The Drum Beat 482 - Climate Change Communication
This issue of The Drum Beat explores intersections between climate change and communication for development. It features selections on climate change and its impact on communities, its relationship to and effect on women, media's role in climate change alerts, climate change and youth awareness, and global information sharing on climate issues.
Please send additional project, evaluation, strategic thinking, and materials information on communication for development at any time. Contact Deborah Heimann at dheimann@comminit.com
- An exploration of climate change and GENDER ISSUES.
- A focus on CHILDREN, YOUTH, and climate change.
- Addressing and supporting CLIMATE COMMUNICATORS.
- A POLL on risk communication in Southeast Asian countries.
- A spotlight on COMMUNITY PARTICIPATION and climate change.
- Submit info to the next DEVELOPMENT CLASSIFIEDS e-magazine.
- Projects and resources about INFO SHARING on climate change.
1. Gender and Climate Change: Mapping the Linkages
by Alyson Brody, Justina Demetriades, and Emily Esplen
This report offers insights gleaned from existing resources integrating a gender-sensitive perspective into climate change research and responses. The authors outline key linkages between climate change and gender inequality, identify gaps in the existing body of work on gender and the environment, review best practices on adaptation and mitigation, and offer recommendations regarding priority areas for future research. They conclude that there is an urgent need to identify obstacles to women's participation in decision-making, and find ways to address these constraints through supporting grassroots awareness-raising, confidence-building, and advocacy and leadership training programmes.
2. Reclaiming Rights and Resources: Women, Poverty, and Environment
by Shalini Gidoomal
Published by CARE, this report presents 7 case studies from across Africa that focus on 3 types of threatened environmental resources: land, forests, and water. In each case, women share their stories of how the loss or degradation of such critical resources has adversely affected their lives and what they are doing to address these problems. In the foreword, Nobel Laureate Wangari Maathai argues that women's livelihoods are directly linked to the state of the environment, and that when rural environments become unsustainable, it is women whose lives are most disrupted. She also argues that educating those who work most closely with the land - especially women - will greatly benefit the environment.
3. Gender: The Missing Component in the Response to Climate Change
by Yianna Lambrou and Grazia Piana
This 2005 report analyses the gender dimension of climate change and the policies enacted to mitigate and adapt to its impacts with the aim of developing gender-sensitive approaches with regard to mitigation measures, adaptation projects, and national regimes. According to the report, natural disasters and environmental damage associated with climate change are worse for vulnerable populations, including women and children. They depend largely on the environment for their livelihoods and have less access to natural and economic resources for recovery. However, the research found that gender aspects have generally been neglected in international climate policy. The report concludes that studies, debates, and international fora suggest integrating the gender variable into emerging national and future international responses to climate change.
CHILDREN, YOUTH, AND CLIMATE CHANGE
4. Children in a Changing Climate (CCC) - Global
Launched in June 2008, this child-led global consultation programme is an effort to secure children's influence in preventing and adapting to climate change. CCC’s research, action, advocacy, and learning are designed to engage children as protagonists - actors in their own development - with an influence on issues of international importance. The organisations involved in the programme - Plan International, National Children's Bureau, Institute for Development Studies, Save the Children, the United Nations Children's Fund (UNICEF) in the United Kingdom (UK), ActionAid, and Footprint Friends - are working to help children directly voice their concerns and solutions to decision-makers. At the December 2008 UN talks in Poznan, Poland, CCC presented a participatory video project from Nepal. Making the films allowed the children to explore how the changing climate is impacting them and their families and how they are coping. Most importantly, according to the organisers, the video project gave children an opportunity to discuss the changing climate with others in their community and to identify concrete adaptation measures that could enhance their communities' capacity to cope with climate change.
Contact: info@childreninachangingclimate.org
5. Campus Climate Challenge - Canada, United States
The Campus Climate Challenge is a project of Energy Action Coalition, a group of over 30 youth organisations throughout the United States (US) and Canada. The Challenge leverages the power of young people, through collective advocacy and action, to organise on college campuses and high schools across Canada and the US to establish 100% Clean Energy policies at their schools. The Challenge is working - through interpersonal communication, community organising, and online interactivity - to grow a generation-wide movement to stop global warming, by reducing the pollution from high schools and colleges down to zero, and to lead North America to a clean energy future. The ClimateChallenge.org website includes: a link to the Climate Challenge weblog (blog); videos and photos from the youth climate movement; a link to "Its Getting Hot in Here", an online blog project; a listing of member campus and community groups; a "newsroom" with links to articles relevant to climate change; and a resources directory.
Contact: ClimateChallenge.org website
Fired Up Media is a network of videographers, editors, and journalists reporting from the front lines of the youth climate movement and disseminating information through a virtual newsroom. This information and communication technology (ICT) initiative harnesses dynamic advances in digital communications and new media, creative social entrepreneurship, and existing youth media to build a media network focusing on climate change issues. At the centre of Fired Up is the training of a global network of youth climate activists and writers in new organising and communications tools. This training is accomplished through an online organising wiki which offers information organised into categories such as "Introduction to Online Organizing", "Basic Online Organizing Guide", "Top 20 Communications Tools", "Mapping the New Media Landscape", "Online Video Resources", "Social Bookmarking", and "Resource Libraries".
Contact: Richard Graves richardb.graves@gmail.org
7. It's Getting Hot in Here: Dispatches from the Youth Climate Movement - Global
This is a global movement of youth researching and reporting on global warming and its effects in their countries, communities, and individual lives. Originally created by youth leaders specifically to allow youth to report from the International Climate Negotiations in Montreal (2005), "It's Getting Hot in Here" has since grown into a global online community of over 100 writers. Contributing Editors work with a worldwide network of Contributors focused on various topic areas such as: climate justice, dirty energy, news and media politics, United Nations/international policy, and youth movement/campuses.
Contact: blogmaster@itsgettinghotinhere.org
Panos London provides this online resource for journalists and other media professionals who seek to help tackle the impact of climate change by providing the public with good-quality information. The guide was prepared in the context of the December 2008 UN Climate Change Conference (Poznan, Poland). The Climate Change Media Partnership (CCMP) - set up by Panos, Internews, and the International Institute for Environment and Development - is bringing 40 journalists from 33 developing countries to the negotiations. To that end, the Climate Change Guide includes video links and articles that feature journalists who are attending the conference talking about the difficulties of reporting on complex environmental issues.
9. Media as Partners in Education for Sustainable Development
by Eleanor Bird, Richard Lutz, and Christine Warwick
This training kit, published in 2008 by the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) Series on Journalism Education, attempts to provide media professionals with basic information about priority issues for sustainable development. It also provides practical exercises to inspire investigative reporting, and draws links to existing experience that may enrich the information resources of media professionals.
10. Science Communicators Rise to Climate Challenge
by Jia Hepeng
This SciDev.Net article describes a collaborative effort amongst science communicators from around the world to devise and put forward recommendations for better communicating climate change impacts and mitigation methods. Specifically, the author reports on the Copenhagen Challenge project, June 2008, where more than 500 science communicators from around the world were afforded a chance to build bridges and dialogues through an open, constructive platform. Delegates were organised into focus groups to offer recommendations on 14 discussion topics, such as how to communicate climate change to communities without access to modern mass media, dealing with regional differences in climate change, and communicating to spur people to change their behaviour.
11. Poor Countries' Media Must Tackle Climate Change
by James Fahn
This article asserts that improving media coverage of climate change issues, particularly in developing countries, is critically important for tackling the challenges of global warming, but that climate-change reporting is inadequate because too often editors lack interest and assign writers without expertise. Author James Fahn cites journalistic successes, where reporting on climate issues has made a difference in government responses, but also describes examples from the developing world of reporting that misrepresents reasons for climate change and that reflects a lack of journalistic knowledge and media interest. Fahn suggests that better support - from "research institutes, who could do a much better job at outreach; from national and international climate-related agencies, who should try harder to accommodate the media's need for locally relevant information; and, in particular, from multilateral, bilateral and private aid agencies" - would help media organisations and journalists in the developing world.
12. Talking about a Revolution: Climate Change and the Media
by Mike Shanahan
This December 2007 briefing paper on climate change and the media is based on published studies of how the media report on climate change in different countries and on the problems that persist in the way it is reported. The document emphasises the complexity of climate change reporting, and recognises that, amidst criticisms of the media coverage, there has been improvement and that this improvement could increase with training for media outlets. A survey of studies on climate change reporting shows that, though "climate change's media profile has never been higher, the news may not be reaching all people equally, and is particularly missing in [economically] poorer communities of Africa, Asia, and Latin America. Senior editors and reporters often do not have science backgrounds to report on highly politicised climate issues..."
13. Communicating Climate Change in India
In 2000, the United States Agency for International Development (USAID)/India asked GreenCOM (USAID's environmental education and communication project) to recommend strategies for communicating climate change issues to government officials, the business community, and the news media. Participatory research shaped the initial phases of this effort to build effective outreach to Indian businesses. GreenCOM then developed 25 possible messages and information items and presented them to focus groups of Indian business leaders. Following this process, the project produced a report on recommended messages and information for specific sectors of the private sector. In addition to reaching out to industry, GreenCOM sought to inform journalists about climate change issues - again drawing upon research and interpersonal exchanges to shape and undertake the communication strategy. The internet was used as a tool for communicating the information that emerged from this process, and for facilitating dialogue and learning.
Contact: Richard P. Bossi rbossi@aed.org OR Thaltej Tekra cee@ceeindia.org / industries@ceeindia.org
Please VOTE in our current Natural Resource Management POLL:
Having just passed the 4th anniversary of the Indian Ocean tsunami, on the whole Southeast Asian countries:
- have made wonderful strides in bolstering warning systems and establishing better channels of communication.
- still need media development assistance and foreign aid to ensure proper risk management.
- will for some time need to cope with issues that go far beyond risk communication but nonetheless challenge NRM practitioners to draw on communication strategies to facilitate learning and healing.
~
RESULTS from our last NRM Poll:
How would Europeans and North Americans feel if Asians and Africans provided them with policy guidance and technical assistance on climate change?
45%: Yes...but - please do share your ideas, but we will decide.
28%: Great - come on in - we need all the help we can get. Particularly if it comes with funding.
17%: No way - this is a European/ North American issue.
10%: Not so fast - we have very specific cultures and politics.
COMMUNITY PARTICIPATION AND CLIMATE CHANGE
14. In Kidi Ya Chanza (When the Drumbeat Changes You Must Change Your Dance-Steps) - Nigeria
This 26-episode radio drama series, launched in 2007 and running for 2 years, is designed to assist smallholder farmers in northern Nigeria to adapt to climate change. It aims to provide information on new methods, alternatives, and options to encourage improved farmer (both male and female) adaptation to the effects of climate change. It also intends to increase awareness of the important role of women in agriculture, and encourage youth participation in agriculture. Besides the drama, the programmes include popular music, a narrator linking the components of the programme, and guest experts such as an agriculture extension officer or an experienced farmer. Listeners are encouraged to provide feedback via short message service (SMS), phone, and/or mail, both individually and through listener and farmer groups.
Contact: africanradiodrama@yahoo.com
15. Focus the Nation - United States
Launched in January 2008, Focus the Nation is a multi-faceted effort to involve United States citizens in a conversation about how to stabilise the global climate and lay the foundation for a sustainable and just future. It connects community members, students, and educators who are motivated to create a just and prosperous clean energy future through advocacy-oriented interpersonal communication and the internet. A key strategy is to encourage and enable educators to plan symposia and other events to energise children and youth for earth-friendly change. The first nationwide dialogue took place at colleges and universities, houses of worship, secondary schools, businesses, and civic organisations in January 2008. Students nationwide participated in workshops and panels in which they brainstormed about global warming solutions. Mobilising people to use their voice for environmental advocacy through use of ICTs is also a central Focus the Nation strategy.
Contact: info@focusthenation.org
16. Left Out of the Climate Communication Loop
by Rod Harbinson
In this commentary, the head of the Panos London environment programme, Rod Harbinson, places the international findings and discussions surrounding the United Nations (UN) Environmental Summit 2007, in Bali, Indonesia, into a context of local climate change news in the developing world. He cites how, for example, the 2007 Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) report, a culmination of the previous 5 years' scientific findings, states that it is people in the global South who are likely to suffer most from climate change. He juxtaposes this information with the local news situation for farmers in rural Madagascar, where people live far away from the sphere of influence of central government but want to be heard by those who make decisions and those able to offer support and agricultural knowledge.
17. Project BudBurst - United States
This nationwide works to engage students, gardeners, and other "citizen scientists" in every state of the United States to track climate change by observing the timing of flowers and foliage and then enter their observations into an online database. Participants visiting the Project BudBurst website can access various guides to provide them with the necessary information to conduct research. When participants submit their records online, they can view maps of these phenological events across the United States. In short, by drawing on the participation of people who are privy to potentially useful data (e.g., in their backyards), scientists can learn about the responses of individual plant species to climatic variation locally, regionally, and nationally as part of their quest to detect longer-term impacts of climate change.
Contact: budburstinfo@ucar.edu
Development Classifieds is an initiative of The Communication Initiative which includes listings of any development-related jobs, consultants, requests for proposals (RFPs), events, training opportunities, and books, journals, or videos for sale. Please see the Classifieds website.
The next issue of the Development Classifieds E-magazine will be published March 18 2009.
Please submit open vacancies from within your organisation, event information, training opportunities, upcoming RFPs, details about your consultancy skills, and information about books, journals, or videos for sale as soon as possible to ensure inclusion.
INFO-SHARING ON CLIMATE CHANGE
This web-based initiative is a mass collaboration space designed to bring together people around the world who are interested in brainstorming about, and sharing, solutions to climate change. The social networking space, called "OneClimate", is an initiative of the non-profit organisation OneWorld United Kingdom (UK), whose mission is to "leverage media innovatively for a fair and sustainable world". OneClimate draws on a website to create what are intended to be innovative spaces and useful tools to enable people around the world to communicate experiences, insights, questions, and answers about climate change. OneWorld built the e-platform with the intention of ensuring that the content is generated almost exclusively by the users.
Contact: oneclimate@oneworld.net OR owuk@oneworld.net
19. Coping with Climate Change
'Coping with Climate Change' is the theme of this February 2007 edition of ICT Update. According to this issue, because of predictions that developing countries will suffer far more from the impacts of global warming than Europe and North America, non-governmental organisations (NGOs) and researchers are engaged in practical strategies using information and communication technology (ICT) to mitigate the effects and help local communities adapt. This ICT Update looks at a few of these pioneering activities in African, Caribbean, and Pacific (ACP) countries.
20. Climate Change in Our World - Global
This initiative connects Google Earth users around the world so that they can see how climate change could affect the planet and its people over the next century. Using ICT to explore and disseminate information about climate science, Climate Change in Our World shows global temperatures over the next 100 years, along with stories of how people in some of the world's economically poorest countries are already being affected by changing weather patterns. One official associated with the project commented: "Google Earth maps allow us to see first hand accounts of poor people coming to terms with everything from floods and droughts to melting glaciers. Amidst the massive impact on the world's environment the initiative highlights the personal costs to people least able to withstand the changes."
Contact: helpline@defra.gsi.gov.uk
21. Climate Change and Human Rights: A Rough Guide
by International Council on Human Rights Policy
This June 2008 report from the International Council on Human Rights Policy discusses the human rights impacts of climate change and maps research agendas. It argues that human rights principles can guide climate change policy by focusing on individual suffering and exposure to risk. It bases its discussion on the observation that climate change responses can be made more effective if policymakers include human rights thresholds (minimum acceptable levels of protection) when assessing future impacts of climate change and of adaptation and mitigation strategies.
This issue of The Drum Beat was written by Julie Levy.
The Drum Beat seeks to cover the full range of communication for development activities. Inclusion of an item does not imply endorsement or support by The Partners.
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