Day: November 19, 2018

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Workshop in New Delhi

Climate change mitigation requires an unprecedented systemic change. So does climate journalism, says Dmitry Yagodin after attending a workshop in New Delhi, India (November 15-17, 2018). To withstand the pressure of conservative movements, populist leaders, and fake news, media professionals around the world need to look beyond the traditional topics and formats of climate change reporting.   

Journalists, educators and media scholars from 14 countries spent three days inside a hotel conference room, insulated from hazardous air pollution of the Indian capital city, and discussing research, training and the best practices of climate reporting. Dmitry Yagodin presented the results of a media study that focused on the coverage of climate summits (COP15 in Copenhagen and COP21 in Paris). Based on a multinational sample of 13 countries, the study reports a decrease of media attention to the summits, despite their close geographical location and similar political representation. It was also found that business actors played a slightly more prominent role in Paris.

The workshop paid a special attention to the public communication efforts of the UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC). Participants generally agreed that the recent release of the IPCC report on “Global Warming of 1.5 °C” has been a relative success compare to the less articulate and complex scientific language of the previous reports. The IPCC’s public communication strategy, adopted in 2012 and updated several times until the last moment, seems to have improved the report’s outreach in many countries. However, according to, the exceptionally low coverage in Russia – 5 articles in 50 printed news media during the three weeks after the IPCC release –  exemplifies the existence of yet uncharted territories.

The Journalism and Media International Center at OsloMet, Norway, and Datamation Foundation in Delhi in co-operation with the MediaClimate network organized the workshop. The participants came from different parts of India, from Bangladesh, Indonesia, Sri Lanka, Japan, the USA, the UK, Australia, Germany, Norway, Finland, Uganda, Turkey and Russia.

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“Northern Dimension Future Forum on Environment: Black carbon and Climate Change in the European Arctic” today in Brussels

“Northern Dimension Future Forum on Environment: Black carbon and Climate Change in the European Arctic” is organised today in Brussels. Veli-Pekka Tynkkynen is taking part in “Knowledge Arena 2: Actions in Practice” session of the forum, giving a talk “How to reduce black carbon emissions in Russia’s oil and gas industry?”

Temperatures in the Arctic are rising clearly faster than the global average temperatures. Thus, also black carbon, that may cause some 20-25% of the warming in the Arctic, has received special attention by the Arctic Council and the Northern Dimension Environmental Partnership. In addition to its global warming impacts, black carbon is detrimental to human
and ecosystem health. Important sources of black carbon include transport, residential burning of coal and biomass, oil and gas flaring, and open burning of biomass.
Because black carbon remains in the atmosphere only for days or weeks, emission reductions produce positive results fast. Furthermore, many technological solutions to curb emissions already exist. In addition to the activities of the Arctic Council, there are also other international and regional initiatives aiming at reducing black carbon emissions such as the Climate and Clean Air Coalition and the World Bank’s Zero Routine Flaring by 2030.
This event brings together researchers, businesses and policy makers to discuss how countries and actors in the European Arctic are tackling this common challenge and what they could do more.

More information on the event is available here.

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Dmitry Yagodin’s comments in Helsingin Sanomat

A new article “Venäjällä monet tutkijatkin uskovat, että maailman lämpenemisen sijaan edessä on jääkausi” (Many researchers in Russia believe that there is an ice age lying ahead of the global warming) was published yesterday, 18th of November, in Helsingin Sanomat. The article discusses how climate change is covered in Russian media and what is the discussion around the issue in the country in general.

The author of the piece asked Dmitry Yagodin to comment on how the recent IPCC report was met in Russia. Dmitry said, that out of 50 newspapers, according to his calculations, only 5 have written about the report, and it was largely ignored in the TV-news. According to Yagodin, the situation is hampered by the fact that there are only 5 journalists in the whole country that are well familiar with the climate change issue. Another important reason for the indifference of media is a twofold nature of the attitude towards the issue in the country – while Russia signed the Paris Agreement and has not withdrawn from it like the USA, it still has not ratified it.

Full version of the article is available on Helsingin Sanomat website.