Publishing Is Not Enough: How young climate scientists can make their research matter

On 16 October, 2026, Brazil’s National Institute for Space Research (INPE) announced that deforestation in the Amazon had fallen to its lowest level since satellite records began in 1988. Some 3,335 square kilometres of forest were cleared in the twelve months to July, a drop of around 42 per cent in a single year, and the fourth consecutive annual decline since President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva returned to office in 2023.

For anyone who cares about the planet’s climate, this is about as good as environmental news gets. The Amazon stores colossal amounts of carbon and helps regulate rainfall across an entire continent. International bodies such as the UN Environment Programme (UNEP) in Nairobi or the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) on Lake Geneva have long warned how close parts of the forest are to a tipping point. The new figures are the product of decades of painstaking satellite monitoring, field research and enforcement.

Yet the data landed barely a week before a bitterly fought presidential run-off on 25 October between Lula and Senator Flávio Bolsonaro, son of former president Jair Bolsonaro, who edged ahead in the first round. Under the elder Bolsonaro, Amazon clearance soared to its highest levels in 15 years. Flávio’s manifesto promises to tackle illegal deforestation, but his movement has built its strength on a formidable social media machine, promoting the argument that opening the forest to agribusiness and mining will create jobs travels far faster than any satellite data series.

Credible Storytelling is the Key

Whether such messaging rests on sound evidence hardly matters. Content of this kind, which is increasingly AI-generated and often funded by business, political or religious interests, circulates across countless platforms with no need to justify itself. For audiences with little time or inclination to check the facts, it is persuasive. It is also extremely difficult to counter. A peer-reviewed paper, however rigorous, is not built for that fight.

This is the challenge facing every young scientist today. Whether you are measuring permafrost thaw in the Arctic or working with flood-hit communities in Latin America, your research may be crucial. But if you want to convince a policymaker, a donor, a journalist - or your grandmother - that it can make a difference, you must explain it in a way anyone can grasp. That applies whether you are arguing that capturing carbon dioxide can help offset emissions, or that developing North Sea gas is feasible, but only under strict conditions.

BBC reporting from the field. A crucial part of international reporting.

BBC

Pressure at the top

Even the world’s most authoritative science is under strain. The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), which evaluates and synthesises thousands of peer-reviewed studies for governments, is still deadlocked over the timing of its Seventh Assessment Report (AR7). European and Latin American states, small island nations and the least developed countries want the reports delivered by 2028, in time for the next UN Global Stocktake of climate action.

A rival group of countries led by Saudi Arabia, Russia, China and India has resisted, pushing key reports back to 2029 or later. The IPCC does not conduct its own research, but its assessments remain the most trusted summary of what we know about climate change coupled with its risks and the options for dealing with it.

Meanwhile, US President Donald Trump, who routinely dismisses such reports as “fake news”, signed a presidential memorandum on January 7, 2026, directing his government to exit 66 international organizations, including the IPCC and the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC). Unlike former treaties with mandatory waiting periods, leaving the IPCC reportedly took place immediately halting U.S. participation, funding, and official scientific involvement.

Still a member of the World Meteorological Organization (WMO), however, Washington has been pressuring various UN advisory panels in Geneva not even to mention “climate change”. European and other governments are pushing back hard. But as one senior researcher noted, highly qualified American scientific participants forced to toe the official line make “little effort to hide their embarrassment”.

Climate change's growing impact on the Arctic.

Charles Norchi

Where people get their news now

Such authoritative science is still covered by mainstream news organisations. The problem is that fewer and fewer people are watching, listening or reading. (See Global Geneva's Vanishing Heights series on the impact of climate change on the Alps)

According to the Reuters Institute’s Digital News Report 2026, social media and video networks have, for the first time, become the most widely used sources of news worldwide, ahead of both television and various ‘legacy’ news organisations. Creators and influencers are a growing part of the mix. Trust in news has fallen significantly in 29 of the 48 markets surveyed, to its lowest point since the Institute began tracking it.

In the United States, the Pew Research Center found in 2025 that only about a third of adults get their news from television, 11 per cent from radio and just 7 per cent from printed newspapers or magazines. Adults under 30 rely heavily on social media, podcasts and online personalities. The closure of countless small-town newspapers, one of the few effective ways of keeping tabs on local government, has left vast “news deserts”.

Public broadcasting, precisely the kind of outlet that normally gives credible science a platform, has faced severe budget cuts under the Trump administration, while the Voice of America has been all but shut down.

The Hellenic Red Cross responding to wildfire in Greece.

Photo: IFRC

Europe is somewhat more resilient. Television remains the main source of information for most older citizens. Many readers, however, have moved from print to digital subscriptions with titles such as Die Zeit, Svenska Dagbladet or Corriere della Sera, and public service broadcasters still enjoying relatively high trust, even if some public sector media face funding cuts. But Europeans aged 15 to 24 now rely primarily on social media and online video. (See Global Geneva article by William Dowell on explaining journalism to an 11-year-old)

Across much of the developing world, or Global South, audiences have leapfrogged desktop internet and print altogether, moving straight into a mobile, social-first and video-driven ecosystem. Yet in parts of Africa and Asia, farmers, entrepreneurs and students still turn to international broadcasters such as the BBC World Service, Deutsche Welle and Radio France Internationale, or to faith-based radio and television, often because they distrust government-controlled or privately owned local media.

As Jim Egan, lead author of the Reuters Institute report, points out, the world is changing at an accelerating speed, leaving news media to jostle for a share of the four to five hours a day people spend on their smartphones. “For some, this means new opportunities to stay close to news stories as they unfold; for others, it risks creating a sense of overload,” Egan maintains. (See Global Geneva series on journalism today)

Young filmmakers shooting off WIKI, a 105-year-old wooden sailing ketch, to illustrate the impact of climate change and pollution on the Mediterranean.

HelpSaveTheMed.org

Many audiences, many doors

For scientists, none of this is entirely bad news. The new landscape opens real opportunities, while still leaving room for serious journalism and credible, trusted information in the public interest. But there is no single route.

An op-ed in the New York Times, Le Monde or Folha de Sao Paulo may sway influential decision-makers. Reaching broader and more diverse audiences, however, means working across the whole spectrum: YouTube channels, audio and video podcasts, Instagram, and TikTok clips that may last no more than 15 seconds. Attention spans are short.

If you cannot explain what you are doing in the first two or three lines, or the first 30 seconds, you have lost your audience.

Editors and journalists at credible organisations such as the BBC, the Washington Post or El País can generally be trusted to reflect your research accurately.

Influencers are another matter. Many are highly opinionated and make little effort to respect journalistic norms such as fact-checking. Yet some reach millions of people. Like it or not, they may need to be part of your outreach with messages crafted specifically for them.

A participant in the Zimbabwe Red Cross’s Climate Smart Resilience feeds her poultry using grains provided by local producers. The project supports farmers in using conservation-oriented techniques.

Photo: Zimbabwe Red Cross Society

Start with your own news diet

One striking problem is that many scientists, including younger researchers with a firm grasp of what their work can achieve, have little understanding of how news is produced or consumed. Many also make little effort to follow current events beyond their field, whether floods in Nepal or the conflict in the West Bank.

In an informal straw poll at a recent London climate change workshop organized by the Quadrature Charitable Foundation and the International Federation of Red Cross & Red Crescent Societies, a few Fellows said they kept up by reading The Economist, scanning The Guardian or The Times online, or listening to the radio back home in Chile or Brazil. But most saw little need to inform themselves deliberately from credible, multi-sourced outlets. They relied instead on whatever surfaced in their social media feeds or was shared by friends and colleagues.

They are hardly alone. University professors and corporate managers across North America and Europe complain that many people in their 20s and 30s rarely read or write in depth, despite having smartphones and computers at their fingertips. Some youth dismiss traditional news as “the media” that cannot be trusted, and assemble their own world view from what their feeds serve up, which may help explain the drift of young voters towards both political extremes, from the UK to Germany and Poland.

There are encouraging signs. James Daunt, chief executive of Waterstones in the UK and Barnes & Noble in the US, says young adults in their early and mid-twenties are returning to books, and that Young Adult sections are among his shops’ most popular. (See Global Geneva interview with Daunt. Global Geneva's own YouthWrites and Young Filmmakers initiatives together with HelpSaveTheMed exist precisely to encourage young people to read more and sharpen their communication skills.)

Communicating well starts with knowing the world your audience lives in. Imagine you are talking to your neighbour, who knows nothing about your work but has asked about it, or to your grandmother. “What do you really do, dear?” That conversation is your elevator pitch, and it must tell a story.

WMO map on global precipitation probability.

WMO

Field notes from London: a communicator’s checklist

For the Fellows who joined us in London, and for anyone else who wants their research to travel, here are the essentials we worked through together. Keep them handy.

1. Know exactly who you are talking to. Before you write a word, picture one real person: a minister’s adviser, a foundation programme officer, a Year 10 pupil, a farmer in Kenya. What do they already know? What do they need to know? Why should they care?
2. Lead with the “so what”. If you had only one sentence, what would it be? Say it the title, and perhaps the first two lines or the first 30 seconds, not in the conclusion.
3. Anecdote first, data second. Open with a person, a place or a moment, then bring in the numbers that prove the point. Stories are remembered; statistics are what make them credible.
4. Build a message box. Settle on three key messages, each backed by one strong proof point: a fact, an image or an example. Use them every time, in every format.
5. One study, many formats. Practise turning the same finding into an 800–1,000-word article, a 60-second phone video, an explanation for a classroom of 15-year-olds and a 30-second pitch to a minister. Each audience needs a different door into the same room.
6. Pass the editor’s test. Would an editor run it, rewrite it or spike it? Give it a title that makes a non-specialist stop scrolling. Ask yourself honestly: would I read this if I had no particular interest in the subject?
7. Show, don’t just tell. Use photographs, maps, satellite images, drawings and even cartoons. A single strong image will often do more than a page of charts.
8. Prepare for the interview. Know your three messages, anticipate the awkward question, answer briefly and bridge back to what matters. Use plain words, avoid speculation and rehearse in the hot seat with a colleague first.
9. Treat influencers as an audience, not an enemy. Check their track record, tailor your message to their followers and insist on accuracy. If you do not tell your story, someone else will tell it for you.
10. Use AI as an assistant, not an author. It can help with drafts and summaries, but human judgement and your own voice remain essential. Check every fact it gives you.
11. Feed your own news diet. Follow at least one credible legacy outlet, one international broadcaster and one source from the region you study. Know what is happening beyond your field.
12. Keep your 30-day pledge. Choose one concrete output - an article, a short video, a briefing for a policymaker - and get it done within a month.
13. Pitch us your story. Global Geneva welcomes articles from young researchers and will help edit them. When we published a feature on EPFL’s Transnational Red Sea coral project, the scientists took the magazine to their donor meetings; it helped them secure funding.

Good research deserves to be heard. In a world of 15-second swipes and manufactured certainty, the scientists who learn to tell their stories clearly, and to keep telling them, are the ones who will shape the decisions that matter.

Journalist and author Edward Girardet is editor of Global Geneva. He has reported conflict, humanitarian and development issues across the globe for more than 40 years. Fellows and young researchers interested in pitching an article can contact him at edgirardet@gmail.com.