Media workers need to help spread word on climate change

Media practitioners need to be engaged in the conversation of climate change, as the interface between the technical agencies and the public.

This was the sentiment expressed by Keith Nichols, project development specialist, Caribbean Community Climate Change Centre, during a workshop in Belize on Wednesday.

Nichols told SEARCHLIGHT that the media is key in the work which they are doing. However, they have not had the chance to grow in the area of concern which is climate change.

“We’ve had some feedback and some effort beyond the traditional business that media people use. But we need to sustain that process and we haven’t been able to do it and I think that is the particular key in bringing media people together to understanding what the issues of climate change are in a much bigger way.”

He stated that they need to engage the media in a much better way and identify and craft a role for media people to help in spreading the message of climate change.

“It is not enough to have media people to cover the opening of an event,” Nichols pointed out.

He said that the media also has to be a part of the conversation.

“If we expect you to do a job, you may come and see whomever is speaking and… do a press release, maybe a couple interviews afterwards… and that not enough,” he noted.

Nichols added that he wants the media to transform the thinking and recognize the issue and make it a regular feature of discussion.

“The risk associated with climate change has to become part of our everyday thinking.”

Nichols also pointed out that at this point it is irrelevant to speak about the contribution to emissions, but rather what can be done to build resilience for the changes that are happening.

“Yes, it is happening, we are affected; forget the fact that we are not contributing anything, but we need to know what it is we can do ourselves to build our resilience to the impacts,” he stated.

Karen Bernard, Deputy Resident Representative, United Nations Development Programme, Belize, stated that the workshop sought to give media practitioners techniques, go through exercises and enable them to communicate about climate change to the average person.

She noted that media workers have a difficulty in reporting on a number of issues which they are not experts on.

“What we are trying to do here is to assist and make it easier for them to speak about that and to report correctly on climate change and give people the proper information in a way that’s easier for them to understand it, absorb it,” Bernard stated.

The two-day workshop, which was attended by media practitioners from across CARICOM, sought to give attendees the opportunity to better understand the issue of climate change, while delivering the news.

St Vincent and the Grenadines was represented by Chanolde Munroe of SEARCHLIGHT, Ernesto Cooke of News 784, Suzan Lewis-Dalzell of The News and K’Sha Woodley of the Agency for Public Information. (API)