From Local to Global, How Climate Journalism Can Elevate the Health Story at the Heart of the Climate Crisis

Friday, 1 December 2023
1.30 PM GST / 8:30 AM EST

There is a growing awareness that the climate crisis is a health crisis that demands corresponding policy responses. In mid-November, the 8th annual report of the Lancet Countdown on Health and Climate Change outlined several ways in which climate change continues to have a worsening effect on health and mortality around the world. It is a narrative that can be told as a series of stories of tangible impact: existing health threats will intensify, and new health threats will emerge as the planet warms.

Journalists reporting on climate change and health can help the public and policymakers gain a better understanding of climate the impacts as well as the health arguments for climate action. Immediate and urgent, from local to global, climate journalism can elevate the health story at the heart of the climate crisis.

Join this panel discussion — an in-person and live-streamed side event at the Health Pavilion at COP28 in Dubai — between experienced journalists and a One Health expert to learn how to best communicate this story and amplify the inextricable linkages between the health of people, animals, and ecosystems.

Speakers:

• Ana Carolina Amaral — Specialist writer for Folha de S. Paulo, Executive member of the Brazilian Environmental Journalism Network, and journalism fellow at Internews and Wellcome Trust.
• Chiamaka Okafor — Senior journalist for Premium Times, Nigeria, recently completed a six-month fellowship with the Oxford Climate Journalism Network, and currently a Climate Change Media Partnership (CCMP) and Earth Journalism Network fellow.
• Joydeep Gupta — Media trainer for EJN, editor-at-large for The Third Pole, Manager, EJN India
• Alice Bell — Head of Policy, Climate, and Health at Wellcome Trust, PhD in Science Communication

The discussion will be moderated by Ida Jooste, Internews’ Senior Health Media Adviser and award-winning journalist based in South Africa.

Register to join us at the World Health Organization’s COP28 Health Pavilion in the Blue Zone (participants are welcome on a first-come, first-served basis) or to tune in via the livestream.