Finding a context for climate change

The panelists discussed the various issues climate change reporters need to consider

Climate change reporting is a real challenge for science journalists. There is a wide range of news angles to choose from — and it is often hard to find one that convinces editors.

A good strategy when covering stories about climate change is to not lose the “big picture”, said Andrew Revkin, environment reporter for the New York Times, at the session ‘Climate change coverage: The messy marriage of science, policy and politics’.

Revkin said that it is important to frame news, making the context clear.

There has been a steady increase in media coverage of climate change in the last 20 years, according to Maxwell Boykoff — a research fellow at Oxford University — who presented the results of a study at the session. But analysing the headlines and text of news stories, he found that there is sometimes no coherence between the two.

Richard Black, environment correspondent for BBC News, pointed out that when reporting on climate change a reporter has to face not only science, policy and politics but also business, education, culture and many other areas.

For example, explaining the mechanisms of the ‘carbon market’ is really complicated and incorporates a variety of areas. “You need to learn,” Black warned, “and if you are not sure about something, just don’t say it.”

Black said that climate change is undeniably a major environment issue. Desertification, deforestation, loss of biodiversity, decline of fisheries and growth of population are all related to climate change. But Black pointed out that media coverage about these phenomena is “pretty bad”.

A key when reporting is to link your story with your region, said Black, to “find the relevant element in your time and place,” he concluded.

I think that’s a really a big challenge!

Laura García, freelance contributor to SciDev.Net

Reporting tomorrow’s story today

UN talks offer easy news hooks for climate change stories

We (the editors I mean) are apparently to blame for the lack of media coverage on climate change. This is beginning to sound a bit like a broken record. Every session I’ve been to at the 6th World Conference of Science Journalists has, in one way or another, bemoaned the fact that editors aren’t interested in stories about climate change (or science more generally) — because they’re not new or sexy, or are just plain boring.

Today’s session ‘A drought or a flood? Climate change reporting around the world’ was no exception. Paddy Coulter, from the University of Oxford, discussed his research on climate change journalism in China, Ghana and Norway, concluding that newspaper editors, especially those at business papers and tabloids, just don’t see climate change as a big story.

The problem, said Saleemul Huq from the IIED, is that “climate change is not an issue of now”. It is tomorrow’s story, or next year’s — but not today’s. Today, editors want stories that will wholeheartedly resonate with their readers, such as imminent changes in government or crashing markets.

So how to get editors to buy in to climate change coverage? Huq suggested that it’s essential to find a “news hook”. International climate talks, such as the UNFCCC Conference of Parties meetings are an easy example. And the negotiations planned in Copenhagen later this year, with all that’s riding on them to come up with a sequel to the Kyoto Protocol, are the biggest hook of all—even the most complacent editor is likely to take the bait.

But, as one delegate from the Thomson Foundation put it, “what happens after Copenhagen?” Huq said the key is to use local events to bring up related issues of climate change. For example, extreme weather events like cyclones or droughts. While any single event cannot be attributed to climate change, each one provides an opportunity to explain that such events are likely to become more frequent with climate change.

One delegate from The Guardian, suggested using technology (electric cars for example) or political tension, drama and scandal as effective news hooks.

Earlier today we heard some other tips for making climate stories appealing — both to editors and readers. “Humanise it”, was the advice from The Guardian’s Damien Harrington. IPCC chair, R.K. Pachauri agreed—“human stories have immense appeal”, he said.

The bottom line is that after Copenhagen journalists will have to become more imaginative in pitching stories about climate change.

Sian Lewis, SciDev.Net

Creating a climate for change

Rajendra Pachauri underlined the scientific rationale for action on climate change.

The poorest countries will be the hardest hit by climate change and we, as science journalists, must do more to highlight their plight and support their position — this was one of the key messages to emerge from the much-anticipated climate change session at the 6th World Conference of Science Journalists this morning.

Echoing the sentiments in his SciDev.Net Opinion article published last week, IPCC chair Rajendra Pachauri said the media has a crucial role in underlining the scientific rationale for action on climate change, which includes reporting on the worst impacts of climate change, many of which are expected in the developing world.

David King, former UK chief scientific advisor, similarly suggested that the media can help put pressure on governments to take action against climate change.

This means emphasising the need to “defossilise” economies over the next 40 years. Science will have a huge part to play. “There are amazing opportunities for innovators in the private sector,” said King. And the time for action is now. Change is coming, and “any country that doesn’t start defossilising now will find the transition very expensive”.

Developing countries are, in some ways, at an advantage as they can jump straight to low-carbon economies — if they are given help to do so. The willingness to help is certainly there — only last week UK prime minister Gordon Brown highlighted the need to work with African countries in the battle against climate change. He said billions of pounds need to move from North to South to help African countries manage climate change impacts.

But — and this is key — such support must not be just another hand-out. It must come with the skills, people and technology needed to support long-term sustainable development. I won’t argue with that.

Sian Lewis, SciDev.Net

Former UK scientific advisor comments on climate change and development

Sir David King, former scientific adviser to the UK government, dismisses fears that asking developing countries to cut their carbon emissions is a plot to curb their development.

At a media briefing on 18 July at the third Euroscience Open Forum (ESOF-3) in Barcelona, King, currently director of the Smith School of Enterprise and Environment at Oxford University, warned that climate change mingled with population explosion, would bring a series of global challenges, ranging from food and energy security to increased terrorism. The world must rise up now to act against climate change by reducing emissions, he said.

King, however, does not think cutting emissions will curb the development of the emerging economies such as China and India. “If your development repeats our energy intensive road in the past, the development is both a disaster to environment and a big threat to energy safety,” he warns

He also pointed out that levels of permissible emissions considered safe to the environment were not decided by politicians and negotiators, but by scientists at IPCC who have reached global consensus.

“It is not European nations which pressure on China’s development by asking it to reduce emissions. This (pressuring) is mainly done by the United States, which until now did not accept any emission reduction obligation. So it is not a plot at all,” King said.

Jia, Hepeng, China coordinator of SciDev.Net

Science communicators propose to fight climate change

Science communicators across the world have proposed more than hundres recommendations for better communicating the dangerous impacts of climate change and the ways to take mitigation measures. Their recommendations will be submitted to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) to fuel further anti-climate change actions.

The project, named Copenhagen Challenge, is part of the 10^th conference on the Public Communication of Science and Technology (PCST) held in Malmo of Sweden and Copenhagen of Denmark between 24 and 27 June.

While climate change has become an established fact to the science community, it is still a changing work to persuade industries, politicians and many of the public to take actions, said Mikkel Bohm, director of Danish Science Communication, at the Copenhagen Challenge session on 26 June.

He says that the gathering of science communicators at the PCST meeting has offered a marvelous chance to “build bridges and dialogues in the societies on the issues of climate changes.”

The 14 topics of Copenhagen Challenge were distributed to all of the PCST participants two week before the conference and the attendees – more than 500 – were organised into 73 focus groups at the session to offer their recommendations.

The challenges include topics like how to communicate climate change without modern mass media; how to deal with regional differences of climate change; communicating in order to make people change behaviour; communicating conflicting views and using new electronic media for communicating climate change.

Each of the Copenhagen Challenge focus groups consists of communicators of different regions, background and professions, and is allowed to offer up to three recommendations to one of the 14 challenges plus some key words needed for climate change communication.

The challenge and recommendations were discussed within each group for the whole afternoon and then they were input by organizers to the Copenhagen Challenge website (http://fm.formidling.dk/pcst/rec) as well as submitted to UNFCCC.

Participants have actively joined the discussion, debates and solution designs. In the challenge how to communicate climate change without modern mass media, for example, they have recommended solutions like using the natural meeting places such as schools, shops and hospitals; adopting rich folk art, like folk songs, games, toys, folk theater and dances; and identifying the local problems and needs of the community related to climate change and focusing on these to design particular strategies within relevant communities.

Similarly, they also suggested to “localise both the impacts of climate change and the impacts of people’s activity alternation on the climate” in dealing with the challenge to change people’s behaviours.

“We have had an overweight of recommendations, and they will form a good start for us to deal with climate change through communications,” Bohm told the next day (27 June)’s PCST conference.

He says that all recommendations will be submitted to UNFCCC in their original forms instead of forming a report prioritizing some over others. “All of them will eventually be chosen by some people having relevance,” Bohn told SciDev.Net.

Manoj Patairiya, President of Indian Science Writers’ Association, welcomes the work under Copenhagen Challenge, saying it offers a constructive open platform to discuss communicating climate change issues.

“But there should be more topics related to the communication situation in the developing countries, such as the contradictions between development and tapping climate changes,” Manoj told SciDev.Net.

Jia Hepeng, China Coordinator, SciDev.Net