For
all the negative commentary on our work, many Caribbean journalists have been
looking at the question of climate change long before it became fashionable to
wave banners on the street, to have colourful demonstrations proclaiming its
advent, and before the issue earned serious mention in our parliaments.
Predating
the efforts of the Association of Caribbean MediaWorkers (ACM) which was
established in 2001, was the work of the Caribbean Environmental Reporters
Network (CERN) which, since 1993, had been focusing on broad environmental
management issues and attempting to zero-in on some of the regional challenges
the onset of changed climate conditions was capable of creating.
Then,
in 2004, the ACM was invited to participate in the work of Caricom’s
Mainstreaming Adaptation to Climate Change (MACC) Project to help produce a
Climate Change Handbook for Caribbean Journalists. It was published in 2005.
My
enthusiasm for the exercise, as a member of the editorial team, flowed
seamlessly from the journalistic work I had been a part of, via CERN, to
critically examine the potential sectoral impacts of climate change. We looked
at agriculture, tourism, public infrastructure and insurance, among other areas
of concern.
By
the way, the T&T industry official I called for comment on the insurance
angle was unclear what the hell I was talking about – even as Lloyds of London
had already established a special programme to examine the future of risk
assessment and implications for reinsurance rates. This is not to embarrass
anybody or any institution, but to state a dry fact.
Last
week, in Guyana, an ACM team assembled for part two in a series of journalistic
consultations for production of a publication that considerably advances the
narrative of the 2005 text and acknowledges a role in promoting better
understanding of what I have proposed we describe as the current “climate
crisis.” The first consultation was hosted in Antigua.
Our
early work had attracted the attention of our colleagues in the South Pacific
via the Pacific Islands News Association (PINA) with which the ACM had signed a
memorandum to collaborate on an issue we recognised as being of grave, common
concern.
Today,
Pacific journalists are present at the Conference of the Parties (COP) sessions
of the United Nations Climate Change Conference and are among some of the
issue’s most competent reporters.
There
has been broad recognition of the fact that while the media industry stands,
like every other commercial sector, to be affected by our changing
circumstances, media practitioners have a very special role to play when it
comes to truth-telling about climate change.
This
means that greater attention needs to be paid not only to the sloganeering of
politicians and the actions of “activists” but to an understanding of the
climate science that has, so far, and largely got the story right.
Proceeding
along this path has run very much against a Caribbean culture that relies
heavily on intuition, a notion of selectively divine beneficence, and the view
that, however weighted by fact and data, there are multiple sides to some
stories that require equal hearing.
There
is a raging debate in some circles on this point because, after all, shouldn’t
all ideas contend? Well, there was a time when the flatness of the planet was
being seriously debated (I have no time for modern-day flat-earth loonies) and
there are conspiracy theories about things like the lunar landing and the
causes of some diseases, that are just as easily dismissible.
This,
of course, is a newspaper column and not a chapter in a science journal. So you
need to go look up the available science on climate change, or read what is
happening to those countries near and far that are experiencing the impacts of
more frequent and more intense weather episodes, rising sea levels and threats
to freshwater supplies.
I
had asked in my introduction to the 2005 volume: “Why do journalists need this
handbook?” and I answered myself by concluding that climate change had become “one
of the most compelling stories of the 21st Century.”
In
this season of the budget debate and upcoming local government elections, this
is not an irrelevant assertion. I am following the budget debate and the
election campaign to hear what our leaders have to say about this. I believe
you should follow suit
