Press Releases

Global Climate Negotiations Get a Southern Perspective

Helping Developing Country Journalists to Cover Bali Conference

(October 10, 2007) When James Fahn attended the United Nations conference on climate change in Kyoto, Japan in 1997 as a reporter for the Bangkok-based newspaper The Nation, he found he was one of only a few journalists there representing media from the developing world—and he had to pay his own way.

A decade later, while the threat of global warming has only become more urgent, developing country journalists are still drastically under-represented at the international summit meetings that are pivotal in determining the world’s response to this issue.

“If the developing world and its media are to engage in climate change negotiations in a fair and meaningful way, they must have more journalists present at treaty talks,” says Fahn, now the Executive Director of Internews’ Earth Journalism Network (EJN).

EJN aims to change that imbalance by establishing a fellowship fund that will bring 10 to 20 developing country journalists to Bali in December 2007, when crucial talks will commence on what agreement should follow the Kyoto Protocol, whose provisions were set to extend until 2012.

These journalists, participating in what is known as COP13, or the 13th Conference of Parties to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change, will first undergo a brief training workshop in preparation for the global treaty talks and then attend the talks themselves.

EJN will provide these participants with training and daily mentoring sessions. The reporters will receive media credentials and are expected to file multiple reports to their home media organizations. They will also learn how to set up blogs and develop other media skills to advance coverage of climate change in their home countries.

This pilot program will serve as a springboard for continued coverage of climate change issues after the conference is over, and be replicated for future treaty negotiations and carbon market events leading into the global conference in Copenhagen in December 2009 that will determine a successor mechanism to the Kyoto Protocol.

Journalists from around Asia and other parts of the developing world are currently submitting applications, which will be sifted through to find the best candidates. We are also getting recommendations from Internews country offices and from other like-minded organizations. Simultaneously, Internews is continuing to seek funding for this program to bring as many journalists as possible.