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It’s a sign of the times: A leafless tree emoji will become available on phones in 1H 2025 to fill the gap of emojis representing climate degradation, Bloomberg reports. The Unicode Consortium, a non-profit alliance tasked with standardizing text processing across our devices, announced the inclusion earlier this year after the emoji was first pitched by Brian Baihaki two years ago to represent the growing threat of drought.
Severe drought is becoming more common: Rivers are drying, with 2023 recorded as the driest year in over three decades for rivers. For example, Brazil is experiencing a severe drought that saw one of the Amazon river tributaries reach a record low just this week. Morocco has experienced five years of drought, and last year approached the absolute water scarcity threshold of 500 cbm per capita per year. Tunisia’s agricultural sector has also been a victim of severe drought that slashed its cereal agricultural output.
Communication is key: An emoji is not a climate change mitigation tool but plays a vital role in reflecting people’s needs to communicate about the everyday, hard-felt impacts of climate change, Communication professor Scott Varda told Bloomberg. “An emoji like the leafless tree emoji has the possibility to create awareness of climate change as a problem,” he added.
