Effective media coverage of the impacts of climate change
One of the major resolutions of Zimbabwe’s 2012 Media Stakeholders Conference was the need for the media to play a central role in promoting awareness about, and responses to, climate change. A lack of journalists trained to understand climate and environmental issues has resulted in minimal reporting on climate change and a lack of sufficient information to promote public efforts of mitigation and adaptation.
This project will address the need to educate Zimbabwean journalists on climate change by training a group to report on weather, agro-economics and tourism news as well as environmental and humanitarian crises.
Forty journalists and media practitioners (7 of which were women) drawn from the print and electronic media outlets across Zimbabwe benefited from two climate change training workshops held in Harare and Bulawayo. Participants included editors, bureau chiefs, reporters, producers and presenters. The climate change training sought to raise awareness levels of the media in reporting climate change, causes, effects/impact and surrounding issues, with the goal of sensitizing them on the need to report extensively and intensively on the global phenomena. Moreover, the workshops equipped the media professionals with information and knowledge to understand the science and facts around climate change with a view to demystify public perceptions on the issue. Training focused on the production of news, stories, pictures, audio/video programmes for newspapers/magazines, TV, radio and the Internet. Content was adapted from the following UNESCO’s publications: “Media as Partners in Education for Sustainable Development: A Training and Resource Kit” and “Reporting on Climate Change in Africa: A Practical Guide for Journalists”. As a result of this project, there has been an increase of media reports on climate change on radio and print media in Zimbabwe.