South Asian Journalists Receive Training on Climate Change Reporting.

By BUTH REAKSMEY KONGKEA

About 50 journalists, radio and television managers, environmental researchers and climate experts from ten countries in Asia including Bangladesh, Cambodia, China, India, Indonesia, Laos, Malaysia, Philippines, Thailand and Vietnam, have attended a two-day Workshop on Climate Change and the Media. The workshop was held in Manila, Philippines.

The workshop was jointly organized on August 12-13 by the Philippine Science Journalists Association, Inc (PsciJourn), the International Development Research Centre Southeast and East Asian Offices (IDRC), and the Economy and Environment Program for Southeast Asia (EEPSEA).

Angelo B. Palmones, president of PsciJourn, said that the main purpose of the Climate Change Media Workshop, under the theme “Reporting Climate Change: Creating a Climate of Change in Southeast Asia” aimed to improve media coverage of climate change issues, and to develop and foster greater collaboration between journalists and climate change experts in Southeast Asian countries.

He said that a further objective of the workshop was to raise the skills of journalists in increasing the quality and relevance of reported information on climate change issues. This was necessary, given the flow of information from climate change experts to local editors. A final goal was the generation of debate about the central role of media and communication in formulating climate change policies that include the perspectives of the general public and key stakeholders such as scientists, businesses, consumers, policy makers and marginalized communities.

Rex Victor O. Cruz, Dean of the College of Forestry and National Resources at the University of the Philippines Los Banos, said that currently, climate change is a hot topic and of concern to people across the world.

Rex Victor said, “Southeast Asia is possibly one of the most vulnerable areas in the global-climate scenarios now being put forward by scientists.”

He pointed out that according to a research conducted by the College of Forestry and Natural Resources Philippines 2007, many of the regions’s estimated 500 million people lived in either low-lying river deltas or far-flung islands that would be inundated if waters rise significantly.

He said that multiple factors also indicated that Southeast Asia possess a high decree of vulnerability to such climate changes and many countries in the region already struggled to cope with the current climate variability to which they are exposed including tropical cyclones, rainfalls extremes, frequent droughts, and extreme tides.

Rex Victor added that climate change has exacerbated natural disasters, health problems and posed threats to water and food security. This will undoubtedly affect the lives of those who are without social and economic resources to adapt to climate change.

Dr. Rosa T. Perez, climate expert and member of Environmental Impact Assessment Review Committee of the Department of Environment and Natural Resources in the Philippines said that climate change referred to long-term fluctuations in temperature, precipitation, wind and other elements of the earth’s climate systems.

Rosa said that climate change threatened coastal systems and small islands with erosion, inundation and storm surges, stress on wetlands, marshes and mangroves, coral bleaching, shrinking fresh water resources, invasion of non-native species and threats to critical infrastructure.

She pointed that Southeast Asia had a high degree of vulnerability to climate change, resulting from pre-existing socioeconomic conditions, exposure to a range of climate hazards, and potentially significant changes in future climate conditions over the next century.

She said, “Perhaps the region’s greatest vulnerability is to sea-level rise, which all studies indicate will erode and inundate coastlines and wetlands, resulting in displaced communities.”

“The natural ecosystems of the region will face increasing pressure from human activities and land use change, reducing the resilience of mangroves, coral reefs, tropical forests, and mountain communities to raising temperatures and sea levels, as well as changes in rainfall,” Rosa added.

Rosa also said that the existing challenges to human security in Southeast Asia might be significantly exacerbated by the broad range of impact that climate change might bring. Chronic food and water insecurity and epidemic disease might also impede economic development in some nations, while degraded landscapes and inundation of populated areas by rising seas may ultimately displace communities and millions of individuals, forcing intra and inter-state migration.

James Fahn, Executive Director of Internews’ Earth Journalism Network, based in Bangkok, Thailand, said that most journalists lacked scientific expertise to cover the complex environmental issues.

However, Fahn said in order to cover climate change, journalists should make the climate change reporting “sexy” and pitch the stories with different angles to different sections of readership.

He continued, “I think that in order to accurately report climate changes issues, journalists should have a basic knowledge of climate change. They must be clear about the issues at both regional and global levels. They should also increase the frequency of dialogues with scientists, environmental researchers, experts or involved people.”

“Journalists should also receive more training sessions on climate change and scientific issues in general,” he added.

Fahn suggested that newspaper editors, TV producers and radio station managers should have a “column or page for environment or climate change news” in their daily publishing.

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