By Colin McIntyre
Reuters Foundation’s first Climate Change workshop in partnership with COM+, the Alliance for Communicators for Sustainable Development, was held in London from June 11 to 15, bringing together journalists from 12 countries – India, Pakistan, Sri Lanka, Vietnam, Namibia, Kenya, Ethiopia, Lebanon, Jamaica, Jordan, Georgia and Indonesia. The trainers were Oliver Wates and Colin McIntyre.
We jumped in at the deep end on the first morning with an exercise on the Millennium Ecosystem Assessment, handing participants a much-distilled version of a four-year study ordered by former U.N. chief Kofi Annan that ran in its original to 2,500 words. The report, compiled by over 1,300 scientists, provided strong, for many overwhelming evidence that the current alarming pace of climate change was caused by man. We also did an exercise on the report by Sir Nicholas Stern, a former chief economist at the World Bank, which for the first time looked at the economic consequences of climate change. Other practical writing exercises covered the rising seas, and the implications for millions of people living near them, the contribution of aviation to climate change, and the continuing loss of biodiversity due to human activity.
As guest speakers we opened with Sir Crispin Tickell, a former British Ambassador to the United Nations and a prominent environmentalist, who gave us a comprehensive run-down of the whole climate change debate. We also had representatives from a company planting forests in developing countries to offset carbon emissions in industrialised ones, and an analyst from a carbon trading firm telling us how the system worked in the market-place. We also had someone from the World Nuclear Agency to make the case for nuclear power, seen by many experts as an uncomfortable but necessary element of future energy production.
Our main field trip was a visit to Bedzed, billed as the UK’s largest carbon neutral eco-community. The 82-home community in south London, a 20-minute train ride from the centre, has been built to make maximum use of solar energy, waste water recycling and insulation to reduce to a minimum the need for extra heating. Residents are encouraged to live a more “green” existence generally, with shared use of cars and buying food produced locally rather than shipped in from outside.
Our final trip was to a building overlooking the river Thames where we heard the Mayor of London’s advisor on the environment report on moves by the world’s 40 biggest cities to tackle climate change.
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