Getting the Message Across: Better Journalistic Reporting on Climate Change and Sustainable Development

School of Media, Languages and Cultures, University of Nottingham Malaysia Campus in association with UNESCO and the Universiti Sains Malaysia are delighted to invite you this event. 

Background
Climate change is not just a story: it is the context in which so many other stories will unfold. As such, it is not a subject solely for science or environment reporters to cover. That is why it is essential for all journalists, editors and media owners to understand at climate change and realise that there is more to it than carbon dioxide and disasters. 

The immediate impacts of rising temperatures include rising sea levels, less predictable weather and more extreme events such as droughts, floods and storms. The changing temperature and rainfall patterns can produce additional effects on water supplies, on crops and their pests and pollinators, and on organisms that cause disease. They can also have physical impacts on infrastructure, historical monuments, and all of these impacts can combine to create additional social, economic and political impacts. 

In addition, in 2015 the 193 Member States of the United Nations adopted the new 17 Sustainable Development Goals that will serve as a global agenda that will guide the world towards a more sustainable future. The 17 Goals represent a universal, ambitious, sustainable development agenda, an agenda of the people, by the people and for the people. 

For journalists getting the message across to the intended audience is a big challenge. It is challenging to have a masterful grasp of something such complex issues and to present it accurately but at the same time, to be able to present the story in such a way that it would have an impact on its audience. 

Over and over again, climate change specialists from academia, civil society organisations and government agencies have expressed interests in a more dynamic approach to better report on climate change and sustainable development, specifically to have:  

• More stories that demonstrate how climate change affects men and women, older people and young people in different ways. Indeed, what are the human rights and gender dimension in coverage of climate change?
• Fewer disaster narratives and more success stories highlighting how people are adapting, developing solutions and using new technologies that can limit climate change including stories on how local and indigenous societies have adapted to environmental change and extreme events over generations.
• More coverage of each nations’ roles and responsibilities under the UN climate change convention, and what governments say and do at the international negotiations. 
• More stories that explain the causes, including climate change, of events such as droughts and floods. 
• More stories that explain the human side of climate change and show this is a development and people/human rights issue, just as much as an environmental one that will affect the way our societies evolve in future across all sectors. 
• More stories about the business and development opportunities that climate change presents.

To address these needs and concerns, UNESCO has developed several resources and material to support better journalistic reporting of the climate change and sustainable development. These resources include UNESCO’s Climate Change in Africa: A Guidebook for Journalists (2013), and the new syllabi on Teaching Journalism for Sustainable Development (2015).

Objectives of the meeting

• The first objective of this meeting is to help journalism educators in the region to develop a journalism curriculum that is up-to-date with the latest development of climate change and sustainable development and to help build the capacity future journalists to report holistically on the complexity of climate change and sustainable development. The public lectures produced on the first day of the conference will be made freely available as future educational video material. 
• The second objective of this meeting is to adapt the 2013 UNESCO’s Climate Change in Africa: A Guidebook for Journalists to the Asia Pacific version. In line with UNESCO’s Open Access policy, this updated Asia Pacific version of the guidebook will serve as a valuable resource freely available for journalism educators and journalists reporting on climate change and sustainable development.

Details
Date: 8 November 2017, Wednesday
Time: 09:00 to 17:00
Venue: Pullman Kuala Lumpur City Hotel and Residences
              4 Jalan Conlay
              50450 Kuala Lumpur

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