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Author: Rina Tsubaki

Researching the unacknowledged: A young Belgian researcher’s journey to understand the hidden world of forest soils

Researching the unacknowledged: A young Belgian researcher’s journey to understand the hidden world of forest soils

Published November 26, 2025 by Rina Tsubaki

By Rina Tsubaki.

Soil might not be the first thing you notice when walking through a nearby forest. But it’s a quiet, hidden guardian that our forests depend on. It connects trees, insects, and fungi in ways we often overlook. Many soil organisms feed on dead plant residues, making important nutrients available to plants. Additionally, while feeding and digging, they incorporate organic carbon into the soil, improving soil structure and water holding capacity. Healthy, biodiverse soil is therefore essential for making forests resilient and multifunctional and cannot be ignored by anyone working in sustainable forest management.

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It Starts with Us: Human-Centered Design to Tackle Barriers for Collaboration human-centered approach. Photo by AbdulRahmanUzair/AdobeStock.

It Starts with Us: Human-Centered Design to Tackle Barriers for Collaboration 

Published January 23, 2025 by Rina Tsubaki

Human: A Barrier to Transformative Change 

For biodiversity conservation to be effective, nature must be placed at the heart of decision-making. In recent years, concepts like nature-based solutions (NbS) have emerged as promising tools for fostering social empowerment and ecological transformation. Yet, studies reveal a significant limitation: these concepts are often applied within narrow, specific contexts, restricting their potential to drive transformative change. A troubling pattern emerges when we look closer at how “nature” is framed. Complex, top-down power dynamics often exclude marginalised communities and species from meaningful participation. This disconnect underscores the need to rethink how we approach biodiversity conservation. 

The challenges we face in creating a sustainable society are not just environmental — they’re deeply human. We often struggle to align on shared goals to protect the planet. Different languages, perspectives, and priorities can create barriers to collaboration. To develop solutions that effectively address biodiversity loss, we must first overcome the human problems that stand in the way. This calls for a shift toward designing communications and public engagement strategies with a human-centred approach. 

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Reductionism, stereotypes, biases: A collaborative process to investigate generative AI through forest images 

Reductionism, stereotypes, biases: A collaborative process to investigate generative AI through forest images 

Published December 16, 2024 by Rina Tsubaki

The potential impacts of generative AI images on public perceptions of forests 

Without a doubt, generative AI has captured global attention. ChatGPT, the most well-known generative AI tool, famously gained 1 million users within five days of its launch in 2022. Today, it receives over 130 million visits every month, ranking as one of the most visited sites worldwide.  

What is particularly striking is the fast adoption of this new technology among younger users. In the UK, nearly 80% of young people between the ages of 13 and 17 report regular use of such tools. In the Netherlands, the same applies to 74% of those aged 16 and 24. 

As AI capabilities expand, particularly in generating and editing images, such technologies are increasingly integrated into daily life. These types of images are now prevalent on social media and even appear in political campaigns and NGO reports. Needless to say, as AI-generated content starts to permeate our everyday routines, increased AI exposure could potentially influence how people perceive, relate to, and make sense of environmental issues and sites, including forests and the people who live and work in them.  

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What can Google Image search results tell us about human-forest relationships? 

What can Google Image search results tell us about human-forest relationships? 

Published June 5, 2023 by Rina Tsubaki

While public perception research on forests often uses surveys and questionnaires as data collection methods, there are many other ways to inquire about how society perceives and interacts with them. These include repurposing online and social media data to understand what forests mean to people and how widely used digital platforms portray relationships between people and forests.   

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Stories as enablers for ‘deepscaling’ forest restoration 

Stories as enablers for ‘deepscaling’ forest restoration 

Published April 21, 2023 by Rina Tsubaki

Science is the key to the future of our forests. Without it, we cannot restore and make forests resilient to climate change. But is science really all we need? What about the role stories play in forest restoration and, thinking even bigger, in systems change?  
 
If we want to change a system and foster lasting improvements in our society, we need to tackle the root cause of societal issues. Through the SUPERB project, we are ultimately aiming at systems change by collectively restoring forests and biodiversity in twelve locations in Europe. Part of this work involves exploring how people see, feel and value these places in their neighborhoods so that the work can continue beyond the project.  

So, why am I bringing up “stories” here? What’s that got to do with forest restoration and systems change?  

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What Twitter images tell us about COP27 issues: A focus on the Forests and Climate Leaders’ Partnership and Biodiversity Day

What Twitter images tell us about COP27 issues: A focus on the Forests and Climate Leaders’ Partnership and Biodiversity Day

Published December 22, 2022 by Rina Tsubaki

In our previous exploration we looked at how Twitter hashtags can help us inquire into emerging public issues around global events like COP27. In our rapid exploration, based on the digital methods recipes developed by SUPERB partners at the Department of Digital Humanities, King’s College London and the Public Data Lab, we identified different ways people engage with forest restoration through keywords like #conservation, #afforestation, and #rewild. Hashtags such as #forestsarenotfuel and #lettreesgrow problematised the economic use of forests. Political matters also came up, linking the Amazon rainforest and changing politics in Brazil.

COP27 was undeniably an important meeting to follow up on last year’s Glasgow Leader’s Declaration on Forests and Land Use, where over 140 world leaders pledged to “halt and reverse forest loss and land degradation by 2030”. This year’s COP also saw dozens of governments collectively announcing the Forests and Climate Leaders’ Partnership (FCLP), and the day dedicated to biodiversity acted as a platform to discuss the progress of the Glasgow commitment.

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COP27 on Twitter: Forest restoration issues and narratives through hashtags

COP27 on Twitter: Forest restoration issues and narratives through hashtags

Published November 25, 2022 by Rina Tsubaki

Elon Musk’s takeover of Twitter has prompted confusion among its users and concerns about the platform’s future. Musk’s tweets are gathering daily attention due to large-scale layoffs and safety concerns around the new paid blue verification mark. To make things worse, as its engineers are on their way out of the door, users are also experiencing various technical glitches on the platform. Millions of users – including journalists, researchers and organisations – are already signing up on alternative platforms to be prepared for the platform’s deterioration and demise.  

While no one can predict Twitter’s future, it remains widely used by politicians, scientists, companies, NGOs and influencers who are still busy posting on the platform. This includes COP27 in Egypt, where Twitter was one of the main platforms to report on the event. #cop27 has been tweeted over 2.85 million times since 5 November 2022.  

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Exploring the world of investigative journalism: Some takeaways from the panel session at the International Forest Policy Meeting (#IFPM4) 

Exploring the world of investigative journalism: Some takeaways from the panel session at the International Forest Policy Meeting (#IFPM4) 

Published May 17, 2022 by Rina Tsubaki

From wildfires to deforestation in the tropics, journalism brings various forest-related issues to the public attention. Yet, one of the main concerns from the scientific communities is the issue of ‘speed over accuracy’, where many news journalists fail to report complex topics without providing contextual background. Particularly in the digital age, when the speed of news is faster than ever before, there is even more pressure on today’s news industry to report forest-related issues in a timely and accurate manner.  

The good news is that there is a wide variety of journalism practices that take serious consideration of the process for inquiry. In particular, investigative journalists take a unique approach to exploring the issues in depth before jumping to a quick conclusion. Many investigative journalists spend years following a single issue by working closely with scientific experts and mastering the skills to wrangle complex (and often unstructured) data to identify the links that no one has ever addressed in the news. 

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What does social media engagement around the Amazon rainforest fires tell us about public narratives? – Takeaways from our analysis

What does social media engagement around the Amazon rainforest fires tell us about public narratives? – Takeaways from our analysis

Published March 31, 2022 by Rina Tsubaki

During the months of August and September 2019, the Amazon rainforest fires captured global attention. Celebrities, politicians and other public figures spoke up and shared…

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Cracking complexity: How we helped the media explore the link between finance, supply chain and deforestation 

Cracking complexity: How we helped the media explore the link between finance, supply chain and deforestation 

Published February 28, 2022 by Rina Tsubaki

For almost five years, EFI has been actively engaging with media from all around the world to help them explore complex issues related to European and global forests. Under the Lookout Station, a science-media capacity-building initiative, we’ve trained more than 320 editors and journalists through 12 workshops and masterclasses organised in-person and online. Our focus has always been on building a bridge between science and media by offering free training and open platforms to engage with experts. We’ve taken this approach because we believe in making long-term impacts at the individual and an editorial level instead of merely generating immediate media reporting.  

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