From 29 September to 1 October 2025, the Media for Future in Iceland training brought together journalists and climate scientists to enhance communication, foster collaboration, and strengthen the public impact of climate reporting. Over three days, participants engaged in immersive workshops, field visits, panel discussions, and interactive sessions, combining practical exercises with insights from research and media practice.
The first day was focused on the inputs of both researchers and journalists in the climate science world. Topics were varied, thanks to the diversity of perspectives brought by our international group. Hearing about the experiences, challenges, perspectives and hopes emerging from across the 7 nations present was enlightening and inspiring.
To begin with, Þorvarður Árnason of HÍ spoke with a talk entitled “Glacier downwasting – visual research into past, present and future(s)”. This touched on the human connection to place and how enigmatic landscapes can inspire both optimism and loss.
This was followed by Dalia Abdou of SEKEM, who´s presentation described the impact of climate change on Egypt and some of the innovative solutions emerging within Egypt.
Padraig Flatery of Met Éireann, the Irish meteorological institute, gave an account of their efforts to make Ireland “Weather & Climate Prepared”. Padraig also shared ways in which Met Éireann work to make their findings more understandable to the public, and to connect the reader´s lived experience to the changes that are happening with their climate.
The second session was led by journalists also from Iceland, Egypt and Ireland.
Esther Jónsdóttir of HÍ opened the next series of talks led by journalists. Her talk was entitled “Environmental journalism through the eyes of activists” and described the ways in which the Ungir Umhverfissinnar (Young Environmentalist association) have worked to vouch for the climate and reach out to young people to make a difference and connect with the environment in Iceland.
The environmental journalist Hadeer Elhadary delivered a talk on Environmental Journalism in the MENA (Middle East and North Africa) region. In this she outlined the challenges and solutions her institute has been grappling with in relation to climate change communication. Hadeer pinpointed ways that journalists can enhance their skillsets and a storytelling initiative that humanizes the environmental issues that impact daily life in the MENA region.
Lauren Boland of The Journal gave a talk on how their small team of generalist journalists navigate the media landscape. She walked us through the ways they get in touch with researchers or visa versa, to what a good press release will include and what kinds of headlines attract attention and what doesn´t in Ireland.
Reem El Meligy from Heliopolis University gave a talk entitled “Heliopolis University Communication Initiatives: Strategies for reaching audiences”. In her talk, she discussed their strategy for “flipping the narrative” to celebrate the people working tirelessly to mitigate climate change instead of framing humans only as the destroyers of the Earth. We heard about the events they have held and how their objectives and impact is working towards engaging the Egyptian public.
After the talks, a panel discussion was led by Sarah El-Shaarawi where all speakers from earlier in the day were invited to discuss “Local media landscapes and their relation to climate discussion”. This was an enlightening discussion where themes and conclusions from across the day were explored from the varied geographic and specialist perspectives at the event. This then ended with an open Q&A where participants were able to ask each other more about each other´s talks. Discussions could well have continued on into the evening with so many questions, ideas and thoughts being evoked but details for the following day needed to be disseminated before our time in the conference room ran out.
The second day consisted of a field trip to Sólheimajökull, one of the “downwasting” glaciers from Þorvarður´s talks the previous day. During the wettest month of the year, in the middle of the Icelandic autumn, the team climbed aboard a coach to dodge showers on an exciting and awe-inspiring journey through the countryside and towards the wilder parts of the country.
Once there, Ole Martin Sandberg delivered a talk in front of the glacier entitled “Embracing Uncertainty and the Unknown in Climate Communication”. The philosophical discourse set the tone for participants to collect footage, conduct interviews with one-another and enjoy the natural scenery of the glacier. Discussions and conversation continued between participants over lunch at Faxi bakery, set in front of the infamous Eyafjallajökull glacier.
After the break, the group arrived at Miðskálagil where there was some time for taking in the scenery, hiking, content production and conversation before returning to Hvollsvöllur.
The final day of the LTTA was kicked off with the University of Aveiro team presenting their research on climate change including hot topics, future directions and the state of the art. This was a well co-ordinated and comprehensive walkthrough which primed the audience for what was to come. Elisabeth from FJUM followed up with a presentation on the journalism forum´s journey through political changes and priorities in Austria, and how they have adapted to a different strategy to revive audience engagement and interest.
Sarah El-Shaarawi from the American University of Cairo gave a talk about the state of environmental and climate journalism in the MENA region. Sarah described the challenges in recruitment on their environmental journalism course at the university and overall difficulties in the region regarding disinterest, crisis fatigue, post-colonial suspicion, and lack of data. These two talks shared themes of overcoming challenges in engaging their audiences. Themes of youth engagement, supporting small local platforms and initiatives were shared between the two.
Both Elisabeth and Sarah held a discussion on their shared themes and took questions about their challenges and different strategies that can be employed to overturn declines in engagement in environmental issues across regions. The dedication and hard work of these two organisations was inspiring and their path to success shone an optimistic light on the future of environmental journalism.
David Robbins delivered the final session of the event, a workshop on Infographic Communication Approaches. After a short presentation on storytelling methods based on data visualization, the room was split into several groups and given 2 infographics to study. How the reader responds to the graphics, the key messages were identified by each group. The participants then began to explore different storylines that can be told through each piece of information. David´s guidance highlighted aspects of communication misconceptions in journalism and showed how important interpretation was to the journalist. It is true that there are no “bag of tricks” available to the journalist but rather they should bear in mind that the target audiences are plural and varied, and that the public shouldn´t be underestimated in their ability to understand complexity.