By: Pacey Smith-Garcia
The Cronkite Foreign Affairs and International Reporting Club and the Sustainability Review partnered to host two events this month to focus on COP26 and served to provide an introduction to climate journalism.
COP26 is the united nations climate conference that was held in Glasgow.
The first of the two events was titled “Lets Get Local: An Into to Climate Journalism and COP26”. The event featured Andrea Polanco, an award-winning journalist and Hubert Humphrey Fellow from Belize, and Sadie Babits, Professor at the Walter Cronkite School of Journalism and president of The Society of Environmental Journalists.
The second event was titled “COP26: Where Do We Go From Here”. The event featured Dr. Peter Schlosser who is the Vice-President and Vice-Provost of The Global Future Laboratories at ASU.
Local climate journalism was one of the main topics that was discussed at the events. Local climate coverage is focused on local angles to climate change and its effects on local populations.
“Localized coverage, it is really important to tell the stories of the challenges that lie ahead but also the response to these challenges” explained Babits. “Is there a solution, is there a response from an individual, a community, or a government” she went on to explain
“They used to call me in the middle of the night to get help. They were being promised all of this money for equipment and crops. So, I did a story and I think it was the next day they got a call from the minister” explained Polanco.
“It made me feel like I was doing something that mattered to people” explained Polanco. Local climate coverage is a good way to see the results of the stories journalist are writing both Polanco and Babits.
Another angle of climate journalism is focusing on how Indigenous people are struggling with and adapting to climate change.
“Don’t try to victimize them but look at their solutions. They have very smart practices” explained Polanco as she discussed the indigenous groups who live in Belize. They live closer to the land and use its resources more directly she elaborated.
Schlosser sees a shift in climate reporting from his angle as a scientist “There is an uptick, there are more conversation with activist and politicians on primetime” he explained.
He believes that climate reporting should adjust in some ways “new technologies should get the spaces they need” he explained when discussing coverage of new forms of electric vehicles.
He also hopes that journalism schools will shift their education “to have more students have a substantive knowledge on the worlds issues” when it comes to climate change.
He provided a more direct commentary to attendants on the COP26 conference. “The conclusions were not sharp enough to have to have the right effect” he explained.
This lack of monumental change leads him to hope for change from different areas. “The private plays a big role in this with some governments almost frozen from within” Schlosser explained.
