Over the past year, correspondents and students across the world helped us explore climate change and the ways to slow it down and reverse it.

Climate change is such a big problem many people feel overwhelmed by it. The predictions were dire and the actuality appears worse. We are facing species extinctions, drying up of lakebeds and rivers, rising temperatures and seas and extreme weather conditions. People talk about the apocalypse.

But it isn’t time to panic, it is time to push through solutions: carbon capture; renewable, emissions-free energy sources; changing our ways of living to reduce our impact.

Things are happening all over the world. In every country people are adopting new policies and strategies. Scientists are working together on technological solutions. People are banding together to plant trees and change the way they produce and consume products.

As part of a project called The Writing’s on the Wall, funded by the European Union’s Erasmus+ program, News Decoder published a series of stories called “Climate Decoders” and published a set of profiles by student journalists that gives us a better understanding of the depth of the problem we face — together, across the globe — in saving the planet. But we also see how people in all types of fields, in every region and from every social class are working together to find solutions.

“Climate change stands in front of our noses like a brick wall,” said Matthew Pye, philosophy teacher, author and founder of the Climate Academy. “The laws of physics and chemistry cannot be manipulated, negotiated or argued with. They are just there. But we have the choice to look at them, and we have the choice to make a creative and informed response.”

For the conclusion of this project and in celebration of the work of these correspondents and student journalists, News Decoder has compiled the stories here.  At News Decoder our mantra is this: while problems cross borders, the solutions connect us.

The Climate Decoders

Our network of correspondents produced 16 stories that explore climate change through the lens of international relations, finance, food and agriculture, energy production, environmental conservation and social and political movements.

Climate Champions storytelling challenge

News Decoder partnered with the nonprofit organization Global Youth & News Media on a global storytelling challenge. The competition was open to teenagers anywhere in the world who could profile someone, through text, a podcast, a video or multimedia, working on projects that make real progress toward removing carbon, lowering emissions or passing climate change legislation — the kinds of actions on a local level that, if copied elsewhere, could have major impact.

We published the six winning articles and present them to you here. These stories profile people finding solutions in areas as varied as the fashion industry, food utensils, tree planting, energy production and in getting mass numbers of people to change their behavior for the planet.