How listening can help us respond to a planet in crisis (resilience.org)

Jana Winderen recording bearded seals under the ice with three hydrophones at Svalbard, a Norwegian archipelago. Photo by Stuart Trowell in 2023. What does it mean to listen to a planet in crisis? Scholars, scientists and artists are using sound to study biodiversity and the climate crisis, challenging us to consider how we listen to, and with, the living world. Recording technologies are making it possible to listen in unprecedented ways, taking on an increasingly crucial role as a tool for collecting data on species to support their well-being and survival, and as a way for humans to engage with the more-than-human world. Kara Oehler, Director of the Institute for Climate Sound & Society and co-founder of Harvard’s metaLab, is a journalist and artist whose work focuses on sound, climate and data. In 2025, Oehler curated the “Copenhagen Climate Sound Series” at the University of Copenhagen’s Center for Applied Ecological Thinking, which featured three events. Each event featured a special guest speaker who explored listening as anything but neutral, from who records and controls sonic conservation data to what sound can tell us about the emotional lives of animals, and the soundscapes hidden beneath ice and water. Among the speakers...