Bridging Science and Storytelling: How CGIAR’s Climate Security Research Is Reaching Wider Audiences 

Science is powerful when people can see themselves in it.  

This year, the United Nations revealed a sobering fact: fewer than 5 percent of its reports are downloaded more than 5,500 times. One in five never break 1,000. Evidence, it turns out, too often lives and dies in PDFs, admired by experts, unseen by those whose lives it aims to improve.  

The CGIAR Climate Security team took that as a challenge. In 2025, our researchers made a deliberate shift from publishing findings about people to communicating with them. Through partnerships with journalists, filmmakers, and broadcasters, we worked to bring scientific data into public dialogue, bridging the gap between climate models and lived experience.

Partnering with Media Storytellers  

In the Honduran fishing villages of Cedeño and San Marcos, climate change has already become personal. Rising tides, erratic rainfall, and shrinking catches are not abstract phenomena; they’re choices to adapt or to leave.   

CGIAR researchers studying these dynamics worked with Climate Tracker Latin America to integrate their findings into a short documentary, Cuando el mar se lleva algo más que la tierra, (“When the Sea Takes More Than the Shore”). Told through the voices of residents and CGIAR Climate Security researchers, the documentary traced how families balance their ties to home against the slow violence of climate change. A follow up guest post on Climate Tracker shared how communities are finding ways to protect livelihoods and dignity amid environmental and social pressures, turning abstract research into compelling storytelling. 

The story didn’t stay in Honduras. Bloomberg later cited CGIAR’s evidence in its feature Trump’s Deportations Are Driving a Remittance Boom in Latin America, weaving local climate data into a broader economic narrative. Revista Mutante, a Colombian platform known for immersive storytelling, published Expulsados por la sequía: migración climática en Honduras, merging CGIAR’s analysis with first-person testimonies under the viral hashtag #HablemosDeLaMigración. 

Science, it turned out, could travel faster than the scientists themselves if someone gave it a human voice.

Taking Evidence into Public Dialogue  

In Africa, the conversation evolved from storytelling to strategy. In September 2025, Dr. Gracsious Maviza of the CGIAR Climate Security team joined journalists and policymakers in Addis Ababa for the Pre-Summit Forum to the Second Africa Climate Summit, themed Media as a Catalyst for Africa’s Climate Change, Peace and Security Agenda.  

The result was the Addis Ababa Declaration on Media, Climate, Peace and Security and Justice, endorsed by the African Union Commission and the Federation of African Journalists. It argued that accurate, accessible information is “as vital as food, water, and shelter in times of climate stress and insecurity.” By contributing data and field evidence, CGIAR helped shape that message. 

While this dialogue was unfolding, another strand of CGIAR’s work was reaching audiences through a different medium: public discussions on food security and conflict.  

A dense statistical analysis by our researchers on the relationship between malnutrition, conflict, and climate stress in Nigeria was published in the Journal of Peace Research. The study found that child malnutrition could serve as an early warning indicator of instability; a subtle, powerful insight. But numbers alone rarely move hearts.  

A follow up thought piece titled Child malnutrition is a sign of conflict to come was published on The Conversation, reaching international readers and emphasized that tackling hunger is also a strategy for preventing violence. The piece captured the media’s attention, leading to an invitation for CGIAR researchers to appear on Channel Africa’s radio show On the Move called Climate, Child Malnutrition & Conflict: Breaking the Cycle. On the show, Dr. Grazia Pacillo, CGIAR Climate Security Lead, reframed technical data into urgent, accessible language for millions of African listeners explaining that hunger is not only a humanitarian crisis but also a predictor of unrest.  

Purposeful Science  

What unites these stories, from Cedeño’s coastline to Nigeria’s farmlands, is not just the subject matter, but the philosophy behind them. By partnering with storytellers and media outlets, CGIAR scientists are creating the conditions for people to make sense of their risks, question their leaders, and imagine fairer futures. 

CGIAR’s Climate Security work is proving that the most meaningful impact of research may begin when the story leaves the page and enters the public sphere. 

These stories remind us that research has two lives. The first begins in data i.e. the precision of field measurements and the rigor of peer review. The second begins when those insights enter the world: when a farmer hears them on the radio, a student watches them in a short film, or a policymaker reads them in the news. 

That second life is where science meets its purpose. 

When scientists speak in ways people can understand, they build trust. As the fight against misinformation rages on, trust may be science’s most important currency. 

Authors: Julian Higuera, Nohelia Palou, Grazia Pacillo, Gracsious Maviza, Ibukun Taiwo, Alliance of Bioversity & CIAT | Photo Credit: ©CIAT/Rod Lefroy

This work is carried out with support from the CGIAR Climate Action and Food Frontiers and Security Science Programs. We would like to thank all funders who supported this research through their contributions to the CGIAR Trust Fund: https://www.cgiar.org/funders/