Translating Climate Information for the Global Majority With Hikaru Wakeel Hayakawa

This episode features a conversation with Hikaru Wakeel Hayakawa, Executive Director of Climate Cardinals, one of the world’s largest youth-led climate advocacy organisations, who work to make the climate movement more accessible to those who don’t speak English. It was recorded in August, 2024.

In his role, Hikaru oversees a volunteering program that is projected to grow to over 60,000 volunteers by the end of 2024, translating climate-related information into over 100 different languages.

Hikaru established Climate Cardinals’ signature translation program in partnership with Translators Without Borders and Google Cloud,  expanding the organisation’s translation capacity to a million words per year. 

Under Hikaru’s watch, Climate Cardinals has handled translation requests for over two million words of climate information, has fundraised for a six-figure budget, and became one of the first-ever youth-led organizations to be funded by Google’s philanthropic branch. 

Hikaru represents Climate Cardinals as part of UNESCO’s Youth Climate Action Network Steering Committee, a network of networks that represents over 10 million youth climate activists, and has spoken about his work for the Smithsonian, the UN Development Programme, the Italian Ministry of the Environment, the March On Foundation, Williams College, and the U.S. Interagency Group on Climate Literacy. His work has also been featured in Axios, the Guardian, Forbes, and Teen Vogue.

All this, while still a university student.

Amongst other things, Hikaru and I discussed the fact that more than 90% of scientific information about climate change is only available in English, the challenges that this presents in terms of engagement and justice for the global majority, and the power this translation gap has when it comes to fueling climate misinformation.

Additional links:

Visit the Climate Cardinals website

Climate Cardinals Founder Sophia Kianni’s TED Talk

Join the Climate Cardinals mailing list

Candis Callison’s book, “How Climate Comes to Matter”