Media has power to build climate change narrative: Grammy winner Ricky Kej

BENGALURU: Environmentalist and multi-Grammy winner Ricky Kej said there are two approaches to climate change awareness -- the Greta Thunberg approach and David Attenborough approach. “One is all about doom, gloom and shaming people into action, which is effective in the short-term, but also has negative aspects. The other is about inspiring people into action, which means getting people to fall in love with the natural world. We as human beings will only protect things that we love, we love things that we understand and understand what we are taught,” he said on Thursday.

Kej was speaking at the South Asian launch of the book ‘Media and Climate Change: Making Sense of Press Narratives’ written by Prof Deepti Ganapathy, Chairperson for IIM-B’s Centre for Management Communication. On similar lines, Prof Ganapathy said that drawing comparisons between faraway changes to get a local response on climate change was ineffective.

“Managing the narrative is the key -- problems of painting a doomsday narrative, such as the portrayal of the image of a lonely polar bear in a distant corner of the world, does not galvanise into behavioural change in local cities and towns,” she said. On the media’s role in building a narrative for climate change, she said the media has the power to bring about changes in the way citizens view climate change. “The media has the power to enable conversations.

In a democracy, it is necessary for the media to bring out the voice of local marginalised communities who are affected because of climate change. It is also necessary to project government policies and what impact they will have on communities,” she said. On government’s role in creating conversations around climate change, Kej said there were many things that need to be done at the policy level.