The Earthshot Prize: A Handbook for Dreamers and Thinkers

About the Author

Colin Butfield (Author)

Colin has almost 25 years' experience communicating about the natural world and climate change.

During 15 years at WWF (World Wildlife Fund) he wrote numerous articles and appeared in hundreds of media interviews on topics including renewable energy, tropical rainforests, chemical pollution, ocean biodiversity and sustainable development.

Colin has worked on conservation issues at a senior level around the world. During his career he has led many high-profile campaigns and worked across a number of United Nations climate and biodiversity agendas. He is an agenda contributor for the World Economic Forum on these issues and an advisor for the Earthshot Prize.

In recent years Colin's collaboration with Silverback Films has become his principle focus. He was WWF's Executive Producer for the Our Planet project and the Scientific and Conservation Advisor to the Emmy Award-winning Netflix series Our Planet. He was Executive Producer of the feature documentary David Attenborough: A Life on Our Planet.

Following the success of those projects, Colin and Jonnie Hughes formed Studio Silverback with Alastair Fothergill and Keith Scholey. One of Studio Silverback's first projects is a five-part TV series for the BBC about the Earthshot Prize.

Jonnie Hughes (Author)

Jonnie Hughes was educated at the University of Leeds (BSc Ecology), the University of Warwick (MEd Science Education) and Imperial College London (MSc Science Communication). He worked as a lecturer in biological sciences before becoming a freelance science journalist, writing for broadsheets such as The Times, The Guardian and The Independent, and periodicals such as BBC Wildlife Magazine and Geographical.

Jonnie joined the BBC Natural History Unit in 2002 and has spent the last 18 years in the Bristol documentary community producing science and natural history films for the BBC, Discovery, National Geographic and Netflix.

In 2009, he took a sabbatical to write a popular science book, On the Origin of Tepees, on the subject of cultural evolution for Oneworld Publications (UK) and Simon and Schuster (US).

In 2012, Jonnie joined Executive Producer Alastair Fothergill (Blue Planet, Planet Earth, Frozen Planet) at Silverback Films to work on the BAFTA award-winning BBC series The Hunt (2015) and the Emmy award-winning production Our Planet (2019). His collaboration with Sir David Attenborough on both these projects led to his engagement on Sir David's A Life on Our Planet project as producer/director and co-author with Sir David of the accompanying book.