Scientists Urge Shift to Storytelling to Tackle Climate and Biodiversity Crises

While the world grapples with the climate and biodiversity crises, scientists are calling for a change in the way science is communicated. Traditional academic writing, with its bias towards objectivity and technicality, may not be popular among the masses. One green research team at the University of Exeter feels that communicating scientific findings through storytelling is critical to create public interest and action in the world.

The traditional form of scientific communication depends upon millennial standards of rationality and objectivity. The form has been used for centuries to pass on results between scientists but doesn't cut ice with the general public, particularly in a matter of pressing international importance such as climate change and environmental disaster. The Exeter researchers believe that it will not become significant to public opinion or practice in seeking the change they wish to achieve, by persisting in writing in impersonal and detached scholarly styles.

Scientists can consider adding narrative to what they do in order that they can utilize the power of narrative to talk not just about evidence, but about what the work is concerned with, and how it is significant. This is not a practice of scientific integrity on the backs of science. Rather, it is a question of bringing personal experience, common situation, and emotional back-story to bear on scientific inquiry in order to make richer, more personal contact with publics. The idea is to emerge from the single masked presentation of science and to work towards more familiar, more understandable material addressing more than a single public.

Authors point to the employment as an illustration, specifically of off-scene production work coverage such as on "Blue Planet II," to enable identification on the part of audiences with scientists and environments in general. Scientist briefs on their profession and lives make the scientific process humanized and possibly could function toward building even deeper understanding and empathy on the part of audiences. The scientists are also champions of even more personalized author biographies, emphasis on motivations and personal rapport with the topic, maybe making the science easier to comprehend and believe in the common man. In the article, the writers note that science communication is not to be confined to research publications. New media and modes, such as blogs, imaginative essays, short films, and social media posts, can offer a vehicle for presenting science more naturally narrative-form-based that humans ingest story. This method also leaves space for emotional and imaginative expression—things typically ruled out of traditional scientific writing but maybe necessary to bring in the multitudes.

The authors reference the necessity of this shift in communication habits. Despite decades of warning by scientists and data collection, ecosystem destruction and acceleration of climate change continue to be real issues. The present ways have not managed to energize public action or political will. That reality makes an effort to test new science communication practices more effective that respond better to how people take in information, connect to, and get motivated by information.

Exeter researchers do not simply call for change but show how scientists can effect such change. For instance, fieldwork storytelling, self-descriptions of struggles and successes, and expression of the emotional motive for research endeavors. Such storytelling can make scientists more robust, not frail, by anchoring them in the human and his stakes.

Their paper, in People and Nature, makes several practical proposals and invites scientists to make imaginative leaps when it comes to communicating with the public. Recognising that it may perhaps be new or even slightly out of their comfort zone for some scientists to acquire these skills, the authors firmly propose that the time is opportune and that storytelling may be a powerful tool for bridging the science-society divide.

As the climate and biodiversity crises worsen, the researchers call on researchers to change the way they present their work.
If scientists were to adopt narrative, they would better connect with the public and might ignite the kind of concerted action needed to address these global challenges. Scientific integrity does not have to take a back seat but can actually be improved through the process of making the story more engaging and readable. As the world is suffering from environmental collapse, scientists are being called upon not only to test in the lab and while conducting fieldwork—but to test the way they are telling their tales to the world.

Source/Credits:As per a study by the University of Exeter, in People and Nature. Original article by Alex Morrison, April 2025.