Climate Fiction and Environmental Narratives

Climate fiction, often abbreviated as cli-fi, and broader environmental narratives have emerged as vital cultural modes for engaging with the complexities of planetary change. These narratives span literary forms—from speculative and science fiction to magical realism—and extend into film, graphic novels and digital media. By weaving scientific insights into imaginative world-making, they offer readers and viewers experiential pathways to understand the socioecological consequences of rising temperatures, biodiversity loss and extreme weather events. Far from mere dystopian spectacle, climate fiction frequently explores agency, hope and modes of adaptation, foregrounding both individual and collective responses to ecological threat. Environmental narratives more broadly encompass policy reports, documentary storytelling and participatory storytelling practices, each shaping public discourse around justice, resilience and intergenerational responsibility. Together they reinforce the interconnections between local lived experience and global environmental transformation, highlighting how affect, imagination and ideology coalesce to influence climate perceptions, policy decisions and grassroots action.

Research from Nature Portfolio

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Climate Fiction and Environmental Narratives publication trend

The graph below shows the total number of articles in climate fiction and environmental narratives across all publications each year (not limited to Nature Index journals).

Technical terms

Climate fiction (cli-fi): A literary and multimedia genre that explores climate change and its impacts through imagined futures and speculative scenarios.

Speculative fiction: A broad category of narrative that includes science fiction, fantasy and other genres engaging with hypothetical worlds to examine social and environmental issues.

Shared Socioeconomic Pathways (SSPs): Scenarios used in climate research that outline alternative trajectories of societal development, including factors such as demographic changes, economic growth and technological innovation.

Sociotechnical imaginary: A collective vision of desirable futures shaped by the interplay of societal values and technological possibilities, often mobilised in policy and narrative forms.

References

1. Climate catastrophe: The value of envisioning the worst‐case scenarios of climate change. Wiley Interdisciplinary Reviews Climate Change (2023).
2. Narrating climate futures: shared socioeconomic pathways and literary fiction. Climatic Change (2017).
3. Reimagining climate futures: Reading Annihilation. Geoforum (2022).
4. Mind the gaps! Climate scientists should heed lessons in collaborative storytelling from William Shakespeare. Wiley Interdisciplinary Reviews Climate Change (2022).