Welcome to Future of Journalism, a podcast from the right, the Institute for the Study of Journalism at the University of Oxford.
I'm Edward's wife, Heather Victoria of the Institute. From unprecedented heatwaves in Spain to devastating flooding in Pakistan.
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.
The global majority is mostly sidelined when these issues are discussed.
This is why a climate focus carbon brief and the Reuters Institute have launched the Global South Climate Database.
Publicly available, searchable database of scientists and experts from Africa, Asia Pacific and Latin America and the Caribbean.
How many scientists have joined our database? Where do they come from?
How can journalists use this resource in their reporting?
And most crucially, what are the next steps for the project?
Well, those are the questions I am going to put today to our guests who are Aisha Tandon and Diego Sirtis,
the journalists who are leading on this project.
Aisha is a climate and science journalist from Campbell Brown, and Diego is the manager of the Oxford Climate Journalism Network,
an initiative that will launch in 2021 and whose founders were to go on Blue Mirror, Selva, Asia and Diego.
Welcome to the podcast. Thanks for having us.
Yeah, thanks for having us here. Aisha, I'm going to start with you.
I mean, the origin of this initiative can be traced actually to an analysis that post about the
lack of diversity in climate science and expertise that you published in October 2021.
And so I'm sure that our listeners would be interested.
What did you find back then? Absolutely.
So as you say, the wheels started turning to this project, if you like, about a year ago when I published this analysis.
So we at Carbon Brief, we're running a feature week on the topic of climate justice.
And the piece that I contributed to that, I wanted to look at the lack of diversity within climate science.
I wanted to look at how climate papers get out there and who are the people who are writing these papers.
So I looked at the 100 most highly cited climate science papers over a five year period.
So this is papers in highly prestigious journals like Nature and Science.
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.
And I found this that how long did it take?
Oh, it's many, many, many more time than I want to admit to for plate.
Probably not the most efficient way to do this analysis, but basically I found that, maybe unsurprisingly,
90% of the authors came from the Global North, so North America and Europe and less than 1% came from Africa.
So I was expecting an inequality, but I wasn't expecting it to be this big, you know.
And so what I did is I talked to lots of scientists about why they thought this was.
So I spoke to experts from the global north and from the global south. Men and women.
And I just spoke about what barriers they face in introducing climate science.
And there were a huge, as you can imagine, a huge number of issues that they brought up.
So there were things around funding, funding for equipment, funding for grants.
There was the power imbalance of even if you do manage to collaborate with someone from the Global North,
it has funding that produces this power imbalance in the way that your research is conducted.
There are language barriers. Publishing in English is really, I don't want to say needed,
but English really is the most popular language for people to read climate science and all of the really prestigious journals in English.
So there's a language barrier that anyway so many issues that people raised.
And so this really highlighted to me how important it is to to try to get some more diversity into our work and
make it a little bit easier to just overcome a few of these barriers that Global South experts are facing.
Hmm. And I guess Diego from the other side of this problem.
You know, you are the manager of the Oxford Climate Journalism Network,
and you've been in permanent contact in the last year or so with 200 Johnnies from all over the world.
JOURNALIST Some of the climate journalism and also journalists interested in climate that cover other weather areas.
So are they aware of this problem that Asia, you know, detected and, you know,
in which ways this is actually impacting their reporting on the climate crisis?
Yeah. I think it's very interesting how at the same time or like several months after that afterwards that Alicia and
we finished this exercise and we started chatting with reporters at the Oxford Climate Journalism Network.
We started hearing similar reports or similar circumstances.
So what we do is network. We have lectures and workshops and seminars, but there's a lot of listening.
Part of the exercise is creating community and sharing experiences and sharing what work and what's not working.
On outcome of reporting. And many of our members, the majority of whom come from the global south, from Africa,
Latin America, Asia and the Pacific, they were saying, look, I am struggling to find.
Reports or scientists or experts that cover these topics in countries around me.
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.
It was not entirely clear who these experts were and where are they placed.
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.
And if I just Googled oceanography, climate change, or even in Spanish oceanography, I can be thematic.
It was likely that the scientists I came up with were not from our region.
So that's something we discussed.
And the other thing we kept hearing was that some of these reporters, we're hearing from their sources, from scientists.
And I can distinctly recall one colleague from the Philippines who was telling us.
My sources are telling me that they're frustrated because they are feeling sidelined on the reporting on climate change.
Some scientists from elsewhere come and maybe spend a couple of weeks here and study the subject,
and then they are quoted more often than people who maybe know this area for their whole lives.
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.
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.
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.
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.
I mean, I don't know about you, Diego, when you were doing your reporting,
but I could easily sink an entire day into trying to find diverse sources for peace.
One day out of, let's say, two days. I have to write the piece and still not find anybody just from Googling,
because people from the Global South in general seem to have such a lower Internet presence because they
don't have access to these big journals and websites and places where they can get their name out there.
So yeah, it was very exciting when you approached me and saw that you were also seeing these issues.
Well, let's talk a little bit about the database itself, because now we have the database.
It is available on Carbon Breathe Web site.
And I would like you to walk our listeners through what we have right now, how many experts I've joined so far.
How did you recruit them?
How are you may find them.
I mean, there was a little bit about that process. Absolutely.
So as you said, the database is now life. Very exciting.
On the Carbon Brief Web site, carbon brief dot org.
So the way it works is that we have a Google phone and if a scientist from the Global South or an expert.
So we're looking at climate science, energy and policy experts from the Global South.
If they want to add their details to this database, they just need to fill in the Google form.
It should take about 5 minutes and that response gets sent to me and Diego and our team,
and then it gets to the very time consuming process of verification.
We look through every single submission. We check that they are from the Global South.
We check that they are actually an expert in what they say they are an expert in.
We clean it up, we fix typos, spelling mistakes, etc., etc.
And then the details go live onto the database. So we're trying to do that update maybe once a month.
We don't have any Mickey Mouse or don't know lag or whatever.
These are real experts, right? Absolutely. That is the idea.
And it's interesting because, yeah, there are so many people who have signed up that do not belong there.
If you want are the people who.
Are based and are from the global north side is from from Germany or from Denmark or sciences are from Germany and Denmark,
but are based in the Global South because part of the idea is so many of these top scientists from Europe,
North America, they go to countries like Costa Rica or South Africa or Singapore to share their expertise over there.
And maybe we wouldn't like to highlight more scientists or experts from those countries,
but also just a lot of people who you just feel they want to share their expertise.
But but they maybe they're reporters or it's interesting how many people just want to join.
I think from our first cut, we were doing 540 or so entries and out of those 410 or 20 reached the big database.
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.
Maybe they didn't have a specific line of expertise.
And on this, I think it's interesting that we are asking scientists and experts to submit this their end to themselves.
Because this might be seen as an extra burden for them.
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?
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.
So if you submit, then we'll verify it.
But we didn't want this database to be only people we know because it makes narrower, you know, just by definition.
Absolutely. And that's such a good point, because some other people have also asked, can you verify who is a good speaker?
Like can you rank people based on how good they will be for media appearances?
And that, again, is something that we're not going to do. We're not going to impose our views on these experts.
We will sort of put the database that journalists can use it themselves.
But we're not going to start trying to rank experts by how good they would be to speak to.
That's not our role. Yeah. So so the experts will will add their own details.
It's self submission. And as data has said, we think that's really important.
And so as it is, we have experts from more than 80 countries who collectively speak more than 50 languages on the database.
So every expert on the database speaks English. We decided to make that a prerequisite.
But of our 412 experts, there are more than 50 other languages represented there as well, which is very exciting.
And I should also add that since the launch of the database, which is only five days ago,
from the day we're recording, we've had about four or 500 new submissions to the database.
So it is really taking off and we will try to update every month or so with with new submissions.
This is a constantly evolving process, so we're constantly new people added.
And so that's very exciting and is really exciting to hear.
Yes, I should mention this briefly,
but one of the coolest things about the database is that it includes experts who can do interviews in more than 50 different languages.
And obviously you and I are both Spanish native speakers.
And from your conversations with Time, the journal is not just in Latin America but, you know, in other regions.
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,
let's say, in French or India or Urdu or any other languages around the world?
I think it's fundamental and not only global Southern languages, but also languages like German and Swedish.
I was checking the database and we do have people speaking German and people speaking Swedish and.
So and I think it's critical for for several reasons.
The first one, obviously, is because majority people around the world don't speak English as a first language,
and naturally you feel more comfortable sharing ideas and interviewing someone in your own language.
That is the first point.
But then because of the nature of journalism, especially audio and video journalism, you require someone who speaks the language of your audience.
So if you're reporting from Argentina. You need someone who speaks Spanish.
And if you're in Angola, one who speaks Portuguese and you just need someone who can understand sorry or your audience can understand.
So that's fundamental for just for the issue of like, how do you make sure your audience understands this expert?
And then the other point is you just need scientists that you can talk to and make it make it easy to to comment.
And this is relevant and is really felt by reporters.
This week we had one of our weekly chats at the Oxford Commentaries Network, and one of our members was Neil Kamal from India.
He was mentioning he just was just really thankful for the fact that we have languages
listed and he can reach out to people in India and see who actually speaks Hindi here,
who can interview. And I think that makes a difference of reporting on on a topic.
Especially if maybe you're, you know, deadline you don't have time to translate back into your language.
I think that just makes it easy for reporters to understand.
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,
you can actually Google this or search the state database as it was there.
Who's who's speaking the language. Sure.
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.
And I don't know if you can tell us, I mean,
which kind of things you guys are planning to do to ensure that the database actually moves the
needle in terms of the diversity of the climate change coverage in publications around the world?
Absolutely. Well, I should thank you for keeping us on track,
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.
But yes, as you say, got a person got to get more people using this database.
So one of the first and maybe most important things is COP 27 is coming up starting on Monday.
And we obviously will have journalists and scientists and experts from all over
the world travelling to Egypt to Sharm el Sheikh to talk about climate change.
And so we have some people from Carbon Brief, some people from the Reuters Journalism Institute will be travelling there.
And, well, very basically they'll be trying to promote the database to as many people as they can.
So we actually have a little QR codes that they're going to be taking around and
flashing at people and asking them to sit down with them and fill the database.
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.
So it's all very well to have a database of experts from the Global South.
But if they don't understand how to interact well with journalists, how to do quotes,
how to respond to media inquiries, it's not going to be very useful to the journalists.
That's what we want. We want to make this database useful for journalists.
So in the new year, the plan is to basically put forward some training to help global experts understand what is needed from them.
When a journalist reaches out with a question.
Well, I, I'd like to finish this episode actually speaking a little bit more generally about COP 27 that I should just mention.
I mean and this taking place in Egypt this year, actually later this month.
Diego, what would you say are the main issues that news organisations should be paying attention to this time?
I think the topic that will take most of the attention this time will be the loss and damage the recent floods in Pakistan,
the heat waves around the world, the hurricanes in the Caribbean and typhoons in the Pacific.
I think this issue of like, what is the extent of what we're losing?
How are we going to pay back for that? Is going to be at the centre of the conversation.
And I think that will where the media attention will be, I think.
But I would like to me to go out further on and then start asking.
I start following the money after loss and damage.
I think most damage will be discussed a lot as a topic in itself, but the financial implications of that,
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.
We have so much money being discussed.
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.
I think all these big money issues, I would expect to be at the centre of the conversation after this cop.
And as for me, after the cup, I think the cup ends and media coverage, climate change I hope would continue following.
And I think we are getting better as an industry, slightly better at not only covering climate change two weeks every year,
but getting more of a flow across the other 50 weeks of the year.
Hmm. That's a great point.
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?
Yes. So I completely agree with Diego that I think loss and damage is going to be the big thing that media is covering.
I got 27 and so what I'm really interested to see is who they talk to,
who journalists talk to about this issue, because there are some real giants in the field of loss and damage.
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
basically every outlet to be running a very similar story with a very similar set of quotes.
And so I'm really interested to see if there are any new voices who arise out of 27 this year.
And if the media really does put that time and effort into finding different experts for this topic,
I think that will be that's what I'm hoping to see from this from this top.
That's also a very good point. Finally, like you both to highlight, actually, one of the experts in our Global South climate database,
I mean, you can choose more than one tree, but obviously the purpose of this is to highlight the,
you know, the work of one of these people who have actually joined the database and that journalists
can reach out for some of their coverage in the next few weeks or in the next few months.
Maybe we're going to start with you. I said absolutely, but I have picked just one person.
It was very difficult, but I have selected one person from the database.
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
the launch of the database and she's been really helpful to bounce ideas off.
And she actually spoke at the soft launch of the event of the database as an event a couple
of months ago about some of the barriers faced by climate experts from the Global South.
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.
Aside from that, she is a fantastic scientist as well. So she's studying compound extreme events in the ocean and on land.
And she's a very good speaker. She's she's done work with, for example, nature commentary pieces before.
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.
Okay. We got that down. Regina Rodriguez from Brazil.
So, Diego, what's your choice? I'm going to go Home-grown and I'm going to go for Dr. Andrea Vincent,
who is an assistant professor of ecological systems or ecosystem ecology at my home university, University of Costa Rica.
And Andrea is one of these like forces of nature.
And it is crazy. She's like so like experienced in your field.
She does carbon like in soils and the whole like geo carbon system and she has a
gazillion experiments at the same time in Costa Rica and mentors students over there.
And I just I just really enjoy that work that she does back home.
And I really admire her a lot. But the other person I also want to highlight is David Huda,
who is the founding director of Coastal Ocean Research and Development in the Indian Ocean.
Quotidien is Africa. And David is just this just.
He works like marine science and biodiversity.
He came to speak to our network on our biodiversity seminar a couple of couple of weeks ago or like a month ago.
And he was so great. He was part of this episode on IPCC biodiversity, on climate change.
So like work joined workshop. And he just knows his stuff on biodiversity and climate change.
Which is one of my favourite topics to cover when I was reporting on climate change.
And I think that strikes me just mentioned this to people and also Regina and so many in the database.
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.
But it's just entirely the opposite. The quality of people here.
Is as good or better than the average reporter you cite we have in the global north.
And I think just highlighting that this is just not chatter reporting this is just like
this wouldn't reach any news organisations coverage of climate change any day of the week.
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.
Yeah, absolutely. I don't know about you,
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.
It is amazing. Well, that's a super great note to end the podcast with.
And we encourage any of our listeners, any journalists who are listening to to go to the database,
find Gina Rodriguez from Brazil, Andrea Vincent from Costa Rica, or Davida, Borat from Kenya.
But many, many,
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.
Aisha and Diego, thank you so much for joining us for the podcast today.
Thanks for having us. It's been great. Yeah, thanks for the chat.
Over. Well, we remind you that our guests today have been Aisha Tanden, and they want to get that sorted.
Aisha, you said the same journalism for I Can't Breathe.
And Diggle, he's the manager of our own Oxford Climate Journalism Network.
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