Raising the profile of Gender and Generation: The role of the Climate Change Media Partnership

The paper details the initiatives taken by the Climate Change Media Partnership to strengthen journalists’ understanding of the importance of gender and generation when reporting on climate change.

Journalists from the world’s wealthiest countries were well represented at the December 2007 UN Framework Convention on Climate change in Bali. In contrast only 9 percent of the journalists at the conference were from non-industrialised countries and there was zero media representation for nearly the entire UN list of 50 Least Developed Countries. To address this gap IIED Panos and Internews formed the Climate Change Media Partnership (CCMP). This initiative brought 37 journalists from developing countries to Bali and provided them with a 10 day programme of support. Since 2007, the CCMP has run three programmes each supporting nearly 40 journalists from developing nations to attend the UN climate change negotiations in Bali, Poznan and Copenhagen. Among the many refinements that the CCMP team has made to its programme over the years, is a greater focus on gender and generation.

CCMP research has shown that although most male and female CCMP fellows were likely to acknowledge a need to include women’s views in their reports, they lacked the resources, tools and knowledge to do so. In addition there is a disparate level of awareness amongst the CCMP journalists about how men and women of all ages are affected by climate change in different ways and about the need to report these differences. Through its work the CCMP identified several key areas that can improve the way that climate change, gender and generation are covered by the media.