Climate Change Communication Prize for AMO Climate Team

On 15 November 2023, the 18-member expert Climate Team of the Association for International Affairs (AMO) became the fifth recipient of the 2023 Climate Change Communication Prize. The organizers also awarded two honorary prizes in the same category for outstanding achievement.

The prize is for scientists and experts for their outreach activities. It is jointly organized and sponsored by the UN Information Centre in Prague and the Learned Society of the Czech Republic. The award's winner is decided by a nomination committee of representatives of major Czech institutions working on climate change.

The Prize aims to contribute to the awareness and cultivation of a reliable, factual and knowledge-based debate on one of the world's most serious threats. It also aims to contribute to bridging some of the differences of opinion and to promote a culture of critical debate between different disciplines.

"The AMO climate team, under the leadership of Tomáš Jungwirth Březovský, brings important issues into the public debate and provides convincing data and interpretation. In the form of seminars and panel discussions, he conducts a dialogue with politicians and implements an educational project for university students," the nomination committee states in the justification of its decision.

Tomáš Jungwirth, Head of the prize-winning AMO Climate Team

The Learned Society awarded the team with a monetary donation of 30,000 CZK. The UN Office in the Czech Republic presented a symbolic tree seedling. This is a continuation of a tradition from previous years.

In the past years, the Prize was awarded to climatologist Radim Tolasz from the Czech Hydrometeorological Institute, Ondráš Přibyla with the team Facts about Climate, climatologist Miroslav Trnka from the Institute of Global Change Research of the CAS and polar ecologist Marie Šabacká from the University of South Bohemia in České Budějovice.

This year, the project organizers also awarded two honorary prizes for outstanding achievement. They were awarded to Petr Daniš, the head of the TEREZA educational centre, for his book Klima je příležitost (TEREZA, 2023) and Vojtěch Pecka, a sociologist and analyst, for his book Továrna na lži: výroba klimatických dezinformací (Alarm and UTOPIA libri, 2023).

A recording of the ceremony, including the presentations by all the Prize winners and the special guest of the ceremony, Jan Konvalinka, Director of the Institute of Organic Chemistry and Biochemistry of the CAS (lecture on The pitfalls and opportunities of science communication: the example of the COVID-19 pandemic), is available on YouTube (in Czech).