Rhett Butler, founder of the environmental website Mongabay: "People prefer to believe what fits their vision of the world"

In times of climate emergency, with scientists evoking the sixth great extinction of species and the entry into the era of the Anthropocene, environmental information and dissemination is emerging as a crucial element to understand today's world.. That is why the BBVA Foundation has awarded the Biophilia Award – which since 2019 has recognized the work of professionals who contribute to improving understanding and awareness of environmental challenges – to the digital medium Mongabay, a conservation news portal that reports on tropical ecosystems, thanks to its network of journalists and local experts in more than 80 countries.

Founded in 1999 by American journalist Rhett A.. Butler, the non-profit environmental information website (all its content has a Creative Commons license, so other media can publish its reports for free) disseminates its articles and reports in English, Spanish, French, Portuguese, Hindi and Indonesian.

The jury's minutes indicate how Mongabay has managed to “establish the connection between science and journalism through the dissemination of research on environmental protection with the dissemination of studies with maximum accessibility criteria.”. A formula that has allowed them to “publicize specific situations or serious environmental problems suffered by communities usually neglected by conventional information flows,” adds the ruling.

Two of the personal experiences of its founder would mark the course of Mongabay. Butler had traveled to Ecuador during his childhood. There he came into contact with an indigenous community that lived in the Amazon jungle.. A few months later he learned that an oil spill had occurred in the area that caused serious damage to the ecosystem.. A few years later, a similar experience in Borneo further defined his professional orientation towards environmental journalism: a region he had visited as a teenager had become a logging operation and then a palm oil plantation.

That is why one of the central elements of Mongabay is the work of local reporters and their connection with the communities affected by the current biodiversity crisis.. “We focus on areas where we can have the greatest impact; the tropics are the richest places in biodiversity and also the most threatened, so they have the most to lose,” he explains.. Thus, throughout its history of more than two decades of existence, the medium that he founded has opened offices in Indonesia, India, Brazil and Peru, and its first newsroom will soon be inaugurated in Africa.

Butler points out as an example an article about a primary forest in Gabon, preserved for generations thanks to the work of local communities, which was about to become a logging operation after being granted a concession to a Chinese company.. The news managed to attract the attention of the authorities, who ended up revoking the license and recognizing the area as a priority conservation area.

The journalist also highlights the importance of putting changes in nature in a context that explains their causes through narratives capable of transmitting scientific evidence to the audience.. “We are a translation service that allows us to connect the data collected by scientists with what people are already observing with their own eyes,” he summarizes.

Political polarization and 'Fake news'

If society's interest and sensitivity towards the environmental crisis have increased in recent decades, new forms of consumption create new challenges when it comes to informing. The impacts of the environmental crisis coincide with the “degradation of the information ecosystem, due to the phenomenon of fake news and its expansion through social networks, which leads people to not be able to distinguish between what is real or not”. Mongabay responds to this scenario of growing misinformation by providing links to the original sources of our information, “to show the scientific data on which we base our articles so that any reader can verify it,” he assures.

Another complex challenge at the current time is the problem of politicization and polarization of the debate on climate and biodiversity.. A context in which “people prefer to believe what fits their vision of the world, rather than what the facts show” and that “leads people to stop trusting scientists, because they believe they hide a bias or ideological prejudice.”

Faced with this challenge, the Mongabay team responds by preparing its information with the intention that it may be relevant and interesting to the greatest number of readers, trying to reach even those who usually reject environmental information for ideological reasons.

However, from Mongabay they avoid excessively pessimistic tones – which Butler describes as “apocalyptic narratives” – since they consider that they can lead to apathy, by creating the feeling that environmental degradation is inevitable.. “There is a risk of driving people to despair, but as reflected in a recent study on media consumption by the Reuters Institute, there is one type of information that people do not avoid, and they are positive stories that propose solutions.”

The communicator believes that, despite the seriousness of the environmental crisis, there are reasons for optimism. “It is true that there are ecological tipping points (critical points of no return), but there can also be tipping points for positive change, such as the transition to renewable energy and electric vehicles. “The question is whether we can achieve these changes in time to solve the enormous problems we face.”