Climate Arena 2024

A cross-border data-driven investigation by Voxeurop, the Guardian and European Investigative Collaborations Network exposed banks and other financial institutions which misuse green-labeled funds to pour investors' money into the world's top polluters. The project looked at financial institutions, including large asset managers like BlackRock and Vanguard, as well as major banks like JPMorgan Chase and HSBC, that continue to fund the world's largest greenhouse gas emitters despite their commitment to sustainability.

In this panel, three journalists who made this award-winning story happen will tell you about their methods on investigating "financial greenwashing". 

The recent European Parliament elections marked a shift to the right, with right-wing populist parties gaining seats across the EU. This has sparked concerns that these parties are increasingly leveraging polarising debates over climate action, pressuring mainstream parties to scale back their environmental ambitions. In some countries where they are not in government, right-wing populists are positioning themselves as the most viable opposition, challenging the political landscape.

While much of the media coverage has focused on the rise and electoral success of these populist parties and their climate-skeptic views, there has been less attention on the concrete implications for climate action when such parties come to power.

This panel will have Clean Energy Wire and DeSmog talking about their work in tracking, collecting and reporting on misinformation. DeSmog will discuss how they developed tools to track climate-related misinformation before the EU elections and their lessons learned, as well as how they structured a cross-border investigation on the issue. Clean Energy Wire will explain practical strategies for reporting on these developments, offering insights on how to cover the intersection of climate policy and populism without legitimising or normalising far-right ideologies.

This session puts the focus on the agribusiness industry. More specifically, the panellists will discuss ways to investigate industrial meat production’s impact (which is huge and ugly) and methane emissions (which is the second most abundant greenhouse gas).  

GIJN’s resource centre director Nikolia Apostolou will talk about why methane matters, how journalist can cover methane emissions, where to find data sources, how to investigate (flawed) measurement systems, and how to find methane emitters on the ground and from the sky. She will also discuss how to critically assess disclosures and commitments by companies.

Journalists Jonas Seufert and Marie Bröckling will talk about their work on the hidden environmental costs of industrial slaughterhouses and how they use cheap public water in Germany. Their investigation involves large meat processing companies with further production facilities in Belgium, Denmark, Spain, Poland, UK, France, Austria or Italy. They will explain how they collected data through FOIA and EIA requests and how they connected data to on-the-ground reporting.

How do you communicate big numbers, extreme events, and (bad) future prospects to your audience? How do you effectively deliver the news to communities that are most affected? Or to a younger generation? These are challenges that all journalists face but if your beat is climate and the environment, you might be feeling the pressure more.  

Come to this panel to hear from three journalists about their experiences, their methods, and their lessons learnt.

Iliana Papangeli will talk about how their recent popular story which involved an unconventional approach to writing about (and recording) bird hunting, Mauricio Ferro will talk about how they created Brazil’s first app-newsroom to deliver stories to news desserts, and Sophia Smith Galer will give you tips and tricks about how to make punchy and informative TikTok videos to capture the attention of hundreds of thousands of people (yes even with climate stories!).