In the summer of 2023, more than 19,000 people were forced to evacuate as wildfires swept through Yellowknife, the capital of Canada’s Northwest Territories. Emergency alerts were issued in French and English, but not in the nine Indigenous languages that are recognized as official languages in the territory, forcing some Indigenous families to rely on friends, radio broadcasts, and social media for critical information.
A new white paper argues that the lack of translated disaster warnings is emblematic of a much broader problem: Climate change information, from emergency alerts to scientific research, is overwhelmingly produced only in English. The research, published by Climate Cardinals, a youth-led climate advocacy organization focused on language access, found that 80 percent of scientific papers are published in English, which is spoken by just 18 percent of the world’s population. The researchers argue that most of the world is excluded from the information needed to understand how climate change is reshaping the planet, including people in positions of power.
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