migrations around the globe.
Friedman “brings climate science down to a human level and highlights how one often-overlooked corner of the world is affected by climate-changing activities elsewhere,” said judge Tina Hesman Saey of Science News. Seth Borenstein of the Associated Press said Friedman’s project “provides an excellent look at an under-reported aspect of climate science that proves a single reporter armed with science and curiosity can make a difference.”
Friedman’s stories ran on the Web sites of Scientific American and The New York Times. “I visited places where families had lost absolutely everything, their mud homes completely submerged in water, and still women would offer to cook me meals,” Friedman said. “I would not have been able to do these stories without them, and without the dozens of experts across Bangladesh who spent, collectively, hundreds of hours walking me through the vulnerabilities the country faces” and the steps needed to avoid future catastrophes.
