The Climate Arena Conference unites journalists and scientists from across Europe to collaborate in investigating the climate crisis.
We are a project of Arena for Journalism in Europe, a non-profit set up by and for journalists to support collaborative investigative journalism in the continent.
Built on the model of our major annual conference Dataharvest, Climate Arena is a European, hands-on, working conference, focused on sharing tools and methods, datasets, insights, and planting the seeds of collaborations, creating the space for building connections and setting up new cross-border projects.
For this edition of the conference, we will be in Bologna, Italy on 18-19 October 2024.
Come and meet other journalists and climate scientists, learn how award-winning investigations were done, get the datasets, understand the methods, and find your next project collaborators.
Here, both journalists and scientists will break out of their bubbles, uncover information the public needs to know, and develop projects to make it connect with them, and have impact.
Together, we can unwash greenwashing, uncover lobbying, expose environmental crimes, and empower our audiences to hold power accountable.
- Grow your network: Meet climate investigators from across Europe, and across disciplines. You’ll develop important new connections, and join the Arena Climate Network, a community of hundreds of climate journalists and scientists telling the stories of the climate crisis.
- Develop your next investigation: This is a working conference, and you can shape your next investigation here. As we found in our last conference, ideas and inspiration quickly spark from conversations to collaborations. We will actively support the development of these projects.
- Grow your knowledge: Get inspired by stories, what they’re about and how they’re told. You’ll not just learn about climate issues, but get a better understanding of how to tell your stories better. You will get a comprehensive understanding the state of climate journalism across Europe, and key stories and datasets to look into.
- Grow your skills: Our sessions aren’t about showing off, but showing how. You’ll learn how award-winning investigations were done, from concept to collaboration and impact. Colleagues will generously share their methods in this intersection of journalism x science, bringing you cutting edge interdisciplinary skills.
History of the conference
Our first Climate Arena conference took place in Prague 27-28 April 2023, where we brought 55 journalists and climate scientist together.
We hosted two full-day workshops, including eight panels. Topics discussed ranged from carbon offsetting industry’s dubious claims, to journalism-science collaborations, to using data to tell climate stories, and much more.
A few journalists who participated in Climate Arena started to collaborate after. These stories revealed greenwashing at the Cannes Film Festival and offered an inside look into the tumultuous workings into the world’s biggest climate consultancy company.
Following the success of this conference, we quickly organised a much bigger conference to build on this energy, and brought together over 150 journalists and scientists in Vienna in November 2023 for our second Climate Arena conference.
You can check out photos and the programme from our previous Climate Arena conferences below:
The team
Zeynep Sentek
Zeynep is a Turkish investigative journalist. She’s the project director of the Arena Climate Network and the main curator of Climate Arena.
Email: zeynep@journalismarena.eu
Jonathan Stoneman
Jonathan is a veteran journalist from the UK. He is lead trainer at the Arena Climate Network. He is in charge our fellowship programme.
Email: jonathan@journalismarena.eu
Sarah Pilz
Sarah is a journalist based in Germany. She is Climate Arena’s network coordinator and co-curator of the conference.
Email: sarah@journalismarena.eu
Marlies Geyskens
Marlies is a Belgium-based freelance journalist. She coordinates the event logistics at Climate Arena.
Email: marlies@journalismarena.eu
