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Don't stop believing
Thanks for reading my World’s on Fire, a weekly newsletter about disasters from journalist Colleen Hagerty. If you found this dispatch interesting, I hope you’ll subscribe!
For the first links edition of this year, I’m trying something a little different – I’m giving it a theme.
All the links I’m sharing with you today are examples of solutions journalism, an approach to reporting that looks at ways people and institutions are addressing issues without falling into the “here’s someone saving the entire planet with one invention” trope.
As the Solutions Journalism Network (SJN) explains:
“Solutions journalism investigates and explains, in a critical and clear-eyed way, how people try to solve widely shared problems. While journalists usually define news as “what’s gone wrong,” solutions journalism tries to expand that definition: responses to problems are also newsworthy. By adding rigorous coverage of solutions, journalists can tell the whole story.”
SJN has a database of more than 10,000 stories published by various outlets on pretty much any topic you can imagine, and I’ve spent a lot of time in there checking out disaster-focused dispatches from around the world. So, I wanted to share some of the recent work that stood out to me in this space, ranging from international initiatives to local U.S. community pushes for resiliency.
I’ve talked about “disaster fatigue” in the past and the difficulty of keeping up with this sort of news, and I personally find solutions journalism a great way to stay engaged without feeling burnt out. I’d love to hear your thoughts on it – you know what to do!
Bring on the links:
📚 Prescribed Burn Associations Are One Answer to California’s Megafires (Sierra Magazine) Full disclosure: this one is from me! Last year I profiled the growing trend of prescribed burn associations in California, looking at the ways community members were educating themselves about “good fire” during a record-breaking fire season.
📚 How AI Can Help Save Forests(Wall Street Journal) “A beetle no larger than a grain of rice is ravaging European forests, infesting and killing trees faster than they can be culled to slow the insects’ spread. It turns out the best way to spot the pests, and stop them, may be from space.” I mean, what an opening! Heads up that this is behind a paywall.
📚 The disaster recovery groups helping rural North Carolina weather COVID-19 (Southerly) I clearly am fascinated by grassroots organizing before and after disasters, and this article offers a comprehensive look at both the need these coalitions serve and the challenges they face.
🎥 How Japan Built Disaster-Proof Skyscrapers(Bloomberg) I actually didn’t find this one in the official SJN tracker, but I loved this mini-documentary on how Japanese engineers and architects are drawing on tradition, science, and technology to design structures that can withstand natural hazards.
📚 India’s first two ‘Tsunami Ready’ villages(Mongabay) Mock drills, maps, evacuation plans – that’s just some of what it takes to be certified “Tsunami Ready” by UNESCO.
📚 How Mexico City’s poorest neighbourhood is battling climate change (Inkline) From a mobile classroom to outreach on WhatsApp, this piece from Mexico offers some creative ideas for increasing community preparedness.
As always…
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Now, here’s a little something for reading to the end.