This site uses cookies, as explained in our terms of use. If you consent, please close this message and continue to use this site.
2 mins Read
A five-day training for 20 Myanmar journalists on reporting climate change adaptation was organised by the International Centre for Integrated Mountain Development (ICIMOD) in Nyaung Shwe, Shan State, in collaboration with the Myanmar Institute for Integrated Development. The training was organised as part of the EU-funded Rural Livelihoods and Climate Change Adaptation in the Himalayas (Himalica) programme, and included field visits.
Journalists cover news related to climate change adaptation on a daily basis, and yet they often lack the basic conceptual understanding of the subject they write about. The training focused on understanding the role of journalists as communicators in translating information related to climate change to a wider audience in everyday language.
Training climate change adaptation communicators is seen as a major milestone under Knowledge Management and Communication component of Himalica, and the training was designed to respond to the local context of Myanmar. Twenty media practitioners (reporters, editors, and freelancers) from both broadcast and print media attended the training from 25 to 29 January 2016.
Training sessions were held in a participatory and interactive style, where technical experts made presentations on the science of climate change, including Myanmar’s specific context. These covered drivers of change, global scenarios on climate change, impacts of change, adaptation planning, the need for adaptation strategies, and importantly, the role of journalists in effectively capturing and communicating issues related to climate change adaptation. A senior media trainer conducted sessions on how to identify and write good climate change-related stories.
After some indoor sessions, the participants visited the Himalica pilot site in Heho and the Inlay Lake area, where they interacted with farmers to understand local issues related to climate change. They then wrote reports for their newspapers and made visual news clips. A number of role plays were also staged by the journalists.
The participating journalists, many of them young and unfamiliar with the subject, said this kind of training is timely and relevant to their day to day work. They said the science of climate change is difficult to understand, and relating climate change adaptation to local issues is often confusing.
As a demand-driven Initiative designed to respond to the needs of the member countries, training journalists and other media personnel is seen as a major step toward fulfilling the mandate of building the capacity of climate change adaptation communicators. A similar training was organised for Bhutanese journalists in 2014.
Share
Stay up to date on what’s happening around the HKH with our most recent publications and find out how you can help by subscribing to our mailing list.
Related content
Every year, the rainy season in the Chittagong Metropolitan Area (CMA), Bangladesh brings news of human causalities and property damage ...
The International Centre for Integrated Mountain Development (ICIMOD) has tried to build capacity to reduce emissions from deforestation and forest ...
Should we be concerned over the impacts that climate change could have on human mobility? For many, the answer is ...
ICIMOD and AKSRP organized a training to promote these value chains and build the capacities of community members from the ...
Even as communities reel from the shock of the COVID-19 pandemic, the threat of floods is omnipresent. Koshi River drains ...
Exploring the different types of flood early warning systems in flood prone areas of Pakistan, three delegates from Pakistan visited ...
Nepal’s Clean Brick Initiative has been consolidated by the signing of an accountable grant arrangement between the
Though a few biodiversity monitoring manuals and guidelines from the Government of Nepal (GoN), National Trust for Nature Conservation (