In 2022 we authored (or co-authored) and distributed 20 science-related news releases and 11 opinion articles on behalf of clients in Montreal, Hamilton, Toronto, Washington DC, New York, Port of Spain, London, Bonn, Brussels, Vienna, Frankfurt, Paris, Nairobi, and Kuala Lumpur
TCA's environmental focus was reflected in all but one news release: biodiversity (6 releases), marine life (3), water/drought (5), metals/minerals (2), and electronic/hazardous waste (3). The other related to health hazards in Canadian child care centres.
These efforts helped generate well over 110,000 online news articles in at least 72 languages across 187 countries and territories, resulting in roughly 600 billion potential public impressions, according to the Meltwater news search engine. Countless other impressions were generated via print newspapers and magazines, radio, television and social media
With thanks to the researchers and collaborators behind these stories, and to the hundreds of journalists who covered them, the following releases were the most widely noted last year.
December 19, 2022
World Adopts Four Goals, 23 Targets for 2030 in Landmark Biodiversity Agreement
"Nearing the conclusion of a sometimes fractious two-week meeting, nations of the world today agreed on a historic package of measures deemed critical to addressing the dangerous loss of biodiversity and restoring natural ecosystems."
News release in full, click here
Example coverage:
100,000+ online news articles, 71 languages, 187 countries, 560 billion potential impressions.
Full COP15 coverage summary here (not including substantial media coverage of earlier negotiating meetings in 2022)
July 8, 2022
50,000 Wild Species Meet Needs of Billions Worldwide
"Billions of people, in developed and developing nations, benefit daily from the use of wild species for food, energy, materials, medicine, recreation, inspiration and many other vital contributions to human well-being. The accelerating global biodiversity crisis, with a million species of plants and animals facing extinction, threatens these contributions to people."
Full news release, Sustainable Use of Wild Species, click here
July 11, 2022
Decisions Based on Narrow Set of Market Values of Nature Underpin the Global Biodiversity Crisis
"The way nature is valued in political and economic decisions is both a key driver of the global biodiversity crisis and a vital opportunity to address it, according to a four-year methodological assessment by 82 top scientists and experts from every region of the world."
Full news release, Values of Biodiversity, click here
Example coverage
3,000 online news articles, 34 languages, 9.2 billion potential impressions.
Full coverage summary here
19 January, 2022
Scientists urge quick, deep, sweeping changes to halt, reverse dangerous biodiversity loss
Halting, then reversing the dangerous, ongoing loss of Earth’s plant and animal diversity requires far more than an expanded global system of protected areas of land and seas, scientists warned today. Needed is successful, coordinated action across a diverse, interconnected set of “transformative” changes, including massive reductions in harmful agricultural and fishing subsidies, deep reductions in overconsumption, and holding climate change to 1.5°C.
News release in full, click here
Example coverage
115 articles, 13 languages, 38 countries, potential impressions 654 million
Full coverage summary here
February 14, 2022
Global Library of Underwater Biological Sounds, “GLUBS,” Will Help Monitor Changing Marine Life
"The Global Library of Underwater Biological Sounds, 'GLUBS,' will underpin a novel non-invasive, affordable way for scientists to listen in on life in marine, brackish and freshwaters, monitor its changing diversity, distribution and abundance, and identify new species. Using the acoustic properties of underwater soundscapes can also characterize an ecosystem’s type and condition."
Full news release, click here
Example coverage:
654 online news articles, 15 languages, 65 countries, 1.5 billion potential impressions.
Full coverage summary here
April 27, 2022
Chronic Land Degradation: UN Report Offers Stark Warnings, Remedies
The way land resources – soil, water and biodiversity – are currently mismanaged and misused threatens the health and continued survival of many species on Earth, including our own, warns the Global Land Outlook 2, a stark new report from the United Nations Convention to Combat Desertification (UNCCD)
News release in full, click here
Example coverage
Totals (combined with UNCCD drought report below): 4,744 articles, 43 languages, 135 countries, 11.6 billion potential impressions
Full coverage summary here
JULY 1, 2022
Crushed, zapped, boiled, baked, more: Nature used 57 recipes to make Earth’s 10,500+ ‘mineral kinds’
"A 15-year study led by the Carnegie Institution for Science details the origins and diversity of every known mineral on Earth, a landmark body of work that will help reconstruct the history of life on Earth, guide the search for new minerals and ore deposits, predict possible characteristics of future life, and aid the search for habitable planets and extraterrestrial life."
News release in full, click here
Example coverage:
474 online news articles, 18 languages, 44 countries, 2.1 billion potential impressions.
Full coverage summary here
OCTOBER 13, 2022
International E-Waste Day: ~5.3 Billion Mobile Phones will Become Waste in 2022
Experts expect roughly 5.3 billion mobile / smartphones will drop out of use this year. Stacked flat atop one another at an average depth of 9 mm that many disused phones would rise roughly 50,000 km – 120 times higher than the International Space Station; one-eighth of the way to the moon.
News release in full, click here
Example coverage:
2,300 online news articles, 55 languages, 107 countries, 6.3 billion potential impressions.
Full coverage summary, click here
January 25, 2022
UN Report: 97% of Latin America’s e-waste is improperly managed; Includes an annual $1.7 billion in recoverable materials
"Electronic waste in 13 Latin American countries rose by 49% between 2010 and 2019, roughly the world average, but just 3% was collected and safely managed, a fraction of the 17.4% global average, according to the UN’s first assessment of Latin America’s e-waste volume, legislation, and management infrastructure."
News release in full, click here
Example coverage
101 online articles, 3 languages, 25 countries, 144 million potential impressions.
Full coverage summary here
May 26, 2022
UN and Partners Detail the Abundance and Promise of Diverse “Unconventional Water Resources"
"UN and partner water experts say it's time to increase the tapping of Earth’s diverse and abundant unconventional water resources – the millions of cubic kilometres of water in deep land-based and seabed aquifers, in fog and icebergs, in the ballast holds of thousands of ships, and elsewhere."
Full news release, click here
Example coverage:
300 online news articles, 11 languages, 45 countries, 966 million potential impressions.
Full coverage summary here
May 11, 2022
World “at a crossroads” in management of droughts, up 29% in a generation
"Humanity is 'at a crossroads' when it comes to managing drought and accelerating mitigation must be done “urgently, using every tool we can,” says a new report from the United Nations Convention to Combat Desertification (UNCCD).
News release in full, click here
Example coverage:
Full coverage summary here
March 21, 2022
UN: 500 million live in 19 African nations deemed water insecure
Despite global Sustainable Development Goals and commitments made in 2015, just 29 African nations have made some progress over the past three to five years, 25 have made none, according to the UN’s first-ever assessment of water security in Africa.
News release in full, click here
Example coverage:
152 online news articles, 32 countries, 1.1 billion potential impressions.
Full coverage summary, click here
April 18, 2022
Study quantifies metal supplies needed to reach EU’s climate neutrality goal
Meeting the European Union’s Green Deal goal of climate neutrality by 2050 will require 35 times more lithium and 7 to 26 times the amount of increasingly scarce rare earth metals compared to Europe’s use today, according to a study from Belgian university KU Leuven.
News release in full, click here
Example coverage:
384 online news articles, 24 languages, 50 countries, 1.5 billion potential impressions.
Full coverage summary here
April 30, 2022
CEC Secretariat recommends factual record on vaquita porpoise
The Secretariat of the Commission for Environmental Cooperation (CEC) has recommended developing a factual record to explore factors contributing to the near-extinction the vaquita porpoise – the world’s smallest cetacean and rarest marine mammal – in the Gulf of California in Mexico.
News release in full, click here
Example coverage
Coverage summary in full here
December 8, 2022
Global Marine Experts Urge Policy-Makers to Support Research to Find, Catalogue, Protect Disappearing Deep-Sea Species
"More than 90% of marine species are undescribed and many may go extinct due to human activity before they’re discovered — the loss of unique, potentially valuable genetic resources resulting in unpredictable effects on global ecosystems essential to human food supplies and climate regulation. Without knowledge of these species, effective deep sea conservation is impossible, leading international marine scientists warned in a new policy brief"
News release in full, click here
Example coverage
Full coverage summary here
April 28, 2022
Mould, pesticides, toxic chemicals reported in survey of Canadian child care professionals
Nearly half of some 2,000 professionals in child care programs across Canada who responded to a survey report unhealthy conditions for children, according to data released on national Healthy Environments for Learning Day (HELD).
News release in full, click here
Coverage (exclusive to the Toronto Star)
Full coverage summary here
Also sent to global media contacts:
* 8 climate and biodiversity-related releases authored by colleagues in Zurich, Nairobi and Montreal
* 17 media notices, including two "primers" for reporters preparing to cover a) two new IPBES biodiversity assessment reports in July and b) the UN Convention on Biological Diversity COP15, and seven invitations to expert briefings for media on different aspects of the world's carbon credit market.
Terry Collins & Assoc. is a Toronto-based consultancy with affiliates in the US, UK, Africa and Asia specialized in global publicity of science-related research. Operating since 1996, Terry established the service after nine years of news reporting (Hamilton, Toronto, Ottawa) and 10 years of public service (Ottawa; UN New York).
To subscribe to releases: tc@tca.tc