Communication challenge for CC

By Ben Kedoga, NBC PNG, benkedoga@gmail.com

 

11 July 2013, Nadi, Fiji - Communicating climate change information to local communities in Pacific Island countries remains a major challenge.

This was highlighted at one of the side events of the Joint Meeting of the 2013 Pacific Platform for Disaster Risk Management and Pacific Climate Change Roundtable.

The side event looked at communication tools for climate change adaptation and risk reduction.

One issue that is critical is the need to simplify technical scientific information to everyday language that can be understood by the receiving communities.

But, Fenno Bruken, Climate Change Advisor of the Federated States of Micronesia says there is some form of understanding of the subject and he called on practitioners to simply not assume that communities cannot understand climate change adaptation and risk reduction information.

 

He did acknowledge that climate change remains a complex issue, but he says that from experience people tend to understand more clearly when the issues are linked to their everyday life.

 Fenno Bruken, Climate Change Advisor, FSM

 

“Many scientists think that the things that they are dealing with are way too complex for the likes of normal people and I think that’s basically not the case so you have to definitely  do some translation, you cannot give a scientific paper to a local chief and then expect him to understand what the background but If you explain it to him in a way where he is able to link it to his day to day experience and then I think it’s easy and then you are also able to explain complex thing, because they see that there is a change in the weather pattern in their region”