The Indian media has been reporting on
climate change far more frequently in the past months. As the international
community prepares for the end-2015 Paris Conference of Parties (CoP) to the
Climate Change Convention – which will decide on the successor to the Kyoto
Protocol – there have been far more stories mentioning climate change and
global warming in the Indian media.
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| Indian newspapers and climate change |
Does this signify a coming of age for
climate change reporting in the country, or is this a flash-in-the-pan interest
that will not continue after the Paris CoP? This question emanates from the trend for India in the continuous assessment graphs being plotted by the Center for Science and Technology Policy Research at the University of Colorado at
Boulder, USA.
The CSTPR graphs track 50 newspapers across the world using the keywords ‘climate change’ and ‘global
warming’. The global list includes four newspapers from India – the Hindu, the Times
of India, Hindustan Times and the Indian Express.
Like with media across the world,
Indian media’s interest in the subject peaked around the December 2009
Copenhagen CoP, where the world hoped for an international political solution
to the climate change issue. However, that was not to be, and the media
attention never peaked as much as with the Copenhagen CoP later. The only
periods when the attention peaked was during and immediately before and after
the annual CoPs, which were held near the end of the every year.
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| World newspapers and climate change |
India follows this global pattern.
However, there has been a consistent increase in media coverage in India since the
beginning of 2012, from where there has been a near-consistent plateau in the
CSTPR graph. Though this does mirror the global trend, there are far less peaks
and troughs in the Indian graph.
Absence of peaks and troughs signify
consistent day-to-day reporting, which means that there is a potentially higher
issue recall among readers. This in turn means that there is potential for
greater public pressure on policy makers to support greenhouse gas mitigation
and climate change adaptation.
The CSTPR graph is just the tip of the Indian
media iceberg, but it gives an indication of the trend. According to the Indian
Readership Survey for fourth quarter of 2012 (the figures since 2013 have been
disputed by the media industry), the Times of India, Hindustan Times and the
Hindu are the top three most widely read English newspapers, with a combined
readership of 13.5 million. The Indian Express added another 0.5 million.
The figures of the English newspapers,
however, pale in comparison to the readership of the Hindi dailies, whose
readership has grown manifold in the past 15 years. The most read Dainik Jagran
itself had a readership of 16.5 million during Q4 of 2012. In spite of their
lesser readership when compared to the Hindi newspapers, the four English
dailies tracked by the CSTPR study have the potential of reaching a strong
section of the readership in India and also parliamentarians and other decision
makers.
Thus, if the increased reporting in these
four newspapers reflects the thinking of the people who read them, then there
is an increased attention on climate change in this section of the population.
Even if it the other way around, i.e., these newspapers are driving the
interest among the readers, it is a good indication that there is a greater
discussion on climate change.
The CSTPR graphs show that in the build
up to the Paris CoP, media attention on climate change has been increasing in
most of the countries. In the USA,
though the graph is still jagged the peaks of media stories, especially those
contributed by the New York Times, have been high.
The graph for the UK
is both similar and dissimilar to the one for the USA. The British media seems
to have reported more frequently about climate change than its American
counterparts. However, like in the USA there is one leader among the pack in
the UK too. Since September 2014, the Guardian and Observer have been doing far
more stories on climate change than any other media outlet in the world. In
November 2014, the month before the Lima CoP, there were 446 stories in the
Guardian and Observer.
Media in Australia
and Canada
continue to have periods of interest and disinterest. In the number of news
stories on climate change published in a month, the Australian media scores
much higher than the Canadian media.
As the CSTPR graph for India shows, the
Indian media has had a weaker coverage on climate change before 2005, even
though New Delhi hosted the CoP in 2002. This is despite the fact that India
has been an active participant in the climate change negotiations since the
1992 United Nations Conference on Environment and Development (the Rio Earth
Summit).
Interestingly though, the Indian
negotiating position has not changed much from the “we are against binding
emission reduction targets” in the past 23 years. In Paris, India will need to show its commitment
to emission reduction, even while keeping
its space for economic growth.
This is where a steady flow of stories on climate change will help make the discussions in the country more comprehensive, and possibly also pressure the negotiators to have a more nuanced than a rhetorical position. The developed country vis-à-vis the developing country binary position of the early 1990s is certainly passé for India, and when there are more stories in the media there is more scope for the multiple dimensions of the climate change discussions to be articulated in the public domain.
This is where a steady flow of stories on climate change will help make the discussions in the country more comprehensive, and possibly also pressure the negotiators to have a more nuanced than a rhetorical position. The developed country vis-à-vis the developing country binary position of the early 1990s is certainly passé for India, and when there are more stories in the media there is more scope for the multiple dimensions of the climate change discussions to be articulated in the public domain.
Like with the Copenhagen CoP, an increased media attention
on climate change in the build up, during and immediately after the Paris CoP can be expected in India. The likelihood of this momentum continuing is high, since the media
has been steadily exploring how the climate change discussions link to the
day-to-day lives of the readers, viewers and listeners.
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Citation for the graphs:
McAllister, L., Nacu-Schmidt, A., Wang, X.,
Andrews, K., Boykoff, M., Daly, M., Gifford, L., and Luedecke, G. (2015). World
Newspaper Coverage of Climate Change or Global Warming, 2004-2015. Center for
Science and Technology Policy Research, Cooperative Institute for Research in
Environmental Sciences, University of Colorado, Web. [18 June 2015] http://sciencepolicy.colorado.edu/media_coverage.
