CONTRIBUTION
Carlos Fresneda Puerto (Madrid, 1963) is the environment correspondent in Paris for newspaper El Mundo. Having arrived in the French capital six months ago, he speaks admiringly of the city’s green transformation. He previously worked for the same newspaper in London, New York and Milan. Fresneda’s journalistic work stands out for its emphasis on environmental issues, and in this pioneering role he has given voice to both scientists and a wide range of figures from the world of environmental conservation, showcasing novel initiatives that contribute to the improvement of our planet. It is for these achievements that the jury has distinguished him in the category of Knowledge Dissemination and Communication in Biodiversity Conservation in Spanish.
The journalist spent his childhood in Carabanchel – “in the Calle del Campo, because back then that was where the city actually ended.” Despite being surrounded by a mostly urban landscape, he always felt the pull of nature. When he began his career in the Local section of El País, there was still no widespread awareness of environmental issues. Fresneda cites Enrique Tierno Galván, mayor of Madrid from 1979 to 1986, as a precursor of sustainable urban planning: “I witnessed the demolition of the Vallecas flyover (the scalextric), the return of ducks to the River Manzanares and the Monte de El Pardo becoming a protected area.” His love of nature, reinforced by early contact with Adena (now WWF/Adena) and CODA (now Ecologistas en Acción) led him to begin writing on environmental issues. “And the experience taught me that this was a whole field of journalism still to be explored, while I continued to keep a close eye on the day-to-day local news.”
In 1987, Fresneda was part of the founding team of newspaper El Mundo. It was there that he met Gustavo Catalán Deus (a previous winner of the same award), whom he considers his mentor and who inspired him to write about nature. At his new journalistic home, he combined the hectic agenda of a correspondent with reporting on environmental issues. Looking back on his time as correspondent, the journalist reflects: “I have had the bad luck that, wherever I went, things got complicated. In Italy, for example, I lived through a harrowing period with the mafia killings of Borsellino and Falcone, but I also witnessed the birth of the Slow Food movement with Carlo Petrini.”
Environmental news, he believes, served him as an antidote, one that stopped him becoming “the sad chronicler of daily life.” He acknowledges that the scale and drama of 21st-century events in the wake of 9/11 makes it hard to keep the environmental flame alive, but reminds us: “The environment is life itself. It is the air we breathe, the water we drink, the food we eat.” For the correspondent, there are four major environmental problems that need to be addressed: climate change, biodiversity loss, air pollution in cities, and plastic pollution in our seas. “I try to approach them from the solutions side,” he relates, “and at the same time tell personal stories.”
Some of his reports on the protagonists of the environmental news were written for El Mundo’s Natura supplement; others were published in his blog Ecohéroes, a section on the newspaper’s website. In the course of this work, he has interviewed scientists like atmospheric chemist James Lovelock, marine biologist Sylvia Earle, the climatologist James Hansen – a pioneer in alerting the world to climate change – and activists like Paul Hawken or George Monbiot.
Fresneda talks about the many lessons he has learned from the over one hundred individuals he calls “ecoheroes.” Jane Goodall, whom he interviewed during the pandemic, gave him a particularly memorable “master class. She told me that to lose hope is to give up and give in, a message that has resonated with me ever since.” Edward O. Wilson (winner of the 2010 BBVA Foundation Frontiers of Knowledge Award in Ecology and Conservation Biology) was another hero who left a particularly strong impression: “I went to visit him twice at Harvard University and was very struck by his book Half-Earth, in which he proposes leaving half the land and sea in a wholly wild state and having humanity make do with the other half.” Finally, he reserves praise for the Spanish ecologist Joan Carulla: “He does incredible work, almost anonymously. He is the pioneer of green roofs in Spain. Now aged 102, he has spent over fifty years cultivating his roof terrace in Barcelona, which he has made into a green island in the heart of the city.”
In addition to his press work, Fresneda is the author of a literary environmental trilogy consisting of La vida simple (1997), Ecohéroes: 100 voces por la salud del planeta (2020), and Un siglo verde (2023). He is now contemplating a new project: a book to be titled La ciudad posible, for which he plans to visit cities that are prefiguring the future, not only in the global North, but also in Latin America (Medellín, Curitiba), Africa (Freetown) and Asia (Singapore, Chengdu). Asked about the biggest challenge he has faced as an environmental reporter, he points to the lack of press space being given to these issues: “It seems the climate world is only of interest when a disaster happens, then it drops off the pages. It is especially difficult to find space to report on possible solutions, because the thinking continues to be that if it’s not bad news, it isn’t news at all.” For this reason, the correspondent calls for the return of environmental supplements like those newspapers ran prior to the 2008 crisis.
With regard to science and science reporting, the main challenge he sees is the growing wave of disinformation spread through social networks. He believes the discrediting of scientists by populist politicians signals that the planet is going through “a dark time,” best exemplified by the United States pulling out of major climate agreements and treaties. “It is also hard to fight back, when meteorologists are receiving death threats for talking about climate change.” Although the situation is worrying, he nonetheless feels that there is still “light at the end of the tunnel and, above all, people doing work that, sooner or later, will end up bearing fruit.”
Picture: Miguel Fresneda