The world needs more climate change news in Spanish » Yale Climate Connections

Yale Climate Connections first started experimenting with Spanish-language coverage during the 2022 Atlantic hurricane season, initially by publishing translations of English-language articles. A few months later, we brought in bilingual features editor Pearl Marvell to run the Spanish project, and she continues to grow and expand our coverage beyond our wildest dreams. These days, it’s common for us to see more web traffic to our Spanish-language articles than to the English-language versions. 

To celebrate three years of this work, the Yale Climate Connections editorial team, editor-in-chief Sara Peach, audience director Sam Harrington, and Marvell sat down to talk about the history of the work and where it’s headed.

Interview edited and condensed.

Pearl Marvell: Why did you think it was important to make this project happen?

Sara Peach: We started the project for a couple of reasons. We were starting to get requests from our partners for resources in Spanish, especially related to extreme weather and disinformation that was circulating when there was an extreme weather event. 

So we took some baby steps in Spanish, where we got some stories translated and put them up on the website, but it was very slow without a dedicated person on staff to do that work. And I felt like there was a lot of room to grow and serve more people who would prefer to get their news in that language. 

We could see with those baby steps that those articles were popular, so we knew there was a demand. And then separately, we knew from our colleagues’ national surveys that the group in the United States that’s most alarmed about climate change is Latinos, and in particular, Latinos who predominantly speak Spanish. 

So we knew from both anecdotal data – what we’d seen on our website – but also this really rigorous national survey data that there was a huge audience out there speaking Spanish, wanting to know more about climate change, that wasn’t necessarily being served well by existing climate media in this country. 

We were very fortunate to get funding for a pilot project to launch the project during the hurricane season of 2022. [Editor’s note: We’re grateful to the CO2 Foundation for both pilot funding and continued support for our Spanish-language coverage.] The first article that we put up about a major hurricane hitting Florida was incredibly popular for Spanish speakers, but Sam and I, as folks who don’t speak Spanish, were struggling, and we knew that we needed someone with really strong language capabilities to join the team. So we were lucky to get you, Pearl.

Sam Harrington: We were doing some research about how to serve this audience and what needs weren’t being met. And I can’t remember who we were talking to, but they were like, “And on top of the other language barriers, when people are experiencing an emergency or a disaster, it’s hard to operate in your second language, even if maybe you do have some English proficiency.” 

Sara: We were also seeing that there are all sorts of communities within the large, extremely diverse Latino community in the United States that are extraordinarily vulnerable. You can think about people working outdoors being exposed to extreme heat, people working in farm fields who are exposed to wildfire smoke, and the list goes on. So we had this large community of folks who are – some members are pretty vulnerable, and in general, people really want the information, and they were extremely underserved. So it was an obvious decision to go ahead with the project.

Sam: We started to realize how complicated some of the language choices were, like words that different diasporic groups used for extreme weather. And it became super important to have someone on the team who knows the language to really guide the project. Pearl has blown all of my expectations out of the water. I imagine Sara would agree. 

Sara: Absolutely.

Pearl: Aw, don’t make me cry. It was so intimidating coming on board. You can be fluent in the language, but not necessarily fluent in that language in a particular field. It was a steep learning curve of figuring out all the names of different weather phenomena, like wind shear, for example. That wasn’t really something I ever had to think about in Spanish. I was so nervous the first two years, just trying to get it right. 

Sara: Are you scared now?

Pearl: I’m scared of other things now. [everyone laughs]

Sam: What really stands out to me is that you really care about the people who will be receiving the information. And when you put that at the center of it, everything blossoms out from there.

Pearl: I got really passionate about it very quickly. It’s been such a fun project to work on, but it’s also scary to think that you’re one of the few sources of information on something. So it’s been both a personal and professional journey for me. 

Sara: I want to remind you, Pearl, that the first time we met, I asked you why you wanted to participate in this project, and you said, “I think I was born to do it,” and I continue to think that’s true.

Pearl: Wow, I said that? That’s really bold to say. 

I mean, I grew up in a place where I was constantly exposed to extreme weather. I think of the communities that I’ve lived in when I’m writing my stories and when I’m translating. I have certain people in mind. I envision them reading one of our articles about a hurricane coming, and I think that helps in making the story more compelling and more powerful. And I’ve always had a great appreciation for weather, which comes from my parents being sailors. I never in a million years thought I would end up here. But it does feel very, very right.

Sam: To circle back to how there’s just not enough information about climate change for people in Spanish, there are still a lot of people doing the work and trying to make more information available, and you do such a good job of building relationships with them. Partnership and collaboration haven’t necessarily always been the norm in journalism. Competition has been a big thing, but I think all of us sort of have an ethos that people need this information, and we can get it out better if we’re working with other organizations and other journalists to do it. What is it like being in that community and having these relationships?

Pearl: Well, I’m so lucky to be here with you two, and we have this very powerful institution behind us, and I think just being able to leverage that in a good way. And I don’t want to be the representation of climate change news in Spanish. Everyone should be lifted up together at the same time. 

And I just love talking to people, and I get so inspired by people who are on the ground doing some of this really hard work, and with very few resources. Especially now, I feel it’s an honor to even be in that position to potentially leverage some of our platforms and our institution to help others. 

I feel like, especially the underserved communities and the Latino communities here in the U.S., in Puerto Rico, and Latin America, in the Dominican Republic, there are just so many great things happening at a community level, because you can’t rely on the government to do anything sometimes. It’s just so inspiring because I truly believe that the solutions, the change that we need, the new reality that we need to create for ourselves, is going to come from those community movements.

This year, obviously, politically, a lot has changed. So it feels even more fraught now, producing our Spanish-language content. And honoring the stories of Spanish speakers in this country, particularly, it feels really, really important. 

Sam: Can you talk a little bit about the issue of misinformation about climate change in Spanish?

Pearl: Yeah, the disinformation/misinformation in Spanish is really interesting. Factchequeado, one of our partners, conducted an amazing study on this. They found that most of it originates in English, gets translated, and spreads faster and quicker in Spanish. And it comes from like five bad actors; it’s not this huge swath of people out there trying to disinform/misinform the Latino population, but it travels so quickly. So many Latinos rely on telecommunications to stay connected to their families, because everybody is so spread out through the different diasporic communities. You know, everybody’s on their phone all the time. 

Through our Pregúntale al Experto project, we’ve received a bunch of questions related to disinformation, and people are still asking, “Is climate change real?” It’s important to get these questions because it gives us an idea of the thoughts and the content that’s out there. 

Sam: I think that’s a good natural plug for people who get their news in Spanish to sign up for our WhatsApp channel. Is there anything else that you think people should know about the Spanish project?

Pearl: Well, we are on Instagram. And I’m excited about that because I think that we’re going to reach a different audience there. And then our YouTube channel, where we’ll continue producing great content both in English and in Spanish. I just think it’s important that we continue to be flexible in the way that we’re producing this information. 

Sam: I am glad that we have places like the YouTube channel or, sometimes on our site or Instagram, where English and Spanish are living together, because it also feels important, as a person who speaks Spanish badly, to show other English readers that we’re doing this work, and this is important.

Pearl: One of my pet peeves, and I will end on this, is that very often, those two demographics get funneled in completely different directions. And it is way more nuanced; there are people who are in multigenerational households, where the grandparents might only speak Spanish, but then the parents speak a mixture of both languages, and then the third generation speaks more English. So being aware of that is very important, and not to like, silo off those two groups. I think it’s silly to do that, so I’m glad we’re doing it the way that we’re doing it. And being culturally relevant in English is just as important as producing stuff in Spanish.