The Climate Change Media Partnership (CCMP) was a joint project of Panos London, Internews and the International Institute for Environment and Development (IIED). It provided more than 170 fellowships for journalists to report on the annual Conference of Parties (COP) that take place under the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC).
The work included assessing 700 applications for 19 places, by establishing the selection criteria, agreeing them with project partners, reviewing CVs, samples of work, supporting letters from editors, and mission statements of the 200 shortlisted candidates. The applicants were further reduced to 60 and later 30 potential candidtaes, taking gender balance and geographical spread into account.
We also improved the monitoring and evaluation sheets for the fellows to reflect qualitative information in relation to the mentoring. A system was devised that looked at the key qualities of balanced reporting from a UN global conference such as the COP.
There were 19 fellowships in 2011 for southern journaliststo attend the Durban COP 17.
The Objectives of the grant were:
- To improve the quality and quantity of journalistic coverage of climate and development issues in the developing country media
- To enhance the capacity of developing country journalists to cover climate and development issues
- To establish a working relationship between CDKN and this cohort of journalists, so information and ideas can be exchanged and opportunities for future collaboration can be explored.
- To ensure that developing country voices are heard within global debates
This project responded to those objectives by:
- A total of 19 journalists producing a total of 132 feature reports for southern media and an additional 47 on the CCMP website for global audiences
Of those the 3 CDKN-funded fellows producing 32 TV, print, online articles in seven different publications that reached over 35 million people in the global south and Europe
- All 19 fellows stated that the CCMP programme helped them to improve their coverage
- Introducing the journalists at the COP to CDKN at a Knowledge Exchange.
- CCMP fellows asking the majority of questions at the only COP press conference held jointly for the chief negotiators of the USA, European Union, Least Developed Countries and Japan
Raising the profile of developing country voices, through the production of a two-page spread in the national Swedish daily, Svenska Dagbladet (readership 518,000) and three articles for El Mundo online, with a readership of 32 million people, many in Latin America. This was a new activity this year.