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by Maxwell Boykoff
Climate Matters
December 3, 2015
Do you need a ticket to COP21 in order to get the full story of what goes on? A week ago in Bilbao Spain, this provocative question was posed by Dr. Unai Pascual to a discussion group at the Basque Center for Climate Change. Unai’s question is an open one I’ve pondered in the lead up to the Paris round of negotiations and something I ask you to consider now.
Attending talks, observing negotiations, meeting with co-workers, researching and learning about new topics are all important dimensions of COP21 participation. However for those who aren’t attending COP21, media outlets are usually the way to go. From Europe alone, media actors from BBC to France24 to The Guardian and El Mundo – seemingly populate every part of the sprawling venue in Le Bourget. See Chris Russell’s good commentary of media resources ‘on the ground’ at Paris COP21
Relying on your trusted sources in mainstream media can help sate your appetite for understanding big issues. Layer on good resources like IISD Reporting Services Earth Negotiations Bulletins the climate change policy & practice listserv and Climate Action Network Media Briefings and you’ve got a substantial entrée to main actions and attractions unfolding. Going further, following tweets from inside and around the summit, you may start to feel quite full as the first two weeks of December pass.
This is only a start: you can add toppings of Facebook posts from Associated Press, New York Times, Democracy Now, Deutsche Welle, EuroNews, Reuters until you’re overstuffed.
A clear advantage as we attend to our daily demands and responsibilities in these December days – is that media actors are working hard to help us all make sense of the complexities of the climate. Journalists can unpack concepts such as “mitigation”, “adaptation”, “Green Climate Funds”, “loss and damage,” “REDD+” and more. They investigate so you don’t have to. However, while these media representations link us to these critical issues being negotiated in Paris, we can still recognize the mainstream media’s limits. Read more …
