1 00:00:08,900 --> 00:00:15,200 Welcome to Future of Journalism, a podcast from the right, the Institute for the Study of Journalism at the University of Oxford. 2 00:00:15,620 --> 00:00:27,640 I'm Edward's wife, Heather Victoria of the Institute. From unprecedented heatwaves in Spain to devastating flooding in Pakistan. 3 00:00:28,000 --> 00:00:38,380 Few issues feel as global today as climate change. And yet most of the voices telling this crucial story come from Europe and North America. 4 00:00:39,250 --> 00:00:44,110 The global majority is mostly sidelined when these issues are discussed. 5 00:00:45,160 --> 00:00:52,810 This is why a climate focus carbon brief and the Reuters Institute have launched the Global South Climate Database. 6 00:00:53,350 --> 00:01:03,370 Publicly available, searchable database of scientists and experts from Africa, Asia Pacific and Latin America and the Caribbean. 7 00:01:04,890 --> 00:01:09,540 How many scientists have joined our database? Where do they come from? 8 00:01:09,930 --> 00:01:13,259 How can journalists use this resource in their reporting? 9 00:01:13,260 --> 00:01:17,130 And most crucially, what are the next steps for the project? 10 00:01:17,930 --> 00:01:25,250 Well, those are the questions I am going to put today to our guests who are Aisha Tandon and Diego Sirtis, 11 00:01:25,490 --> 00:01:27,650 the journalists who are leading on this project. 12 00:01:28,280 --> 00:01:36,710 Aisha is a climate and science journalist from Campbell Brown, and Diego is the manager of the Oxford Climate Journalism Network, 13 00:01:36,980 --> 00:01:45,590 an initiative that will launch in 2021 and whose founders were to go on Blue Mirror, Selva, Asia and Diego. 14 00:01:45,770 --> 00:01:48,860 Welcome to the podcast. Thanks for having us. 15 00:01:49,640 --> 00:01:54,090 Yeah, thanks for having us here. Aisha, I'm going to start with you. 16 00:01:54,110 --> 00:02:00,320 I mean, the origin of this initiative can be traced actually to an analysis that post about the 17 00:02:00,500 --> 00:02:06,710 lack of diversity in climate science and expertise that you published in October 2021. 18 00:02:07,130 --> 00:02:10,430 And so I'm sure that our listeners would be interested. 19 00:02:10,460 --> 00:02:13,970 What did you find back then? Absolutely. 20 00:02:14,030 --> 00:02:21,110 So as you say, the wheels started turning to this project, if you like, about a year ago when I published this analysis. 21 00:02:21,530 --> 00:02:26,900 So we at Carbon Brief, we're running a feature week on the topic of climate justice. 22 00:02:27,290 --> 00:02:33,240 And the piece that I contributed to that, I wanted to look at the lack of diversity within climate science. 23 00:02:33,260 --> 00:02:38,660 I wanted to look at how climate papers get out there and who are the people who are writing these papers. 24 00:02:39,110 --> 00:02:44,840 So I looked at the 100 most highly cited climate science papers over a five year period. 25 00:02:45,200 --> 00:02:49,050 So this is papers in highly prestigious journals like Nature and Science. 26 00:02:49,550 --> 00:02:59,390 And I analysed who was writing them. And so this involved manually going through 1300 authors to see their agenda, to see what country they were from. 27 00:03:00,140 --> 00:03:03,290 And I found this that how long did it take? 28 00:03:03,320 --> 00:03:09,580 Oh, it's many, many, many more time than I want to admit to for plate. 29 00:03:09,740 --> 00:03:16,460 Probably not the most efficient way to do this analysis, but basically I found that, maybe unsurprisingly, 30 00:03:16,580 --> 00:03:24,560 90% of the authors came from the Global North, so North America and Europe and less than 1% came from Africa. 31 00:03:24,590 --> 00:03:29,840 So I was expecting an inequality, but I wasn't expecting it to be this big, you know. 32 00:03:31,220 --> 00:03:35,640 And so what I did is I talked to lots of scientists about why they thought this was. 33 00:03:35,660 --> 00:03:39,319 So I spoke to experts from the global north and from the global south. Men and women. 34 00:03:39,320 --> 00:03:43,850 And I just spoke about what barriers they face in introducing climate science. 35 00:03:44,210 --> 00:03:49,340 And there were a huge, as you can imagine, a huge number of issues that they brought up. 36 00:03:49,730 --> 00:03:54,320 So there were things around funding, funding for equipment, funding for grants. 37 00:03:54,620 --> 00:04:00,109 There was the power imbalance of even if you do manage to collaborate with someone from the Global North, 38 00:04:00,110 --> 00:04:04,639 it has funding that produces this power imbalance in the way that your research is conducted. 39 00:04:04,640 --> 00:04:12,170 There are language barriers. Publishing in English is really, I don't want to say needed, 40 00:04:12,170 --> 00:04:19,260 but English really is the most popular language for people to read climate science and all of the really prestigious journals in English. 41 00:04:19,280 --> 00:04:24,290 So there's a language barrier that anyway so many issues that people raised. 42 00:04:24,980 --> 00:04:31,129 And so this really highlighted to me how important it is to to try to get some more diversity into our work and 43 00:04:31,130 --> 00:04:35,990 make it a little bit easier to just overcome a few of these barriers that Global South experts are facing. 44 00:04:37,690 --> 00:04:42,700 Hmm. And I guess Diego from the other side of this problem. 45 00:04:43,170 --> 00:04:46,979 You know, you are the manager of the Oxford Climate Journalism Network, 46 00:04:46,980 --> 00:04:53,520 and you've been in permanent contact in the last year or so with 200 Johnnies from all over the world. 47 00:04:54,120 --> 00:05:00,300 JOURNALIST Some of the climate journalism and also journalists interested in climate that cover other weather areas. 48 00:05:00,720 --> 00:05:06,660 So are they aware of this problem that Asia, you know, detected and, you know, 49 00:05:07,530 --> 00:05:13,890 in which ways this is actually impacting their reporting on the climate crisis? 50 00:05:15,280 --> 00:05:22,570 Yeah. I think it's very interesting how at the same time or like several months after that afterwards that Alicia and 51 00:05:22,750 --> 00:05:29,080 we finished this exercise and we started chatting with reporters at the Oxford Climate Journalism Network. 52 00:05:29,990 --> 00:05:34,610 We started hearing similar reports or similar circumstances. 53 00:05:34,610 --> 00:05:40,430 So what we do is network. We have lectures and workshops and seminars, but there's a lot of listening. 54 00:05:41,210 --> 00:05:47,450 Part of the exercise is creating community and sharing experiences and sharing what work and what's not working. 55 00:05:47,810 --> 00:05:55,610 On outcome of reporting. And many of our members, the majority of whom come from the global south, from Africa, 56 00:05:55,670 --> 00:05:59,720 Latin America, Asia and the Pacific, they were saying, look, I am struggling to find. 57 00:06:00,660 --> 00:06:05,580 Reports or scientists or experts that cover these topics in countries around me. 58 00:06:05,580 --> 00:06:13,920 And I can go back to my experience reporting climate change in Costa Rica when I was trying to find experts in Nicaragua or in Guatemala, Honduras. 59 00:06:15,180 --> 00:06:19,940 It was not entirely clear who these experts were and where are they placed. 60 00:06:19,950 --> 00:06:27,880 And if I wanted to report on a big paper that just came out. The papers were written by scientists in North America or in Europe. 61 00:06:28,750 --> 00:06:34,570 And if I just Googled oceanography, climate change, or even in Spanish oceanography, I can be thematic. 62 00:06:35,290 --> 00:06:39,370 It was likely that the scientists I came up with were not from our region. 63 00:06:40,880 --> 00:06:42,590 So that's something we discussed. 64 00:06:42,590 --> 00:06:50,780 And the other thing we kept hearing was that some of these reporters, we're hearing from their sources, from scientists. 65 00:06:50,810 --> 00:06:55,310 And I can distinctly recall one colleague from the Philippines who was telling us. 66 00:06:56,460 --> 00:07:03,120 My sources are telling me that they're frustrated because they are feeling sidelined on the reporting on climate change. 67 00:07:03,570 --> 00:07:08,790 Some scientists from elsewhere come and maybe spend a couple of weeks here and study the subject, 68 00:07:08,790 --> 00:07:15,600 and then they are quoted more often than people who maybe know this area for their whole lives. 69 00:07:16,170 --> 00:07:24,990 So these two topics we're on our mind by the time that one of our members, who was also a carbon brief reporter, Joe Goodman. 70 00:07:26,010 --> 00:07:32,760 Told her that she had this mind and we started discussing this and realised that there were many common issues that we were both facing. 71 00:07:33,840 --> 00:07:40,810 Absolutely. I think one of the things he said was so important that there are so many experts from the Global South who are feeling sidelined. 72 00:07:41,010 --> 00:07:47,880 But at the same time, even for journalists who really want to make diversity a big issue in their pieces, it's just so difficult. 73 00:07:47,910 --> 00:07:50,820 I mean, I don't know about you, Diego, when you were doing your reporting, 74 00:07:51,060 --> 00:07:56,100 but I could easily sink an entire day into trying to find diverse sources for peace. 75 00:07:56,400 --> 00:08:02,850 One day out of, let's say, two days. I have to write the piece and still not find anybody just from Googling, 76 00:08:02,850 --> 00:08:07,649 because people from the Global South in general seem to have such a lower Internet presence because they 77 00:08:07,650 --> 00:08:13,170 don't have access to these big journals and websites and places where they can get their name out there. 78 00:08:13,200 --> 00:08:17,490 So yeah, it was very exciting when you approached me and saw that you were also seeing these issues. 79 00:08:19,480 --> 00:08:24,670 Well, let's talk a little bit about the database itself, because now we have the database. 80 00:08:24,940 --> 00:08:28,240 It is available on Carbon Breathe Web site. 81 00:08:28,250 --> 00:08:38,020 And I would like you to walk our listeners through what we have right now, how many experts I've joined so far. 82 00:08:38,980 --> 00:08:42,500 How did you recruit them? 83 00:08:42,520 --> 00:08:45,670 How are you may find them. 84 00:08:46,090 --> 00:08:49,660 I mean, there was a little bit about that process. Absolutely. 85 00:08:49,710 --> 00:08:53,090 So as you said, the database is now life. Very exciting. 86 00:08:53,110 --> 00:08:55,570 On the Carbon Brief Web site, carbon brief dot org. 87 00:08:56,560 --> 00:09:03,100 So the way it works is that we have a Google phone and if a scientist from the Global South or an expert. 88 00:09:03,100 --> 00:09:07,240 So we're looking at climate science, energy and policy experts from the Global South. 89 00:09:07,630 --> 00:09:11,590 If they want to add their details to this database, they just need to fill in the Google form. 90 00:09:11,590 --> 00:09:17,260 It should take about 5 minutes and that response gets sent to me and Diego and our team, 91 00:09:17,860 --> 00:09:21,760 and then it gets to the very time consuming process of verification. 92 00:09:21,770 --> 00:09:25,900 We look through every single submission. We check that they are from the Global South. 93 00:09:26,440 --> 00:09:30,069 We check that they are actually an expert in what they say they are an expert in. 94 00:09:30,070 --> 00:09:34,120 We clean it up, we fix typos, spelling mistakes, etc., etc. 95 00:09:34,600 --> 00:09:39,630 And then the details go live onto the database. So we're trying to do that update maybe once a month. 96 00:09:40,540 --> 00:09:44,020 We don't have any Mickey Mouse or don't know lag or whatever. 97 00:09:44,110 --> 00:09:47,800 These are real experts, right? Absolutely. That is the idea. 98 00:09:48,790 --> 00:09:54,120 And it's interesting because, yeah, there are so many people who have signed up that do not belong there. 99 00:09:54,170 --> 00:09:56,050 If you want are the people who. 100 00:09:57,000 --> 00:10:05,370 Are based and are from the global north side is from from Germany or from Denmark or sciences are from Germany and Denmark, 101 00:10:05,370 --> 00:10:11,069 but are based in the Global South because part of the idea is so many of these top scientists from Europe, 102 00:10:11,070 --> 00:10:17,340 North America, they go to countries like Costa Rica or South Africa or Singapore to share their expertise over there. 103 00:10:17,850 --> 00:10:22,470 And maybe we wouldn't like to highlight more scientists or experts from those countries, 104 00:10:23,160 --> 00:10:29,250 but also just a lot of people who you just feel they want to share their expertise. 105 00:10:29,250 --> 00:10:34,079 But but they maybe they're reporters or it's interesting how many people just want to join. 106 00:10:34,080 --> 00:10:44,909 I think from our first cut, we were doing 540 or so entries and out of those 410 or 20 reached the big database. 107 00:10:44,910 --> 00:10:51,450 The rest were still like either discussing with them like maybe we need more information or just it didn't cut it for one reason or the other. 108 00:10:51,450 --> 00:10:53,760 Maybe they didn't have a specific line of expertise. 109 00:10:54,420 --> 00:11:01,170 And on this, I think it's interesting that we are asking scientists and experts to submit this their end to themselves. 110 00:11:02,280 --> 00:11:07,200 Because this might be seen as an extra burden for them. 111 00:11:08,460 --> 00:11:15,090 So why do I have to do it myself? Why can't carbon brief it which needs to just come and make their own database? 112 00:11:15,570 --> 00:11:21,809 And for us it's very important that we are not seen as the judges of who is who should be in the first place. 113 00:11:21,810 --> 00:11:24,000 So if you submit, then we'll verify it. 114 00:11:24,630 --> 00:11:30,570 But we didn't want this database to be only people we know because it makes narrower, you know, just by definition. 115 00:11:31,710 --> 00:11:37,560 Absolutely. And that's such a good point, because some other people have also asked, can you verify who is a good speaker? 116 00:11:37,560 --> 00:11:40,830 Like can you rank people based on how good they will be for media appearances? 117 00:11:41,190 --> 00:11:46,020 And that, again, is something that we're not going to do. We're not going to impose our views on these experts. 118 00:11:46,410 --> 00:11:49,410 We will sort of put the database that journalists can use it themselves. 119 00:11:49,410 --> 00:11:53,399 But we're not going to start trying to rank experts by how good they would be to speak to. 120 00:11:53,400 --> 00:11:59,400 That's not our role. Yeah. So so the experts will will add their own details. 121 00:11:59,400 --> 00:12:03,000 It's self submission. And as data has said, we think that's really important. 122 00:12:04,320 --> 00:12:12,240 And so as it is, we have experts from more than 80 countries who collectively speak more than 50 languages on the database. 123 00:12:12,630 --> 00:12:17,160 So every expert on the database speaks English. We decided to make that a prerequisite. 124 00:12:17,550 --> 00:12:23,340 But of our 412 experts, there are more than 50 other languages represented there as well, which is very exciting. 125 00:12:23,820 --> 00:12:28,830 And I should also add that since the launch of the database, which is only five days ago, 126 00:12:28,830 --> 00:12:34,530 from the day we're recording, we've had about four or 500 new submissions to the database. 127 00:12:34,530 --> 00:12:40,480 So it is really taking off and we will try to update every month or so with with new submissions. 128 00:12:40,500 --> 00:12:44,490 This is a constantly evolving process, so we're constantly new people added. 129 00:12:45,270 --> 00:12:50,639 And so that's very exciting and is really exciting to hear. 130 00:12:50,640 --> 00:12:54,270 Yes, I should mention this briefly, 131 00:12:54,270 --> 00:13:02,969 but one of the coolest things about the database is that it includes experts who can do interviews in more than 50 different languages. 132 00:13:02,970 --> 00:13:06,900 And obviously you and I are both Spanish native speakers. 133 00:13:08,010 --> 00:13:14,040 And from your conversations with Time, the journal is not just in Latin America but, you know, in other regions. 134 00:13:16,110 --> 00:13:23,009 Why do you think this really matters? I mean, what would be the impact to have these kind of experts, you know, who can give interviews, 135 00:13:23,010 --> 00:13:27,810 let's say, in French or India or Urdu or any other languages around the world? 136 00:13:29,550 --> 00:13:35,640 I think it's fundamental and not only global Southern languages, but also languages like German and Swedish. 137 00:13:35,670 --> 00:13:40,470 I was checking the database and we do have people speaking German and people speaking Swedish and. 138 00:13:41,940 --> 00:13:44,760 So and I think it's critical for for several reasons. 139 00:13:45,360 --> 00:13:49,680 The first one, obviously, is because majority people around the world don't speak English as a first language, 140 00:13:50,490 --> 00:13:57,840 and naturally you feel more comfortable sharing ideas and interviewing someone in your own language. 141 00:13:58,970 --> 00:13:59,870 That is the first point. 142 00:14:00,200 --> 00:14:10,350 But then because of the nature of journalism, especially audio and video journalism, you require someone who speaks the language of your audience. 143 00:14:10,370 --> 00:14:15,860 So if you're reporting from Argentina. You need someone who speaks Spanish. 144 00:14:16,370 --> 00:14:25,640 And if you're in Angola, one who speaks Portuguese and you just need someone who can understand sorry or your audience can understand. 145 00:14:27,040 --> 00:14:32,590 So that's fundamental for just for the issue of like, how do you make sure your audience understands this expert? 146 00:14:33,280 --> 00:14:40,269 And then the other point is you just need scientists that you can talk to and make it make it easy to to comment. 147 00:14:40,270 --> 00:14:45,010 And this is relevant and is really felt by reporters. 148 00:14:45,550 --> 00:14:55,210 This week we had one of our weekly chats at the Oxford Commentaries Network, and one of our members was Neil Kamal from India. 149 00:14:55,600 --> 00:15:00,999 He was mentioning he just was just really thankful for the fact that we have languages 150 00:15:01,000 --> 00:15:05,649 listed and he can reach out to people in India and see who actually speaks Hindi here, 151 00:15:05,650 --> 00:15:11,180 who can interview. And I think that makes a difference of reporting on on a topic. 152 00:15:12,210 --> 00:15:17,520 Especially if maybe you're, you know, deadline you don't have time to translate back into your language. 153 00:15:17,730 --> 00:15:21,060 I think that just makes it easy for reporters to understand. 154 00:15:21,570 --> 00:15:30,209 And also, if you are reporting from friends or from Spain or from Italy or from Germany and you want someone to speak to on air in your language, 155 00:15:30,210 --> 00:15:34,050 you can actually Google this or search the state database as it was there. 156 00:15:34,050 --> 00:15:38,520 Who's who's speaking the language. Sure. 157 00:15:39,360 --> 00:15:47,970 Once we have such a diverse and huge database as we do now, I guess that the challenge is to get journalists to use it. 158 00:15:48,690 --> 00:15:52,079 And I don't know if you can tell us, I mean, 159 00:15:52,080 --> 00:16:00,360 which kind of things you guys are planning to do to ensure that the database actually moves the 160 00:16:00,360 --> 00:16:07,440 needle in terms of the diversity of the climate change coverage in publications around the world? 161 00:16:08,130 --> 00:16:10,650 Absolutely. Well, I should thank you for keeping us on track, 162 00:16:10,650 --> 00:16:16,280 because it feels only five days after the launch that we're still reeling from everything we've been doing over the past few months. 163 00:16:16,290 --> 00:16:20,220 But yes, as you say, got a person got to get more people using this database. 164 00:16:20,430 --> 00:16:26,830 So one of the first and maybe most important things is COP 27 is coming up starting on Monday. 165 00:16:26,850 --> 00:16:31,110 And we obviously will have journalists and scientists and experts from all over 166 00:16:31,110 --> 00:16:35,460 the world travelling to Egypt to Sharm el Sheikh to talk about climate change. 167 00:16:35,790 --> 00:16:41,370 And so we have some people from Carbon Brief, some people from the Reuters Journalism Institute will be travelling there. 168 00:16:41,820 --> 00:16:46,910 And, well, very basically they'll be trying to promote the database to as many people as they can. 169 00:16:46,920 --> 00:16:50,459 So we actually have a little QR codes that they're going to be taking around and 170 00:16:50,460 --> 00:16:54,240 flashing at people and asking them to sit down with them and fill the database. 171 00:16:54,750 --> 00:17:00,600 So the big thing that I'm really looking forward to is we're going to be implementing media training for the experts on the database. 172 00:17:00,960 --> 00:17:04,830 So it's all very well to have a database of experts from the Global South. 173 00:17:05,160 --> 00:17:09,780 But if they don't understand how to interact well with journalists, how to do quotes, 174 00:17:09,780 --> 00:17:13,830 how to respond to media inquiries, it's not going to be very useful to the journalists. 175 00:17:14,070 --> 00:17:16,980 That's what we want. We want to make this database useful for journalists. 176 00:17:17,370 --> 00:17:24,690 So in the new year, the plan is to basically put forward some training to help global experts understand what is needed from them. 177 00:17:24,960 --> 00:17:26,850 When a journalist reaches out with a question. 178 00:17:28,410 --> 00:17:36,840 Well, I, I'd like to finish this episode actually speaking a little bit more generally about COP 27 that I should just mention. 179 00:17:36,840 --> 00:17:42,290 I mean and this taking place in Egypt this year, actually later this month. 180 00:17:42,440 --> 00:17:49,110 Diego, what would you say are the main issues that news organisations should be paying attention to this time? 181 00:17:50,220 --> 00:17:57,110 I think the topic that will take most of the attention this time will be the loss and damage the recent floods in Pakistan, 182 00:17:57,120 --> 00:18:02,610 the heat waves around the world, the hurricanes in the Caribbean and typhoons in the Pacific. 183 00:18:03,720 --> 00:18:08,010 I think this issue of like, what is the extent of what we're losing? 184 00:18:08,010 --> 00:18:13,510 How are we going to pay back for that? Is going to be at the centre of the conversation. 185 00:18:14,780 --> 00:18:18,080 And I think that will where the media attention will be, I think. 186 00:18:18,860 --> 00:18:23,600 But I would like to me to go out further on and then start asking. 187 00:18:25,430 --> 00:18:27,780 I start following the money after loss and damage. 188 00:18:28,580 --> 00:18:35,030 I think most damage will be discussed a lot as a topic in itself, but the financial implications of that, 189 00:18:35,300 --> 00:18:42,460 I think will be interesting not only and then the money, not only the loss and damage, but all the money also in mitigation and adaptation. 190 00:18:42,470 --> 00:18:45,799 We have so much money being discussed. 191 00:18:45,800 --> 00:18:52,640 We discussing the new financial goal of after 2025 the new the new like the new 100 billion was going to be who's going to pay. 192 00:18:53,120 --> 00:18:59,150 I think all these big money issues, I would expect to be at the centre of the conversation after this cop. 193 00:19:00,350 --> 00:19:05,990 And as for me, after the cup, I think the cup ends and media coverage, climate change I hope would continue following. 194 00:19:06,620 --> 00:19:14,060 And I think we are getting better as an industry, slightly better at not only covering climate change two weeks every year, 195 00:19:14,420 --> 00:19:18,230 but getting more of a flow across the other 50 weeks of the year. 196 00:19:19,460 --> 00:19:21,230 Hmm. That's a great point. 197 00:19:21,230 --> 00:19:32,120 And I have a slightly different question for Aisha, which is what would you like to see from news organisations that are covering COP 27 this year? 198 00:19:33,510 --> 00:19:39,550 Yes. So I completely agree with Diego that I think loss and damage is going to be the big thing that media is covering. 199 00:19:39,570 --> 00:19:44,100 I got 27 and so what I'm really interested to see is who they talk to, 200 00:19:44,130 --> 00:19:49,380 who journalists talk to about this issue, because there are some real giants in the field of loss and damage. 201 00:19:49,920 --> 00:19:58,170 For example, Sandy Hook from from Bangladesh. And I think it would be very easy for journalists to go to these same people repeatedly and for 202 00:19:58,200 --> 00:20:02,400 basically every outlet to be running a very similar story with a very similar set of quotes. 203 00:20:02,790 --> 00:20:08,460 And so I'm really interested to see if there are any new voices who arise out of 27 this year. 204 00:20:08,490 --> 00:20:14,459 And if the media really does put that time and effort into finding different experts for this topic, 205 00:20:14,460 --> 00:20:17,910 I think that will be that's what I'm hoping to see from this from this top. 206 00:20:19,750 --> 00:20:30,190 That's also a very good point. Finally, like you both to highlight, actually, one of the experts in our Global South climate database, 207 00:20:31,030 --> 00:20:36,070 I mean, you can choose more than one tree, but obviously the purpose of this is to highlight the, 208 00:20:36,100 --> 00:20:41,860 you know, the work of one of these people who have actually joined the database and that journalists 209 00:20:41,860 --> 00:20:46,310 can reach out for some of their coverage in the next few weeks or in the next few months. 210 00:20:47,110 --> 00:20:52,320 Maybe we're going to start with you. I said absolutely, but I have picked just one person. 211 00:20:52,330 --> 00:20:55,450 It was very difficult, but I have selected one person from the database. 212 00:20:56,140 --> 00:21:02,410 This is 1303 guys from Brazil. And I selected her because I've done a lot of work with her in the lead up to 213 00:21:02,410 --> 00:21:05,770 the launch of the database and she's been really helpful to bounce ideas off. 214 00:21:06,190 --> 00:21:11,049 And she actually spoke at the soft launch of the event of the database as an event a couple 215 00:21:11,050 --> 00:21:15,640 of months ago about some of the barriers faced by climate experts from the Global South. 216 00:21:15,640 --> 00:21:21,170 She's been very vocal about it and very open and really helps me to understand some of the issues that she's been facing. 217 00:21:21,670 --> 00:21:29,140 Aside from that, she is a fantastic scientist as well. So she's studying compound extreme events in the ocean and on land. 218 00:21:29,440 --> 00:21:34,900 And she's a very good speaker. She's she's done work with, for example, nature commentary pieces before. 219 00:21:35,170 --> 00:21:41,560 So she's got lots of experience with the media as well. And I would love to see some more people contacting her for her expertise. 220 00:21:44,210 --> 00:21:48,080 Okay. We got that down. Regina Rodriguez from Brazil. 221 00:21:48,470 --> 00:21:55,250 So, Diego, what's your choice? I'm going to go Home-grown and I'm going to go for Dr. Andrea Vincent, 222 00:21:55,250 --> 00:22:03,080 who is an assistant professor of ecological systems or ecosystem ecology at my home university, University of Costa Rica. 223 00:22:03,110 --> 00:22:07,340 And Andrea is one of these like forces of nature. 224 00:22:08,270 --> 00:22:13,390 And it is crazy. She's like so like experienced in your field. 225 00:22:13,400 --> 00:22:21,950 She does carbon like in soils and the whole like geo carbon system and she has a 226 00:22:21,950 --> 00:22:25,550 gazillion experiments at the same time in Costa Rica and mentors students over there. 227 00:22:26,210 --> 00:22:29,990 And I just I just really enjoy that work that she does back home. 228 00:22:31,640 --> 00:22:35,810 And I really admire her a lot. But the other person I also want to highlight is David Huda, 229 00:22:36,410 --> 00:22:42,559 who is the founding director of Coastal Ocean Research and Development in the Indian Ocean. 230 00:22:42,560 --> 00:22:48,810 Quotidien is Africa. And David is just this just. 231 00:22:48,930 --> 00:22:52,260 He works like marine science and biodiversity. 232 00:22:52,800 --> 00:22:59,100 He came to speak to our network on our biodiversity seminar a couple of couple of weeks ago or like a month ago. 233 00:22:59,850 --> 00:23:04,800 And he was so great. He was part of this episode on IPCC biodiversity, on climate change. 234 00:23:05,460 --> 00:23:10,830 So like work joined workshop. And he just knows his stuff on biodiversity and climate change. 235 00:23:12,050 --> 00:23:16,220 Which is one of my favourite topics to cover when I was reporting on climate change. 236 00:23:16,670 --> 00:23:21,290 And I think that strikes me just mentioned this to people and also Regina and so many in the database. 237 00:23:21,590 --> 00:23:28,370 It's just the level of scientists we have here because IPCC, okay, we'll just find some science from the Global South and which is included in. 238 00:23:30,210 --> 00:23:33,810 But it's just entirely the opposite. The quality of people here. 239 00:23:34,810 --> 00:23:39,640 Is as good or better than the average reporter you cite we have in the global north. 240 00:23:40,270 --> 00:23:44,650 And I think just highlighting that this is just not chatter reporting this is just like 241 00:23:45,190 --> 00:23:49,690 this wouldn't reach any news organisations coverage of climate change any day of the week. 242 00:23:49,810 --> 00:23:56,170 You just find out who these people are and reach out to them because it's just outstanding what they're doing in their fields. 243 00:23:56,530 --> 00:23:58,329 Yeah, absolutely. I don't know about you, 244 00:23:58,330 --> 00:24:05,290 but I have spent hours just trolling the database and kind of grinning at the people that I'm finding about the expertise they have. 245 00:24:05,290 --> 00:24:12,259 It is amazing. Well, that's a super great note to end the podcast with. 246 00:24:12,260 --> 00:24:18,320 And we encourage any of our listeners, any journalists who are listening to to go to the database, 247 00:24:19,010 --> 00:24:24,350 find Gina Rodriguez from Brazil, Andrea Vincent from Costa Rica, or Davida, Borat from Kenya. 248 00:24:24,640 --> 00:24:25,730 But many, many, 249 00:24:25,730 --> 00:24:34,190 many other names there are like hundreds of names of people you can reach out to for your climate coverage in the next few weeks or months. 250 00:24:34,790 --> 00:24:39,320 Aisha and Diego, thank you so much for joining us for the podcast today. 251 00:24:40,550 --> 00:24:43,550 Thanks for having us. It's been great. Yeah, thanks for the chat. 252 00:24:43,550 --> 00:24:51,040 Over. Well, we remind you that our guests today have been Aisha Tanden, and they want to get that sorted. 253 00:24:51,100 --> 00:24:54,610 Aisha, you said the same journalism for I Can't Breathe. 254 00:24:54,610 --> 00:24:59,320 And Diggle, he's the manager of our own Oxford Climate Journalism Network. 255 00:24:59,890 --> 00:25:06,670 Thank you so much for listening to this episode. You can catch up on other episodes on Spotify or Apple Podcasts. 256 00:25:07,000 --> 00:25:09,910 And if you don't want to miss any news from the Institute, 257 00:25:09,970 --> 00:25:16,360 you can subscribe to our weekly newsletter by clicking the link on our Twitter bio or on our homepage. 258 00:25:16,870 --> 00:25:21,530 This was Future of Journalism, a podcast by the Reuters Institute aimed at one story. 259 00:25:22,150 --> 00:25:22,990 We'll be back soon.