| The Drum Beat – 637 – Climate Change Communication |
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| In recognition of the global theme for the 43rd annual Earth Day (April 22 2013), «The Face of Climate Change», this issue of The Drum Beat features items found on The Communication Initiative website that highlight communication on climate change for awareness and action around the world. |
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| FRESH VOICES: LEARNING & ACTION EXAMPLES |
| 1. Young Voices for the Planet |
| These films focus on youth participation in, and engagement with, science – stories of young people: shrinking their carbon footprint; finding solutions to the global warming crisis; banning plastic bags; planting trees; reducing waste,; experiencing the excitement of scientific discovery through citizen-science; and conducting energy audits that save energy and money. For instance, a Siberian girl sees her world literally melting away. She joins Arctic scientist Max Holmes’ research team and enlists schoolmates in collecting water samples from the Lena River. |
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| 2. Climate Change Education (CCE) Clearinghouse |
| This website aims to promote and facilitate CEE by providing practitioners with resources to design and implement climate change courses and stay abreast of trends and challenges in the field. It provides a regularly updated collection of paedagogical materials, a calendar of upcoming CCE events, a list of complementary CCE resource hubs, information about CCE-related funding opportunities, a directory of agencies and organisations dedicated to expanding and improving CEE, and links to CCE-related research documents, case studies, and academic journals. [United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO)] |
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| 3. Global Green Kids |
| Launched in 2013, this international project of Radijojo World Children’s Media Network is dedicated to the environment, nature, sustainability, and fair globalisation. Visitors to the Global Green Kids website can access various resources as well as a call to action. Children and youth are invited to record their «green» reflections as audio or video, using a camera, MP3 recorder, mobile phone, or any equipment in their local school media lab. They can then share additional information about themselves and the issue, sending in their photos and drawings to illustrate their story. |
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| 4. Conversations with the Earth (CWE) |
| This indigenous-led multimedia campaign works to amplify indigenous voices around the world on climate change. Cameras in their hands, community members interview their friends and neighbours, men and women, parents and children, youth and elders, to record how climate change affects their daily lives. The series of 10-minute clips is available online. CWE has fostered a long-term relationship with these communities, based on principles of local control and indigenous media capacity, highlighted by the creation of self-standing autonomous indigenous media hubs in 6 regions. |
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5. Climate Extreme: How Young People Can Respond to Disasters in a Changing World
by Amalia Fawcett |
| This child-friendly version of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) report «Special Report on Managing the Risks of Extreme Events and Disasters to Advance Climate Change Adaptation (SREX)» aims to convert complex research into easy-to-understand information which can arm young people with the knowledge they need to be a part of climate change adaptation and disaster preparedness, challenging them to be involved in disaster preparedness. Examples that exist across Asia are included here. For instance, in Vietnam, children are training their peers on how climate change could affect their communities. [Plan International Australia, May 2012]
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| 6. TckTckTck |
| TckTckTck – whose name is intended to signal that «time is running out» with regard to reducing the emissions that cause global warming – is embracing an organising model called the Open Campaign whereby organisations or individuals can adopt its branding and toolset for use in their own campaigns to educate and encourage their supporters to demand action on a climate change agreement. Another strategy involves engaging the media. Working with the global media development organisation Internews, TckTckTck organised the Human Voices Award. |
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7. Climate Change for the Secondary Teachers on Climate Change Education for Sustainable Development (CCESD)
by David Selby and Fumiyo Kagawa |
| This online learning course is a training kit designed to help teachers develop their capacities to facilitate climate change mitigation, adaptation, and disaster risk reduction learning. The programme includes disaster risk reduction in its activities and tools. [UNESCO, Jan 2013] |
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| 8. Climate Change in Our World |
| This environmental awareness initiative centres around an exhibit of large-scale colour photographs from the book «Earth Under Fire: How Global Warming is Changing the World». While there are the familiar images of climate change – polar bears, penguins, and disappearing glaciers – there are also others that are less known, such as Bangladeshi villagers perched on the end of a road being washed away by erosion and children playing in an empty rice field in a China besieged by drought. |
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| SEND PHOTOS & TWEETS ON CLIMATE CHANGE! |
| Earth Day Network, the group founded by the organisers of the first Earth Day to coordinate the annual day of action that builds and invigorates the environmental movement, is collecting and displaying images of people, animals, and places directly affected or threatened by climate change and telling the world their stories through an interactive digital display of all the images. On and around Earth Day, this display will be shown at events around the world, including next to federal government buildings in countries that produce the most carbon pollution. The display will also be made available online to anyone who wants to view or show it. |
| To participate, upload photos here and spread the word on social media (#faceofclimate). For more information, click here and/or email earthday2013@earthday.org |
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| ENGAGING POLICYMAKERS & MEDIA |
9. Climate Change Communication: ‘A’ Is for Audience
by Mike Shanahan |
| «How often do climate-change communicators take the time to understand what audiences know, think and feel about climate change? Not often enough I fear.» In this blog, Mike Shanahan describes the BBC Media Action project Climate Asia, which has to date interviewed 33,000 people in 7 Asian nations, asking them about their experiences of, knowledge about, attitudes toward, and actions to address climate change. One finding: People don’t get much information about climate change from the media, though they think it has a role to play in reaching them. Perhaps «journalism may be less effective than entertainment». One idea from Indonesia is a «lifestyle-swap» reality TV show about climate-related migration. In Vietnam, a TV game show pits farmer against farmer to show off and share knowledge of how to adapt agriculture to the changing climate. [International Institute for Environment and Development! (IIED), Dec 2012] |
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10. Hidden Heat: Communicating Climate Change in Uganda
by Adam Corner |
| Through a series of 30 interviews with key climate change communicators – members of civil society organisations, the media, and government representatives – this report identifies some of the challenges and opportunities of communicating climate change in Uganda. The report aims to amplify these voices, to summarise the expertise that exists in Uganda on climate change communication, and to disseminate this as widely as possible. [Oct 2011] |
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11. How to Tell Policymakers about Scientific Uncertainty
by Chandrika Nath |
| Designed for scientists, this resource shares strategies for communicating uncertainty to policymakers. It makes reference to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC)’s «likelihood scale» that can help link probabilities to everyday language. Other recommendations include: «Be transparent about the assumptions that have been made in each case, and about the quality of the evidence. It may help decision-making if you present a range of outcomes that also take into account different actions….Be as neutral and objective as possible and let the facts speak for themselves…» [Jan 2012] |
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| 12. A Commitment to Act Now: Broadcast Media and Climate Change |
| This brochure summarises the 7 sessions of an international conference held in Paris, France, from September 4-5 2009: Broadcast Media and Climate Change: A Public Service Remit. Organised by the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) in partnership with the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP), the conference led international and regional broadcasting unions to vow to increase cooperation in order to give media exposure to climate change. |
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| GENDER & CLIMATE CHANGE |
13. Training Guide: Gender and Climate Change Research in Agriculture and Food Security for Rural Development
by Sibyl Nelson, with inputs by Moushumi Chaudhury |
| This guide offers resources and participatory action research (PAR) tools for collecting, analysing, and sharing gender-sensitive information about agricultural communities, households, and individuals who are facing climate changes. [Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) and the Research Program on Climate Change, Agriculture and Food Security (CCAFS) of the Consultative Group on International Agricultural Research (CGIAR), Jan 2012] |
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| 14. Gender and Climate Change: Toolkit for Women on Climate Change |
| Developed as part of an endeavour to explore innovative and strategic ways to communicate gender justice and climate justice issues, especially from Southern feminist perspectives, this toolkit provides community-based or grassroots organisations basic information on climate change and how to communicate climate justice with their constituencies and target groups – e.g., through the use of both traditional and new information and communication technologies (ICTs). It looks at how to use different forms of advocacy and shows how to build an advocacy plan. This information is accompanied by real-life stories and experiences of women around the world. [Isis International, Feb 2102] |
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15. Harvesting Change: Enhancing Media Coverage of Agriculture and Women in Mali, Uganda, and Zambia
by Alana Barton |
| This report shares the experience and assessment of the Reporting on Women and Agriculture: Africa project, a 3-year initiative by the International Women’s Media Foundation (IWMF). For example, in Uganda, reporters worked together to institutionalise agriculture beats. The local trainer implemented strategies to encourage field reporting, and reporters became more innovative in the way they presented stories. Through a network of science-based sources cultivated over time and conversations with rural farmers, trainees gained first-hand knowledge of the gap in understanding that existed between agriculture workers and the natural phenomena that affect their work, such as climate change. [Dec 2011] |
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| Build Your Own Social Networking Space |
| Looking to network within your organisation? Needing to link together colleagues from different organisations under one project? Contract The CI to build you a branded social networking space using core CI functionality. Contact wfeek@comminit.com |
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| CLIMATE CHANGE & ICT |
16. Making Policy on ICTs and Climate Change in Developing Countries
by Angelica Valeria Ospina and Richard Heeks |
| According to the authors of this guide, the impacts and level of uncertainty posed by climate change are redefining the way in which policies and strategies are designed and implemented at the international, national, and local levels. Thus, developing country governments are starting to explore new tools and approaches to face the magnitude and uncertainty posed by climate change within socioeconomic and political contexts. Among them, the use of ICTs such as mobile phones, community radio, and internet-based applications, is emerging as a new area of research and practice that can foster climate change responses utilising readily available and low-cost tools. [Centre for Development Informatics, University of Manchester, May 2012] |
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17. Information Technologies Vital to Tackling Climate Change
by Ban Ki-moon |
| Secretary-General of the United Nations (UN) Ban Ki-moon urged participants in this October 2009 United Nations International Telecommunication Union (ITU) global forum «Telecom World» to think of creative ways to use the latest technology to usher in a «green» economy. As an example, he cited a joint UN/partners’ and mobile phone companies’ project of installing 5,000 new weather stations across Africa. The weather stations will monitor the impact of climate change, and, when there is news, text messages will be sent immediately to farmers’ mobile phones. In an effort to raise awareness of climate change, the UN mobilised young people to use internet tools such as Facebook and Twitter in support of its campaign to «seal a deal on climate change». |
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18. ICT-Based Monitoring of Climate Change-Related Deforestation: The Case of INPE in the Brazilian Amazon
by Raoni Rajão |
| This case study describes PRODES (programme for calculating deforestation in the Amazon), created by the Brazilian Institute for Space Research (INPE) to produce a yearly estimate of the total area of forest loss in square kilometres based on satellite images which generate a geo-referenced map, and DETER (deforestation detection in real time), a satellite-based monitoring system that detects deforestation every 15 days and provides monthly estimates from images obtained from sensors on board satellites. Generally, PRODES is used for advocacy in debating policy changes on maintaining the forest, while DETER is used to evaluate the outcome of actions on a monthly basis and guide law enforcement actions in the forest. [Originally published by the University of Manchester, United Kingdom (UK)’s «Climate Change, Innovation and ICTs» research project, funded by Canada’s International Development Resea! rch Centre (IDRC) and managed by the University’s Centre for Development Informatics (CDI), Feb 2012]
See also:
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| This issue of The Drum Beat was written by Kier Olsen DeVries. |
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| The Drum Beat is the email and web network of The Communication Initiative Partnership – Partners: ANDI, BBC Media Action, Bernard van Leer Foundation, Breakthrough, Calandria, DFID, FAO, Fundación Nuevo Periodismo Iberoamericano (FNPI), Inter-American Development Bank, Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health Center for Communication Programs, MISA, Oxfam Novib, PAHO, The Panos Institute, Puntos de Encuentro, The Rockefeller Foundation, SAfAIDS, Sesame Workshop, Soul City, STEPS International, UNAIDS, UNDP, UNICEF, USAID, The Wellcome Trust, World Health Organization (WHO), W.K. Kellogg Foundation.
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.
Chair of the Partners Group: Garth Japhet, Founder, Soul City garth@heartlines.org.za
Executive Director: Warren Feek wfeek@comminit.com |
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| The Editor of The Drum Beat is Kier Olsen DeVries. |
| Please send additional project, evaluation, strategic thinking, and materials information on communication for development at any time. Send to drumbeat@comminit.com
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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