... and Action! How Media Can Address Climate Change in Countries Most Affected

"Carefully crafted media content has the potential to bridge significant gaps in distance, resource, and most importantly trust. It is this trust that will generate agency and change." - Dr Jonathan Stone, Deputy Head, Climate Adaptation Department, United Kingdom Foreign, Commonwealth & Development Office

BBC Media Action argues that, around the world, media is playing a growing role in helping people understand climate science, question efforts to reduce carbon emissions, and inspire sustainable behaviour.

Media content produced for people struggling to adapt to climate change - and not just about them - offers untapped potential to support people most affected by climate change to access trusted information, discuss and weigh their options, raise issues with decision-makers, and, ultimately, take action.

Featuring many examples from BBC Media Action and others around the world, this policy note articulates how donors, policymakers, and climate experts can enhance the impact of their climate change plans and strategies by leveraging the power of media and communication.

BBC Media Action's experience and research span more than 20 low- and middle-income countries over 20 years, with a focus on climate change adaptation, resilience, health, governance, and humanitarian response. This involvement, along with interviews of twelve experts on climate change and development conducted in 2021, shapes the policy note's discussion of the power of media and communication to support climate action in countries most affected. Some highlights, which are illustrated throughout the document in gray text boxes, include:

• Media can make complex information clear, host discussions that can spark imagination and innovation, challenge norms, and prompt positive individual and collective behaviours.
• Media content can reach most populations at scale - either directly or indirectly, when audience members share what they have seen or heard.
• Well-designed and adequately resourced media programmes can shift attitudes, encourage discussion, role-model positive action, and support skills-building relevant to climate action.
• When tightly coordinated with technical aspects of climate-related initiatives, media and communication can boost results across wider programmes, such as those designed to:
  • Strengthen livelihoods: Knowing how people in specific contexts are both struggling with and succeeding in adapting their livelihoods to the realities of climate change can help inform stories and formats that guide their peers to adapt their own livelihoods successfully. As an example like East Africa's agricultural TV series "Shamba Shape Up" demonstrates, media content that showcases local stories of pioneering "people like me" trying new income-generating behaviours, techniques, and actions can make it easier for others to follow suit. Several quotations from audience members who have listened to or viewed various BBC Media Action programmes explain, in their own words, how they have adapted their behaviour as a result.
  • Help people make informed decisions about climate, weather, and financial services: Media practitioners can act as intermediaries and translators between scientific experts and local users. Media can also help to convey probabilities and impact-based forecasts in ways that reflect audience members' local languages and interests, their practical realities and the climate-related decisions they face. For example, in Ethiopia, BBC Media Action supported local radio stations to produce programmes in five districts and four languages from 2014 to 2017. The magazine-style programmes "Walle Damma" (Honey-seeking bird) and "Genna Bona" (Winter to summer) were followed by a short weather forecast. Research showed that 76% of listeners reported having used scientific weather forecasts. They cited trust, clear explanations, and use of their mother tongue as reasons for taking practical actions as a result of listening to the programmes. Other examples provided here show the value of collaboration for climate services: Building enduring relationships between climate experts and media practitioners can improve how they share information and, ultimately, how they communicate with the public.
  • Empower people to reduce disaster risk: Media and communication that convey the systemic nature of climate-related risks, foregrounding local knowledge, can improve people's understanding of hazards and of their exposure and vulnerability to them. Effective communication can boost people's confidence, motivation, and capacity to make informed climate-related decisions and adopt locally-led solutions, ultimately contributing to a shift in how societies respond to climate risks. One of the examples is that of the TV reality programme "Don't Wait for Rain", produced nationally in Cambodia by BBC Media Action, which explored locally led adaptations to climate change, such as flood early warning systems, and encouraged viewers to take action. Evaluation showed that audience members felt an emotional connection to the people featured in the programme because they were like themselves.
  • Address climate-related health outcomes: One impact of climate change is that it is introducing novel health conditions to communities, such as new infectious diseases brought on by expanded habitats for mosquitoes. Health content produced and disseminated by trusted sources can guide affected populations through confusion and the inevitable misinformation that accompanies new health challenges. Media can also provide a platform to amplify localised health guidance and inspire discussion and collective action around how to make communities safer from climate risks.
  • Support civic participation, governance, and accountability: First, media can convene conversations between different layers of government and with the public on various platforms to reach different audiences, including marginalised groups, and act as an accountability mechanism that enables people to question decision-makers and demand answers. Second, media can help populations understand climate-related commitments such as national adaptation plans and learn how they are relevant to their daily lives. Third, media can explore how public and private sector entities play a role in upholding people's basic rights in the face of climate change. For example, in Nepal, BBC Media Action's long-running political discussion TV programme "Sajha Sawal" (Common Questions) reached over one-third of the country's adult population. BBC Media Action also built the capacity of local radio stations to run related discussion programmes addressing issues such as hardships arising from climate change. Local officials reportedly initiated changes in direct response to listeners' demands for government action and solutions to address impacts on their farming, livelihoods, and lives.
  • Build social cohesion among and support climate adaptation in communities affected by conflict: Media can present conflict through a climate lens - addressing climate-related drivers of tension by highlighting actions individuals and groups can take to manage scarce resources and negotiate agreements. This process might involve supporting collective actions to adapt to climate change in a way that resolves disagreements, supports negotiation and collaboration between community members, and ultimately builds communities' resilience to both conflict and climate change. BBC Media Action stresses that, in order to play a constructive role, media needs to be independent, able to operate in conflict-affected environments, and equipped to tackle issues related to climate and conflict sensitively and effectively. Several examples of programming in this area are provided, including BBC Media Action's "Khan Sar Kyi" (Feel It) TV documentary in Myanmar, whose regular viewers included a high proportion of "community influencers". Audience members reportedly became more interested in, and knowledgeable about, the causes of conflict in Myanmar (including drivers such as deforestation), were more likely to discuss these issues with others, and were clearer on how conflict affects their own lives.

Having shared these insights and examples, BBC Media Action offers the following recommendations:

• For governments: Integrate media and communication activities into national adaptation plans and disaster risk reduction strategies.
• For donors:
  • Consider media and communication as standard interventions for climate financing.
  • Choose partners whom audiences trust and who deliver media and communication strategies that are well-researched, grounded in social and behavioural theory and evidence, and creative.
  • Support collaboration among local media and climate experts to communicate effectively - e.g., offer local media practitioners general training on climate science to help them understand technical terms and concepts and translate them into engaging content relevant to their audience members' daily lives.

The policy note concludes with these key points:

• "The role of trustworthy communication and media is central to meeting the challenge of the climate crisis. But the organisation, strategic prioritisation, and integration of media into climate change responses remains poor.
• The scale of the climate crisis, and the increasingly complex and often confusing information and communication environments most people now inhabit, makes this issue especially urgent.
• There are proven solutions and approaches that can be applied to enable media and communication to play a unique role in tackling climate change. Media must be integrated into wider strategies, funded sufficiently, underpinned by robust strategies and creativity, and delivered through novel collaborations."