Ugandan journalists put climate change on the news agenda
20 January 2009
Climate change may be headline news in the West but in developing countries it
often goes unreported.
To help people in poorer countries understand the issue better, the media organisation Panos London set up, with DFID help, the international Climate Change Media Partnership.
In late 2007, the Partnership enabled 40 journalists from the developing world to cover the Bali climate change conference, a major event convened by the United Nations. Wambi Michael was one of the two journalists to attend from Uganda.
Wambi’s story
Radio journalist
Wambi (pictured left) is used to covering environmental issues for The Voice of Teso,
a local radio station in the east of the country. A natural choice to go to
Bali, when he arrived at the conference Wambi
found that his broadcasting expertise made him a key contact for the Ugandan
government delegation.
"I got regular calls from the delegation, especially at times when they thought they had scored something in Uganda's interest," he says.
For Wambi, such keenness contrasted with his experience in Uganda, where it can take weeks for a journalist to be granted access to government officials. It was clearly important for the government that people back home were aware of Uganda's contribution to the summit, which gave Wambi's daily reports to his home country an extra potency. "They realised this was the only opportunity to have information from Bali reach the Ugandan readership and listeners," he says.
Voices of the vulnerable
As
part of their brief, the journalists were encouraged to give space in their
reports to the voices of the poor and
marginalised. Visiting a coastal village affected by
climate change, they gained a first-hand perspective on the issues affecting
fishing communities.
"One thing I found is that the local people we visited were just like the fishermen in my country," said Wambi's fellow journalist, Salome Alweny (pictured left). "They too don't know what's causing the decline in fish stock. We in the media have to do a lot to educate these people about what is happening to them as a result of climate change."
The fact that there were relatively few developing country journalists in Bali led to new partnerships being struck. After an acquaintance passed on his telephone number to a journalist from Rwanda, Wambi's reports ran on several Rwandan radio stations, helping to inform a wholly unexpected audience about the issues raised at the conference.
Maximising the experience
When
he arrived back in Uganda, Wambi
shared his experiences with newsroom staff and media houses and kept up relations with the contacts he made in
Indonesia. Now, the
National Environment Management Authority involves him personally in reporting their
agenda, the Commissioner for Meteorology is willing to provide vital information on
weather-related issues, and his own journalistic profile has risen to national level.
"Professionally, I've learned many things that will make me a better environment reporter than before," he reflects. "I've had the opportunity to build relations with many climate scientists, activists and, above all, experienced climate journalists. These will enable me to cover climate change issues in a more informed way than before."
Facts and stats
- The total cost of the Climate Change Media Partnership at the UN conference on climate change in Bali 2007 was £46, 888.
- The Bali summit was the first year the CCMP sponsored journalists to attend a UN Climate Change summit. The success of this led to the design of a three-year project encompassing the UN climate change summits from 2008-2011.
- Throughout the summit, the journalists received thematic training, practical skills development and unique opportunities to scrutinise issues and question key experts and actors in the negotiations.
- CCMP participants filed a total of 720 articles - averaging 18 stories every day – for print, online, radio and TV outlets in their home countries. Six feature stories were commissioned and disseminated via Panos media outlets to 3,244 media and environment contacts worldwide. One hundred and seventeen media outlets across 23 countries reproduced one or more of the journalists' stories between December 2007 and April 2008.
Links
- More about DFID's work on climate change
- More about DFID's work with Panos London
- Pushing for global action on climate change to beat poverty - More about the Bali conference
Panos London
- See interviews with journalists and Panos staff on
