Letter from Suva
The untold side of the Pacific environment story
It has fascinated me every time I visit Bangladesh (three times so far) to attend environment conferences. It is the response by the local news media there to environment issues. They turn up in full force not only to attend the conferences but to also to cover them. Even their editors take time off from their busy schedules to be there participating.
You regularly see environment stories on the front pages and regular columns on the environment in Bangladesh newspapers. That¹s something still lacking here in many of our Pacific Islands. OK, so Bangladesh is a big country with a population totalling many millions. In some of our small islands states we are talking thousands. So what's the connection between Bangladesh and the islands?
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The connection is simple. Like atoll nations of the Pacific, Bangladesh is threatened by climate change and rising sea levels. Much of the coastal area of Bangladesh is low lying, just like atoll nations such as Kiribati and Tuvalu.
Fact: A one metre rise in sea level is expected to inundate 16 percent of Bangladesh. It also means that areas affected by salinity will increase from the existing 13% to 31%. To drive the point home, a one metre rise in sea level in Bangladesh will affect 85 urban centres, 1.8 million houses, 15 million people, 8273 schools, and 8000 kilometres of roads.
But getting back to the point - why is it that the media in Bangladesh are so much more proactive in covering environment issues than say the Fiji news media? Two answers come to mind immediately.
One: Editors and news directors there appreciate the importance of environment stories and why they need to be covered. They encourage journalists to cover such rounds, focusing on the issues and also possible answers to the problems. They encourage their journalists to attend conferences to improve and widen their knowledge and know-how.
Second: One of the main reasons is the Forum of Environmental Journalists of Bangladesh. This is an organisation run by news media people for news media people. But it gets strong funding support for its programmes both from the Bangladesh Government and international development agencies.
The Bangladesh Government and development agencies in that part of the world realise the key role of the news media in environmental education and awareness. So they work through the Forum of Environmental Journalists of Bangladesh, providing it the support it needs to develop environmental awareness.
This news media group is in the forefront of environmental education as well as building the awareness of the news media. It is particularly active in narrowing the gap between the journalists and the experts (scientists), and through this building public understanding of the issues.
In the Pacific Islands it does not work that way. International agencies and governments channel almost all their efforts through the inter-governmental South Pacific Regional Environment Programme (SPREP), and sometimes the South Pacific Applied Geoscience Commission (SOPAC). For example, the AusAID Pacific Media Initiative, one of the biggest media development projects in the region, will not fund environmental journalism training. It says this should be done by SPREP, because it already gets substantial funding for environmental education from AusAID.
SPREP, as an inter-governmental organisation, does much excellent work, especially in research, helping national government agencies and vigorously representing the interests of the Pacific Islands in environmental conferences around the world. But because it is an inter-governmental organisation it has to concentrate on working through the governments it represents - even when it is dealing with news media development, for example.
That is not a recipe for success, given the suspicion there is when governments try to tell the news media what they should be reporting. A well-intentioned UNESCO project on environmental information run through SPREP was a good example. News media leaders were very wary of it because of the strong involvement of the governments in its implementation.
Perhaps, it's now time for a rethink. Here in the Pacific Islands climate change and its impact on the people are already being felt, particularly in low-lying islands such as Kiribati, Marshall Islands and Tuvalu. In Tuvalu, for instance, more and more islanders are now forced to grow taro in old kerosene drums because local soils are becoming too salty. For many other small island atolls the possibility of becoming environmental refugees in the near future is very, very real.
Yet the islands news media, despite their very pivotal role, often miss the environment story until it is too late. And there are many important environment stories, not just climate change.
Too much of the Pacific Islands news media - especially in countries like Fiji - are still fixated on politics and crime. I recall a meeting at Nadi last year during the Fiji coup crisis. This was a conference of environmental journalists from throughout the Asia/Pacific region and climate experts organised by Pacific Islands News Association (PINA). The theme was Climate Change: The Role of the Media.
Fiji's editors were pre-occupied with the continuing crisis after the George Speight coup. Only two took time out to visit the environment conference, although some younger journalists attended throughout.
The coup aftermath was obviously the main story of the moment in Fiji. Nobody doubts that. But environment issues are also important - the impact of some environmental issues discussed at Nadi will be felt long after George Speight is forgotten.
So perhaps it¹s time for people in this part of the world to take heed of the Bangladesh example. Development funders active in our region and environmental agencies must get more involved with the news media. They should work directly with key industry organisations such as PINA to help develop and support environmental awareness.
AusAID, United Nations agencies, and the good people of SPREP and SOPAC could and should be working much more directly with news media organisations to help develop news media awareness. Then you might get more Pacific Islands editors and news directors putting the environment on the front page or at the top of the bulletin - just like their Bangladesh colleagues.
