The Climate and Biodiversity Knowledge We Lose When Everything’s in English

Non-native English speakers often struggle to find a foothold in the academic publishing world. We could be overlooking important findings as a result, experts say.

English is the dominant language in research—it’s essentially the lingua franca of science. A common-ground language enables findings to be disseminated around the globe, which has led to a number of breakthroughs in climate and biodiversity research as scientists connect the dots across different fields. 

Yet this outsized English representation has major drawbacks, a growing body of research finds. Non-native English speakers are forced to spend significantly more time reading and writing papers, only to receive more than double the rejections as their counterparts, a 2023 study found. 

Findings from Indigenous experts and non-English-speaking researchers can hold crucial insights for conservation and climate mitigation, which are more likely to slip through the cracks in the current research landscape. Now, scientists are searching for new ways to close this language gap—from cross-cultural collaborations to artificial intelligence. 

Lost in Translation: Peer-reviewed literature is seen as the gold standard of research, but that doesn’t mean it’s always representative of the science world. Of the top 100 most well-regarded scientific journals, 90 are published in the United States and the United Kingdom. In some fields, roughly 98 percent of research is published in English, estimates suggest. 

This bias poses an equity issue—one that could have profound implications for our shared knowledge, according to Tatsuya Amano, an associate professor at the University of Queensland in Australia. 

“I see this as a serious inequality issue, and it is costing the community because we are losing huge numbers of uniquely talented researchers,” he told Nature. 

In recent years, Amano has published a number of papers on how biodiversity information is distributed over space, time and taxa. His research revealed that language is one of the significant barriers that can impede access to and application of science in decision-making. 

Breaking down the numbers reveals just how big this problem can be. A survey led by Amano of more than 900 environmental scientists from eight countries revealed that non-native English Ph.D. students spend an average of 91 percent more time reading a paper in English than native speakers. During the research writing phase, non-native speakers often must hire a professional editor to review their work, which can be an expensive process. 

And the survey found that these authors were asked to revise their papers 12.5 times more often on average than their counterparts. 

The gap is similarly wide between Indigenous knowledge and Western science. Indigenous and native groups hold a wealth of knowledge about the lands and seas they steward. But centuries of abuse against Indigenous peoples by European and U.S. settlers cultivated deep mistrust.

Exacerbating the issue, some scientists and even conservation groups have co-opted or stolen expertise from Indigenous peoples, many of whom are wary of sharing their knowledge in the current research landscape. 

“The history of western science infiltrating Indigenous communities has been laced with harm for centuries,” Lara A. Jacobs, a researcher and citizen of Muscogee Creek Nation with Choctaw heritage, told me. “It’s a very one-way transactional relationship, and until we really break that transactional pathway and start being more reciprocal in the ways that we’re working together, I think that mistrust is warranted.” 

Breaking Barriers: Research in other languages from different cultures can often hold clues to biodiversity and climate issues that English-dominated research missed. A 2021 study led by Amano found that more than 200 bird species were studied only in non-English papers. Experts say that collaboration can help remedy this issue. 

Some research organizations, such as the Animal Behavior Society, have started to implement a multilingual “buddy program” ahead of conferences to promote open exchange. As artificial intelligence improves, new systems have shown promise in providing quick-turnaround translations for research, but researchers urge caution since many of these programs have their own forms of bias or quirks. 

Meanwhile, Indigenous peoples often have traditional knowledge passed down orally through generations that can be critical for biodiversity restoration—but groups are rarely brought to the table on equal footing with Western scientists. In Florida, the Miccosukee and Seminole tribes have long been stewards of wetlands in Everglades National Park, yet have been largely left out of restoration efforts, my colleague Amy Green reported last November. This type of oversight—intentional or not—needs to change, Jacobs said. 

“There’s a lot of distinctions between Western science and Indigenous science. However, they do blend together if we have the right facilitators to do it,” Jacobs said. “A lot of Indigenous scientists and Indigenous academics are trying to work at that nexus to make tribes have more of a voice in the scientific community and bring Indigenous knowledge into the scientific literature.” 

She pointed to the push in Canada to give better rights to and more deeply integrate knowledge from First Nations as an example. 

Looming large over this all is global warming. Last year, I wrote about how climate change is fueling the loss of Indigenous languages by driving displacement and causing glaciers and other ecosystem fixtures to disappear. But tapping into knowledge from different cultures could also help address climate change—and amplify the voices of people combating it, experts say. 

“Traditional knowledge can play an important role in intercultural dialogues,” Gonzalo Oviedo, an anthropologist and environmental scientist who has worked on social aspects of conservation for more than three decades, told Inside Climate News last year. “We need healing processes within societies so that cultures can speak to each other on equal footing, which unfortunately isn’t the case in many places today.” 

Cover photo:  Language diversity in science can help expand access to crucial biodiversity and climate research, experts say. Credit: Jakub Porzycki/NurPhoto via Getty Images