Climate Arena 2024

From logging to agricultural land conversion, human activities on land significantly impact the global cycles of greenhouse gases. As a result, not only does it affect the climate, but also plants, mammals, birds, lichens and fungi.  

But these complex "cause and effect" relationships are difficult to grasp, making it challenging to get a big picture and report on them effectively. More than ever before, we need a "systems" way of looking at the complex relationships between climate, land use and biodiversity to dissect how they are influenced by human actions and driven by factors like the international trade.

This session will feature scientists working on these issues and -interactively- unfold some of this complexity using systems thinking tools, and discuss how journalists can report on these pressing matters.

In collaboration with CLEVER and DETECT projects.

Without looking it up, would you know if the "Clean Resource Innovation Network” is an oil and gas lobbying organisation? Lobbyists often hide under unintuitive or misleading affiliations that obscure their origins. The work of uncovering their identities can be time-consuming and challenging.  

This workshop will outline an approach to using web scraping and Large Language Models (LLMs), like those powering ChatGPT, to systematically identify organisations that are affiliated with the fossil fuel industry. These techniques could also be adapted to other climate projects, such as identifying climate misinformation.

The workshop will:

- Describe some of the challenges of web scraping at scale and the technical tools that can be used to address those challenges
- Describe how to design and test a successful LLM prompt
- How to identify the right LLM for the project you want to do
- How to test your approach and validate the results

ps. You should have a Google account to open the link that'll be shared during the session. 

The impact of the fossil industry on our climate is undisputed. Yet, the industry is finding ways to stay on top of the discourse and climate action. We knew they lied about what they knew. Now they’re changing narratives and use different tactics. And there is no shortage of their enablers.  

Come to this session to hear from three journalists who will tell you how to investigate the players behind the scenes. Sam Bright will talk about social media influencers and how to spot them; Leonie Sontheimer will discuss the role of PR agencies and how they operate; Elena Kolb will tell you all about insurance companies. The reporters will share their tips on how to find information, how to report on enablers, and how to identify a good story.

This session is a practical introduction to LobbyFacts - the EU lobbying database. LobbyFacts enables journalists, activists, and researchers to analyse data from the official EU Transparency Register, tracking lobbyists, their networks, the topics they lobby about, and their influence at the EU level over time. Join lobby watchdog Corporate Europe Observatory's Vicky Cann for a detailed look at the Brussels lobby scene and how the available data can help you to nail your climate stories.

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!).