I recently had the privilege of being invited to participate in an environmental journalism panel run by the Oxford Climate Society (OCS). Ewan Messenger and I attended as student representatives for The Oxford Blue in conjunction with Liberty Denman from Ocean Generation and Ayesha Tandon from Carbon Brief. Both Denman and Tandon are from scientific backgrounds and converted to environmental communications on account of their desire to improve the accuracy and scope of knowledge disseminated to the public. 

Before the panel, Liberty ran the ‘How to Be an Ocean Storyteller’ workshop which is part of the Ocean Generation Wavemaker programme. This aims to educate people aged 16-25 about threats to our oceans and encourage young people to take action to promote ocean health. In 2023, the small team at Ocean Generation educated 4,082,219 people demonstrating the impacts and reach of environmental communication. Denman explained how the ocean is “so often sidelined, ‘out of sight out of mind’, and it’s critical that we can bring it to the forefront of the minds behind environmental journalism, where [she] believe[s] it belongs!”. 

The three organisations represented by the panel were able to shed light on how they appeal to different audiences and how important it is to make sure the information published is catered to them. Ocean Generation workshops are suited to children and young adults aged 3-25 with a focus on emotive storytelling; whilst Carbon Brief focuses on providing scientific and factual information to adults who are already involved in the environmental sphere. The Oxford Blue appeals to students within the University and so bridges this gap between children and adults while providing a student perspective. The breadth of our audience bases led to engaging discussions about why environmental journalism is important and how scientific it should be. 

Communicating environmental issues to the public is vital in encouraging collective agency and action, boosting grassroots movements and coordinating institutions involved in environmental issues and policy. Empowering young people to learn about the environment is crucial to support future policymakers, researchers and activists, and educating current ones ensures decisions are informed by accurate scientific advice. The organiser, Ushika Kidd (OCS co-president) shared her vision for the event, particularly highlighting how Ocean Generation and Carbon Brief address underrepresentation in science communication, such as knowledge from the Global South. She sees climate and environment discourse as having a “human, grassroots-level perspective” that journalists are primed to convey, and “the point is for audiences to learn that there are many ways to approach climate journalism, which remains a key bridge between science and storytelling, and scientists and the general public”.

Flora Prideaux, also co-president, explained how reporting on the environment is rarely unbiased so “making space to talk about the climate in journalism is so important to seeing the challenges and solutions as [a] whole, rather than as parts of politics/economics/social or scientific stories”. We discussed the sometimes difficult task of ensuring all information is accurate and backed by scientific evidence whilst simultaneously making the content engaging and accessible. 

The question and answer session with the audience highlighted some topical and complex debates within the environmental sphere. One question, in particular, examined how science and environmental journalists can incorporate Indigenous ontologies into their work in an impactful way rather than as a tick box for representation. Tandon explained how this exact question still stumps scientists today as Indigenous knowledge bases are so different from the dominant Eurocentric knowledge system, meaning that it can be hard to integrate the two. 

However, she also highlighted how necessary it is to engage with voices from Indigenous peoples and the Global South on issues closely impacting them as they often have a closer, more insightful awareness of their home community and environment than outsiders do. Indigenous and environmental groups as well as environmental journalists have a history of being silenced through state censorship and threats, as well as violence. Therefore, the rule of law needs to be implemented to protect them and their voices should be uplifted and projected transnationally to raise awareness. These kinds of discussions between the public, scientists, and activists from across the world are one of the main ways these problems can be navigated. Environmental journalists play a pivotal role in this communication and eventual change. 

Ewan and I not only were able to detail our own experiences within environmental journalism – and how without it we might not have been encouraged to pursue a degree in the environmental sector – but also learned a lot from the perspectives of the professionals we joined on the panel. I would like to thank OCS for this opportunity and encourage anyone who might be interested in the environment to attend one of their events.