The Global South Climate Database: What It Is, And How (And Why) To Use It

Early signs of climate change are here, and things are expected to continue to escalate for a while as the planet warms. Oddly, though, the deadlier consequences of climate change affect the southern hemisphere more predominantly than the northern, but most to all of climate coverage originates in the northern hemisphere.

The Global South Climate database created by Carbon Brief, a U.K.-based website covering climate science, and the Reuters Institute’s Oxford Climate Journalism Network, was enacted to help journalists of either hemisphere diversify their climate coverage by including data from over 400 climate experts in more than 80 countries.

The founders spoke more on establishing the resource:

“At Carbon Brief, our analysis has found evidence that climate science itself is dominated by men from the global north. We analysed the authors of the 100 most highly cited climate-science papers published between 2016 and 2020 and found that 90% authors are affiliated with institutions from the Global North. Meanwhile, the entire continent of Africa, which is home to around 16% of the world’s population, comprises less than 1% of authors in this analysis.”

“...Journalists in the Philippines and Kenya have told us that their sources complain that European or American experts appear in global media explaining issues about their own countries, while reporters in Mexico and Lebanon regularly struggle to find experts in neighbouring countries. A vicious cycle is created when the same experts from Europe or North America appear in wire stories and global outlets, and become more visible than local sources. This can lead to journalists overwhelmingly contacting experts from the global north for their thoughts on climate science, or directing all of their media requests to a select few well-known global south experts.”

The group of scientists the database contains information for can conduct reviews in over 51 languages, collectively, and their collective expertise includes fields like road freight decarbonization, energy modeling, and tropical meteorology.

The database itself is very user friendly. Journalists can search for an expert by their name, job title, nationality or research area. The experts’ page will list an email address, and even a phone number (in some cases), so it makes the expert much more accessible to the journalist. Climate experts from around the world are encouraged to add themselves to the database by filling out a form.

The reason to use the Global South Climate Database is simple: climate change is a global issue, and therefore accurate reporting must be global. Carbon Brief’s mission is to facilitate that process by “connecting practice and research, by facilitating global exchange, and by driving conversations around the future of news.” Carbon Brief and the Reuter’s Institute also have several other initiatives to make journalism more global that are not focused solely around the issue of climate. As this database and these resources continue to grow, journalists must update their processes to be sure they’re getting current, accurate information from around the world on the climate crisis.