Climate change issues: need for effective communication

The Eighth Session of the Conference of the Parties to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change, CoP-8 for short, begins this week in New Delhi, bringing to the attention of the public once again the complex issues surrounding science, policy, and impacts of global climate change: what is the extent of likely change and how it was estimated; how should the responsibility be apportioned among countries; and what must be done to reduce the adverse impacts of the predicted change. Every national daily within India is bound to cover the event and report on it in some detail commensurate with its significance, and condensed versions of the stories will duly appear in TERI Newswire. But we at TERI are keen to find out what readers of mainline dailies think of the issue and their understanding of the science behind it because discussions on the topic tend to take the form of political debates as often as that of scientific discussions and economic negotiations. It is on such occasions that the difference between communicating to inform and communicating to persuade come to the fore; one only has to compare the treatment of the topic in an advertisement published in a newspaper with that in a paper published in a research journal to know the chasm that separates the two. It is a chasm that needs to be bridged. Scientists regard journalists with disdain for converting their precisely written academic papers into sensational stories: journalists despair the dense prose and arcane jargon of scientists they are forced to read while keeping one eye on the clock so that they do not miss the deadline. It is the middle ground that both must reach?scientists, by presenting information clearly, simply, and yet accurately; journalists, by putting in the required effort to understand the subject. Overcoming the adverse effects of climate change is possible only through collective endeavour, which requires a properly briefed citizenry. As one of the pages meant for the youth from the CoP-8 web site puts it, ?The very first initiative is to share with as many people as we can, what we know about climate change. We can help to create a level of opinion that will convince our policy-makers and industry that action is necessary.?