A new white paper from Climate Cardinals highlights how English-dominant climate science and disaster alerts exclude much of the world, particularly Indigenous peoples. In 2023, wildfires in Canada's Yellowknife forced over 19,000 evacuations, with alerts issued only in English and French, not in nine official Indigenous languages. The report calls for a global fund to support translations of climate data and warnings.
In the summer of 2023, wildfires ravaged Yellowknife, the capital of Canada’s Northwest Territories, prompting the evacuation of more than 19,000 residents. Emergency alerts were delivered in English and French but omitted the nine Indigenous languages recognized as official in the territory. This left some Indigenous families dependent on informal sources like friends, radio, and social media for vital updates.
A white paper released by Climate Cardinals, a youth-led advocacy group, identifies this incident as symptomatic of wider issues in climate communication. The organization found that 80 percent of scientific papers appear in English, a language spoken by only 18 percent of the global population. This dominance, the researchers argue, bars most people from essential knowledge about climate change's effects, including decision-makers.
"Language is not just about inclusion, but I think really determines what would count as climate reality," stated Jackie Vandermel, a co-director of research at Climate Cardinals. "Language is not just about who receives the information, but also what is allowed to even exist in climate governance."
The report stresses the urgency of translating materials into Indigenous languages, which face threats from both colonialism and climate-driven displacement. These languages hold unique insights into local ecosystems and weather patterns, yet Indigenous communities bear disproportionate climate burdens, such as Arctic ice melt and Pacific typhoons.
"Indigenous observations are the earliest climate signals, but science tends to flow where Indigenous knowledge gets extracted, and then scientific findings aren’t returned to them in accessible form," Vandermel added. She emphasized journalism's potential: "By choosing whose voices are heard, in what languages, and in what formats, journalism can reproduce existing gaps, or help make Indigenous and multilingual climate realities legible to the systems that govern response and funding."
Climate Cardinals advocates for a global climate language access fund to finance translations of research, reports, negotiations, and weather alerts. While the United Nations has not pursued such a fund, some agencies are testing machine learning for translations. However, geopolitical tensions and shortfalls in climate finance complicate efforts. At the recent COP30 in Brazil, pledges for adaptation funding remained ambiguous and far below the estimated $400 billion needed annually. In the United States, cuts under the Trump administration have reduced support for climate programs and non-English warnings.
"The hiring of translators, multilingual educators, and local reporters should be embedded in policy and financial structures," said Laura Martin, an associate professor of environmental studies at Williams College. "Language is a matter of climate justice."