Climate Arena 2024

Food production is a leading cause of deforestation, biodiversity loss, and premature deaths, but it is also a major victim of the climate crisis. This is the result of decades of corporate consolidation, a myopic focus on efficiency and productivity, and an over-reliance on techno-fixes. Big Agriculture resists changes that the public supports, with a playbook similar to Big Tobacco and Big Oil.

Much of this is hidden from us by complexity and a lack of media attention. But investigative reporters can play a critical role in changing this by using data, FOIA, and open source tools. Lighthouse Reports' Food Systems Newsroom will lead a discussion about how innovative techniques and collaborative methodologies can invigorate food reporting, helping journalists to reframe consumer-oriented reporting into narrative-driven stories about a broken system and how it can be changed.

The responsibility of financial institutions in the climate disaster we experience is underreported and mostly told by NGOs in their reports. In this presentation, journalists Josephine Moulds (The Bureau of Investigative Journalism) will explain how journalists can follow the money trail of fossil fuel projects all around the world in order to shed light on the banks’ double standards when it comes to their green commitments. Josephine combined financial data, OSINT, and on-the-ground reporting to write hard hitting stories covering coal, gas and oil industry in three continents, and their ties to big finance. In this session, she wants to enable you to do the same by sharing methods and tactics. Join!

Wetlands are a hugely important part of the ecological systems and are suffering throughout Europe but they do not get enough media attention. In addition, improving the overall status of the Mediterranean wetlands is one of the top priorities enlisted by the European Nature Restoration Law, since they are key nature-based solutions against the climate crisis.  

A cross-border investigation, stemmed by a project developed within the Climate Arena Fellowship and partially supported by Journalismfund and SISSA School, has shown that little effort is put into effectively preserving and restoring these environments when heavily polluted or degraded.

Involving a team of data scientists, investigations focused on the main wetland near Oristano (Sardinia), where there is a long-standing plan to define up a much-discussed protected area, and the saltmarsh in Cervia (Emilia-Romagna) strongly affected by the disastrous 2023 flooding. Both stories revealed that political and commercial interests prevented the application of effective protective policies, in some cases further damaging the environment.

They used a combination of investigative approaches (data science, AI analysis of satellite imagery and field reporting on the ground) confirmed the poor status of wetlands in these two countries. The project has also served as a pilot to develop a collaborative approach between science and investigative journalists and a group of data scientists based at SISSA post-graduate School in Trieste, Italy.

In this session, two journalists and the data scientists involved in the project will discuss their investigative approaches encompassing data science, satellite journalism and field reporting on the ground to investigate the effectiveness or the lack of efficacy of protective measures.

Their project can be read here: https://facta.eu/focus-on/swampower/  

Countries across the world have committed to be Net Zero by 2050 or sooner, but real climate action happens at the lower levels of governance. How can journalists find the data they need on local and regional action and untangle the web of relationships and responsibilities on climate adaptation? And how to interpret these?

In Germany, a team of over 20 journalists created the first comprehensive fact base on climate adaptation in Germany. With expert advice from TU Dortmund University and through surveys, the team analysed whether all 400 German districts, independent cities and regional associations were prepared for extreme weather events like heat, drought, heavy rain and flood.

In the UK, the NGO mySociety, in partnership with Climate Emergency UK, has wrangled data from the UK’s 395 local governments for the last three years to develop a comprehensive picture of the UK’s climate ambition and progress.

In this session, they will tell you how you can collect this type of information in your own country, deal with (big & dirty) data, collaborate with civil society and/or scientists, and how you can write your adaptation stories so they make sense.

Artificial intelligence continues to reshape industries, including journalism. But its environmental impact is often overlooked. AI systems require massive amounts of energy, contributing significantly to the global carbon footprint. This panel will explore both the reporting and practical challenges of addressing AI’s climate cost.

Pablo Jimenez Arandia, an investigative journalist, will discuss “invisible” AI's visible impact, the vast energy demands of machine learning models, and examples of reporting that reveal the scale of the problem. 

Sebastian Mondial, a data journalist, will talk about his recent work with big media in Germany in trying to make AI more cost and energy efficient, and protocols that newsrooms can adopt to directly mitigate AI’s climate cost while continuing to report on it.

Come join this talk to hear from different perspectives about AI and the climate — and what we can do about it.

How can trade data help investigate new important trends in climate-damaging energy commodities?

Whether it is to show that some companies keep using unsustainable products to promote so-called “renewable fuels”, or to reveal that Europe is opening new backdoors for palm oil through increased imports of suspicious advanced biofuels, the analysis of European and national public data can often be a good starting point for identifying new, unsuspected energy trends.

The Brussels-based NGO Transport & Environment’s (T&E) analysts have been using trade data, complemented with customs records, private market data, shipping tracking data and satellite imagery to investigate Eni’s biofuels supply chain. Other T&E investigations are currently attempting to adapt a similar tracking approach to identify fraudulent cases of palm oil disguised as advanced biofuels.

This session will present T&E’s approach to trade data analysis and discuss its challenges as well as opportunities for using it in other contexts.

While Europe's transition from fossil fuels to renewables and energy efficiency appears straightforward, growing attention on hotly contested technologies poses a risk of diverting precious resources from effective climate solutions, potentially steering Europe away from its Paris Agreement trajectory.  

What is their realistic contribution to the climate fight? Are policymakers in Europe crafting oversized plans for them? Are they just costly distractions and unproven experiments?

In this panel, three experts will discuss hydrogen, nuclear power plants, and carbon capture and storage, with the aim of informing journalists on the realities behind them so you can understand better what’s a hype pushed by influential lobbies and what’s a fact.

What science says is often an integral part of climate and environmental stories. We use scientific work, data, statistics, lab results and listen to the scientists. But it can be a hard world to navigate and to really understand what an academic study says or if it’s entirely reliable. The world of scientific publishing can be chaotic.  

Journalists who are not specialised in science journalism could benefit from quick learning of specific skills this journalism niche requires.

This workshop will cover:

- What are the most common misinterpretations of scientific findings in the climate stories and what are the possible reasons? (With examples)
- How to find and recognise high-quality scientific research and best experts in a particular scientific field (scientific databases; problems with interpreting h-index and citation; distinguishing between Scopus, WoS and Google Scholar; what to do with pre-print results; avoiding predatory sources; how to get paywall research for free; other sources)
- Tips for better understanding any published research
- How to use published research to find investigative stories (with examples)
- How to use scientific research as an independent source of data