When Climate Speaks English

This blog was originally published in The Eco Update.

Most of the world’s climate research is written in English. That might seem practical, but it comes with a cost: whole bodies of knowledge produced in other languages—often from the Global South—are ignored. In a new paper in Area, we ask a deceptively simple question: does the language of research actually change what we know?

To find out, we compared two “systematic evidence reviews” (SERs) on the same topic: the health impacts of climate change on outdoor workers in urban Asia. One review searched only English-language studies; the other searched Vietnamese-language sources using the same methods. What we found was striking. The two bodies of literature did not simply repeat each other. Instead, they told different stories about climate, health, and responsibility.

Two reviews, two worlds

The English-language review drew on large international databases and focused on cities across Asia. It tended to frame climate change at a macro level—looking at long-term risks, heat waves, and population-scale outcomes such as mortality or hospital admissions. These studies often emphasised structural drivers of vulnerability, such as poverty, gender, migration status, and weak labour protections. Their proposed solutions leaned toward system-level change: urban planning, heat-health warning systems, labour regulations, and policy reform.

The Vietnamese-language review, by contrast, focused almost entirely on Vietnam and on specific groups of formal workers—sanitation workers, traffic police, construction workers. Rather than using abstract health indicators, these studies described everyday illnesses and bodily strain: dizziness, urinary disease, digestive problems, musculoskeletal pain, and fatigue. Climate was framed less as an extreme event and more as part of daily “weather” that shapes working life.

Most importantly, the Vietnamese studies emphasised individual coping strategies: protective clothing, hydration, posture changes, dietary supplements, exercise, and rest. Responsibility for adaptation was often placed on workers themselves, rather than on employers or governments.

Why do these differences matter?

If policymakers rely only on English-language research, they may assume that climate vulnerability is best addressed through large-scale policy and infrastructure. If they look only at Vietnamese-language studies, they might conclude that the problem can be solved through workplace adjustments and personal behaviour. Neither view is complete on its own.

Language does not just translate ideas—it shapes them. Each research tradition reflects its social, political, and institutional context. English-language journals prioritise theory, comparison, and generalisation. Vietnamese outlets write for national audiences and are shaped by different political constraints and academic norms. As a result, the two literatures sit in separate “knowledge silos,” rarely speaking to one another.

The bigger picture: epistemic justice

Listening across languages will not magically solve climate injustice. But without doing so, climate science risks remaining abstract, reductionist, and disconnected from lived realities. Workers do not experience “mortality risk curves.” They experience aching backs, dizziness, exhaustion, and fear of losing income if they stop.

Our findings highlight a deeper problem in global climate research. When systematic reviews exclude non-English sources, they appear neutral and comprehensive—but they quietly reproduce hierarchies of knowledge. Voices from the Global South are treated as “local” or anecdotal, while English-language studies are assumed to represent universal truth.

Yet, as this comparison shows, Southern-language research does not simply add detail—it changes the questions we ask and the solutions we imagine. Listening across languages is not a courtesy; it is a necessity for just and effective climate action.

A truly global climate science must learn to hold both perspectives at once: the systemic and the everyday, the structural and the bodily. That begins by recognising that language does not just describe climate change—it decides whose suffering is seen, and whose solutions are imaginable.