Rain in winter on the Highveld? Warm, balmy Cape winter days? Must be El Nino at it again. But no, it’s climate change, taking place in our own place and time. Like so much of the damage happening to our planetary life-support system, it’s a slow process; and it’s one that doesn’t get enough play in media structures designed to deliver the quick newsbite or the sensational headline.
Floods in Mozambique. Remember those CNN choppers filming poor families perched in trees waiting to be saved? You don’t see much coverage of the steady denuding of riverine vegetation along catchment areas and riverbanks, which results in the land’s inability to absorb rainwater and release it again gently.
Thing is, the time needed to properly analyse and understand these fundamental operating systems is prohibitive to a news media with stretched resources and heavy deadline pressures. Press reporting on the environment is neither an easy nor a common beat. But is the issue simply sidelined due to the commercial and production imperatives of hard news, or is it that environmental journalists are just not cutting the mustard?
For Melanie Gosling, Cape Times environmental writer and last year’s SAB Miller environmental journalist of the year, the concerns are a bit more complex. “I’m lucky to work on the only daily newspaper in the country with a rising circulation [amongst] a better-educated readership. So getting space is not a problem. What is though, is sourcing information. Government officials are becoming less and less open. And NGOs are often under pressure by developers to keep quiet.”
In local newspapers, conservation issues are often given space more readily because the emotional hook is sharper. Canned lion hunting or elephant culling hits many people in the gut, and the gory details make for compelling copy.
Magazines, perhaps because of their more graphic appeal and the leisurely, reflective reading situation, appear to be a better vehicle for environmental coverage. The medium allows readers to absorb the vital information that we’d better look after our natural resources because, when all’s said and done, we can’t eat plastic.
Recently there has been a growth in local magazine titles covering environmental and sustainable development issues. Fiona MacLeod, editor of Mail & Guardian‘s Earthyear, says: “Companies and organisations are interested in quality publications that reflect what they are doing [environmentally]. It’s a complex field and those who understand it will be better supported. SANParks are re-publishing Timbila, for which M&G Media have won the tender, so that’s another publication coming back on the market.”
Features on ecological lifestyles are becoming more prevalent in mainstream magazines too. For a second year, Elle Decoration ran a 70-page feature in its winter “Earthy Issue”. Fairlady‘s “Special Report” in June covered global warming and the Pentagon’s alarming report on the possibilities of abrupt climate change.
As for broadcast media, wildlife documentaries (mostly imported) create awareness by inspiring awe for the natural world, and are staple fare for Sunday evenings. SABC’s 50/50 has run for over a decade – its loyal viewership objecting vociferously a number times when it looked like being taken off the air. Radio runs a few regular slots, and more have been introduced over the past year or two.
And cinema has come into the act by exploiting the possibilities of its own unique form. The director of The Day after Tomorrow – which has probably, of all recent films, done the most to raise awareness – used the length of the format to open with an intricate explanation of one of nature’s typically complex but crucially important processes—and then rapidly turned it into a disaster movie.
Given the above, it could be argued that “environmental reporting” as a standalone category will eventually disappear as it mainstreams into lifestyle and science reporting. The latter (Popular Mechanics notwithstanding) is less prone nowadays to glorifying the technical innovations of modern industry – it’s focusing more on interpretation, alerting us to the distress signals arising out of our abuse of the planet.
But there’s another important aspect to environmental journalism which is begging for more emphasis: enabling those sectors of the population directly affected by polluted, degraded landscapes to articulate their concerns publicly, thereby calling to account those responsible for governance.
The bigger picture here of course is the unbalanced interplay between global power politics and meaningful economic and social development, and how control of much of the world’s economic (and political) activities by the most powerful corporates and financial institutions serves the interests of those few countries that helped set these up in the first place. The implications are that the rest of the world’s governments and citizens are further impoverished as their forests and seas continue to be plundered for profit.
So it seems, paradoxically, that solutions to these entrenched big picture problems need to be addressed before any lasting intervention can be made at the local level. As George Monbiot puts it in his latest book, The Age of Consent (Harpers): “There is little point in fighting to protect a coral reef from local pollution if nothing has been done to prevent climate change from destroying the conditions it requires for its survival.”
Monbiot and other voices that argue for reforming international political and economic institutions – to make them accountable to all citizens of the world – are not particularly upbeat about the role media is currently playing. The “democratising globalisation” proponents are extremely circumspect about media conglomerates, specifically how they limit the expression of alternatives that are fairer and kinder to planet and people.
Against this backdrop, writing and reporting on environmental and sustainable development issues in South Africa is a huge challenge. This country, with its breathtaking physical assets and natural resources standing alongside conspicuous disparities in demographic wealth and power, holds up a veritable mirror to the global complexities. What gives hope is that local environmental reporting is being fuelled by a passionate and growing band of journalists and media brands. It is in a fairly healthy state and, given increasing reader and viewer interest, should provide a solid platform for public action.
Hugh Tyrrell is co-ordinating the programme for EnviroMedia 2004, Southern Africa’s environmental journalism and media conference in Johannesburg from 5 – 7 October. George Monbiot, UK Guardian columnist, author, and visiting professor at Oxford Brookes university, will be the keynote speaker. For more information about the conference, visit www.enviromedia2004.co.za