Dewi Safitri is a science journalist working for CNN Indonesia
As school students in Europe, US, Australia and several countries in Africa started organizing to strike for climate, a journalist colleague from Europe asked whether climate change is a big issue in Indonesia. Other colleague wanted to know whether Greta Thunberg, a petite sixteen years with a ponytail and Asperger syndrome turned climate activist, inspires Indonesian school children the way she does children around the world to demand better climate action?
Sadly, my answer to both is no. Thunberg, the youngest candidate ever nominated for Nobel Peace Prize, is little known in Indonesia. And whilst Indonesian media do cover climate issues, they rarely convey the insistence or urgency over climate-astute policy. In conclusion: neither climate change nor Thunberg are big in Indonesia.
Here are several arguments to explain the conclusion. Firstly, climate reporting is often of complex scientific reasoning. Just as not all men are created equal, not all journalists are eloquently knowledgeable with science behind the climate. If one must hazard a guess, those who have the grasp of climate science would be far fewer than those who don’t. Consequently, with less person in the newsroom understanding the climate there would be, you guess it: less coverage.
But even if half the newsroom are decorated with degrees in science, there is also funding and resources issues. Climate news often call for field reporting – going places with climate emergencies, or visiting disaster laden region caused by climate shift. Both can be long and costly. Whilst resources in most media today are in short supply, justifying a climate reporting can be hard. Especially, since readership or clicks for science news is difficult to guarantee. In other words: science reporting needs more resources but attracts less audience – again, not the best combination to encourage the newsroom to report on the subject.
Lastly, and this may be the real reason to why reporting on climate is such a daunting task, is because of the profound sense of bad news fatigue on audience across platforms. A largely practiced climate reporting is frequently conducted by shoring up threats of climate crisis: unless certain measures are taken, disasters are going to struck. It can be drought, flood, landslide, extreme weather, ruined crops, and so on. But most Indonesians are highly accustomed to the maladies above. Drought, flood and landslides are seasonal occurrences even before the term “climate change” is known. Climate change or not, this is already a real life for a severely troubled earth for Indonesia. So what is the incentive to push for more frightening narratives from the climate reporting – as if the barrages of headlines on corruption, political conflicts and sectarian clashes are not enough?
The American essayist Arthur Miller said a good newspaper is a nation talking to itself. And these horrific headlines, whilst it may feel like nightmares forced down on our consciousness, often times, if not most, are the only chance we have at a national conversation about our crisis. An environmental campaigner once told a story of the rampant logging in West Kalimantan concerning the only tiny pristine forest plot left. Local people in the area, including the security apparatus, were so used to trucks loaded with newly cut logs from trees aged older than teenagers going to and fro, not minding the fact that those are illegal logs. Not until a Jakarta-based national newspaper started to pick up the story and continuously hammered down the reports for several days and weeks that the government officials started to notice. The reporting changed the practice, at least then, since pressure was sent directly from Jakarta to the local government.
Media, concludes the campaigner, is the best alliance to fight for environmental causes. Conversely, when media choose to ignore an issue there is little hope for it to gain traction and public support. Whilst this may not sound like a rocket science (of course a campaign has less chance to succeed without media support!), many, especially those in the newsrooms, may not be aware of the fact. The First Assessment Report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) was completed in 1990 and broadly used by the UN to argue for a global climate astute policies. But nearly 20 years later, such policy is rarely unanimously accepted and sometimes even completely abandoned by prominent countries. The public need the constant reminders of how badly this would end for our children and grandchildren.
Even for mostly the Western media, it took more than two decades to catch up with the message. It is the climate Reporting behind the quick rise of Greta Thurnberg – only a year after she started to sit alone in front of the Swedish parliament in Stockholm bearing a placard saying Skolstrejk for Kilmatet (School strike for Climate). She has since spent her time sailing the Atlantic to the US and leading marches for climate in cities around the world. Thurnberg has given Climate Change a face, and media highlight this eagerly. Her near stoical gaze, small voice and insistent on “don’t trust me, trust the science!” is followed by hordes of journalistic crews everywhere. The movement has kicked the ball rolling so far that “Greta Effect” is believed to have created a greater urgency on climate issue than any other similar campaign before.
Whilst Indonesian media may not have the resources to follow suit, we can certainly start by stating the obvious: that we are highly vulnerable to climate threats. Seasonal reporting on natural disasters need to be strongly stressed as worsening signs of climate crisis. Extreme heat, why yes, it’s the climate. Prolonged draught, also a sure sign of climate problem. Drowned cities, absolutely part of climate effects. Saying it out loud and acknowledging it as the root cause of problems we face today will hopefully initiate the public conversation to solving the problem. It’s high time to kick the climate issue rolling.
This article has been published at the Opinion page of Jakarta Post newspaper dated Nov 23, 2019. Photo by the JakPost’ A Muh Ibnu Aqil