Editors Briefing on Climate Change

The media’s power to shape the way a nation thinks about and plans for its future is hard to overestimate. The particular complexity of climate change makes it critically important that editors and journalists understand the issue and its implications well enough to be able to communicate its importance to the public.

With this in mind we worked with an outstanding team of independent people and organizations in the sustainability field (see below) to create a one-day Editors’ Briefing on Climate Change on 6th August in Johannesburg. The Danish Embassy generously funded the event as part of their preparations for hosting the UN negotiations in Copenhagen in December.

Despite warnings from all sides that our target audience of editors and business / political journalists were notoriously hard to lure to such events and the subject matter was likely to interest only environmental journalists, we ended up with 21 of the ‘right’ kind of journalists and editors in the room (see below), with some 8 others telling us they would have come had they not been held back at the eleventh hour by some circumstance or other. All of them gave us very positive feedback on the usefulness of the day.

The Contributors
We had an exceptionally strong and willing roster of speakers (see below), including the UK Secretary of State for Energy & Climate Change (Ed Miliband) and the Chairman of Shell UK (James Smith - by video link).

We are now actively looking at how we can expand this format to reach a much wider cross-section of the South African media.

If you have any questions or ideas, please contact Magda de Kok at magda.dekok@cpl.cam.ac.uk or 021 4694765.

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Additional reporting on this event

• David Le Page’s blog
• Business Day
• Polity
• Weekend Post

Programme Team

• Monica Graaff - Associate, Incite Sustainability
• Felicity Harrison - Project Director, Goedgedacht Forum for Social Reflection
• Leonie Joubert - Freelance science journalist
• David Le Page - Freelance journalist
• Branda Martin - Project Manager, Project 90 by 2030
• Peter Willis - South African Director, Cambridge Programme for Sustainability
• Mada de Kok - Senior Project Manager, Cambridge Programme for Sustainability

Contributors

• Tasneem Essop - World Wide Fund for Nature (WWF)
• Karin Ireton - Director of Group Sustainability Management, Standard Bank
• Jorn Hammer - Vestas
• Dr Guy Midgley - South African National Biodiversity Institute & IPCC co-author
• Ed Miliband - UK Secretary of State for Energy and Climate Change
• Pancho Ndebele - Founder, Emvelo
• Mandy Rambharos - Climate Change and Sustainability Manager, Eskom
• Stefan Raubenheimer - CEO SouthSouthNorth & Senior Associate, Cambridge Programme for Sustainability Leadership
• Dr Bob Scholes - CSIR & IPCC co-author
• James Smith - Chairman, Shell UK
• Richard Worthington - World Wide Fund for Nature (WWF)

Delegates

• Quintin Wray - Editor, Business Report
• Barney Mthombothi - Editor, Financial Mail
• Ryk van Niekerk - Editor, Sake24
• Peter Bruce - Editor, Business Day
• Henry Jeffreys - Editor, Die Burger
• Moshongwa Matsena - Senior Editor Current Affairs, Channels Africa
• Marlene van Rooyen - Editor, 25 Degrees in Africa
• Peter Fabricius - Foreign Editor, The Independent Group
• Gavin Stewart - Editorial Consultant, Daily Dispatch
• Stephen Mulholland - Columnist, FinWeek
• Christy van der Merwe - Contributing Editor Online, Engineering News
• Francois Williams - Western Cape Editor, Sake24
• Chantelle Benjamin - Chief Reporter / Associate Editor, Business Day
• Nia McGregor - Bureau Chief, Femina Magazine
• Siseko Njobeni - Energy Editor, Business Day
• Jill de Villiers - Head of Programming, CNBC Africa
• Leigh Roberts - Anchor, CNBC Africa
• Sherilee Bridge - Financial & Commodities Journalist, I-Net Bridge
• Guy Rogers - Environment & Tourism Editor, Herald
• Tony Carnie - Environment Reporter, The Mercury
• Melanie-Anne Feris - Environment Reporter, CityPress
• Rest Kanju - Regional Programme Coordinator, Indigenous People, CBNRM and Climate Change for Southern Africa
• Amelia Genis - Senior Repoter, Landbou Weekblad
• Jorisna Bonthuys - Environmental Reporter, Die Burger
• Elise Templehoff - Environmental Reporter, Beeld
• Sharda Naidoo - Cover Editor, Financial Mail
• Peter Mashala - Journalist, Farmer’s Weekly