Dark Green - Course For Journalists On Climate Finance

Climate finance encompasses a complex web of financial flows, surrounded by much PR fanfare, but little practical transparency. Dark Green supports participants to cut through the secrecy and uncover the real stories of how money affects efforts to address the climate crisis and the wider environment. The programme will run for 4 weeks during February and March 2025, taking a cohort of dedicated journalists through the different methods, tools and research skills needed to investigate climate finance.

Applications for this training programme were accepted until 03/02/2025. 15 journalists were selected to take part and have also pitched for small financial grants to support their research towards a climate investigation at the end. 5 such grants will be provided. All applications were of a very high quality and this made for several difficult decisions.

Trainers

• Diogo Augusto
• Dylan Kennedy
• Nimra Shahid
• Scilla Alecci
• Amy Westervelt
• Leigh Baldwin
• Luke Barratt
• Luuk Sengers
• Tansy Hoskins

Module 1 – Understanding Company Accounts
Diogo Augusto, Investigative Journalist

Wednesday 19 February, 14.00-16.00

The opening module focused on building an understanding of how financial accounts and other documents can provide journalists with important insights when conducting investigations. It included explanations on the structure of such documents, the terminology they use and how to access and quickly understand them.

Module 2 – Financial Open-Source Intelligence
Dylan Kennedy, Director of Analysis, Nodum Global

Thursday 20 February, 10.00-12.00

This module covered advanced online research techniques to identify connections between corporations, individuals and other entities. Practical sections took participants through real-life cases to demonstrate core techniques for conducting deep-dive investigations to uncover opaque global company structures used to facilitate money laundering, corruption, bribery, tax fraud schemes, and more.

Module 3 – Investigating Corporations
Nimra Shahid, Award-winning investigative journalist

Wednesday 26 February, 14.00-16.00

This module took participants deeper into financial research, giving an understanding of how to find stories and report on companies engaging in greenwashing, using financial institutions as examples. Through case studies, the module showed a range of different lines of inquiry, such as financial data, corporate and sustainability reports, and sources to find the information required and bring investigations to publication

Module 4 – Investigating Governments
Scilla Alecci, Investigative Reporter, ICIJ

Thursday 27 February, 10.00-12.00

During the fourth module, participants will change focus to governments and national bodies. The learning steps included techniques to identify where regulation is lacking, or enforcement is inadequate. It will also look at researching the public promises of government figures and provide guidance on critically evaluating these and the extent to which they match with actions and policy. It also analysed a range of sources for this research, and address some of the common difficulties, including a lack of transparency or available data.

Module 5 – Investigating the Enablers
Amy Westervelt, Founder, Drilled Media

Wednesday 5 March, 14,00-16.00

Sitting alongside the corporate and governmental actors whose detrimental impacts on climate change mitigation and the environment more generally, is an entire ecosystem of enablers. This includes lobbying firms and PR consultancies, but also research institutions and academic researchers susceptible to influence, and co-opted campaign groups and opaquely funded ‘grassroots’ movements. This module provided guidance on identifying the different elements of this ecosystem and uncovering the influence they have on public debate and policy decisions.

Module 6 – Investigating the Offsetting Industry
Leigh Baldwin & Luke Barratt, Source Material

Thursday 6 March, 10.00-12.00

One of the most lauded solutions to the climate crisis of recent times, carbon offsetting, has now been shown to be, in reality, one of the most flawed. The voluntary carbon offset market in particular is open to speculation and fraud on a huge scale, making profits for companies involved, providing PR copy for greenwashing to multinational corporations, but doing little if anything to mitigate the climate crisis.

Investigative journalism has been an essential element in uncovering this fraud and, despite the revelations, there is still an urgent need for independent journalists to act as watchdogs over an industry that remains open to large-scale corruption. The module will take participants through the processes involved in several recent investigations into fraudulent carbon offsetting projects and provide insight into navigating the data on others.

Module 7 – Accessing the Corporate Sustainability Reporting Directive
Luuk Sengers, Investigative journalist, mentor and trainer

Wednesday 12 March, 14.00-16.00

This module took a detailed look at the reporting requirements for large corporations on the impacts of their actions and those within their supply chains. It will guide participants through accessing, understanding and building compelling stories from the sustainability reports that will soon be filed by large corporations with operations in the EU.

Module 8 – Supply Chain Investigations
Tansy Hoskins, Award-winning journalist and author

Thursday 13 March, 10.00-12.00

This session covered practicalities of supply-chain investigations, using case studies to guide participants through the process of tracking commodity flows through data and shipping records. Using published investigations as examples, this session takes participants step-by-step through how to run a supply chain investigation. It covers training in how to find stories, gather evidence and carefully use multiple databases to locate hidden information and prove wrongdoing. It also covers questions around legal issues, source protection, and cross border collaboration.