Vote for climate change story to be presented during Copenhagen conference

In a few hours, world leaders and representatives from up to 192 countries will meet in Copenhagen, Denmark, for the highly anticipated United Nations Climate Change Conference, which starts on Monday and lasts for two weeks. While the deluge news reports, blog posts and online conversations on the meetings continue to crop up, one of the most interesting media initiatives of Copenhagen that I’ve seen is are awards for the best in-depth feature and investigative climate change journalism.

The Earth Journalism Awards, which are sponsored in part by the World Bank, started with more than 450 submissions from 100 countries that have been narrowed down to 15 finalists. Anyone with an Internet connection can vote for their favorites. The winning story will be presented to, as the site puts it, “a mixed audience of negotiators, climate change experts, activists and media representatives in Copenhagen on December 14 on the eve of the endgame negotiations.” That seems like a pretty significant prize to a journalist. (Read more about the competition here.)

You have until Dec. 9 to vote through Facebook, Twitter or the awards site. If nothing else, it’s worth checking out the list of finalists, which is made up of a nice collection of stories that cover a range of climate change topics from around the world – including two entries from the East Asia and Pacific region.