Media Meets Climate
Change and Disasters Challenge

2^nd ABU
Media Summit on Climate Change and DRR

Krabi, 12 – 14 May 2016

Climate change and global warming are critical long-term threats
to human population and the land they inhabit. Rising temperature is causing
the melting of icecaps, receding of glaciers and rise in sea levels. Globally,
weather systems are manifesting extreme swings that are disrupting and
endangering life and livelihood. More vulnerable countries would be the first
to experience the ill effects of global warming and climate change, but others
will not be far behind.

Although widely acknowledged as a critical threat, climate change
implications has not got the media attention it deserves and programming on the
subject is often limited to a niche interest area. Furthermore, media hasn’t
been truly integrated in the national disaster management policies and processes
to prepare the general public to cope with increasingly frequent and more
intense natural hazards like typhoons, sea level surges, flooding and
drought. 

Given its unparalleled reach to wide audiences, the media should
become a trusted partner of governments in promoting disaster risk reduction
policies, disseminating early warning messages and advancing regional and
national disaster risk reduction agendas.

Many media organizations already accept their duty to serve wide
audiences (including most vulnerable groups such as women, children, youth,
persons with disabilities and elderly) before, during, after disasters. They
recognize the need to prepare people pro-actively during quieter times between
disasters and commit to expand coverage of climate change and DRR and educate
their audiences on these issues.

They also recognize the huge gap in media knowledge and expertise
to do so and that the “messengers” have to be educated themselves about the
complex issues of climate change impacts, mitigations and DRR.

The 2^nd ABU Media Summit aims to bridge this gap.
It will bring together media, government agencies responsible for disaster
management and disaster risk reduction, international agencies working in the
field and NGOs. They will discuss how to put media in the frontline for climate
change adaptation and disaster risk reduction. Furthermore, how to educate the
“messengers” and equip media practitioners with the skills and knowledge to
translate the complex climate change issues into relevant understandable
programmes for wide audiences.

Summit Programme

There will be several parallel workshops before the summit – 
on Food Security, DRR, Workshop for community high teachers.

The Summit is a two day event on 12 and 13 May with an excursion
on 14^th May.

Format

The sessions would be run as TV studio shows. The length of each
session would be 45 or 60 minutes (this is still to be decided with the Summit
Organizational Committee).

The ambition of the Summit is to have the sessions recorded,
edited and offered to ABU members copyright free, so the discussions and
knowledge accumulated during the Summit will be accessible to media
professionals and broad audiences who were not able to attend the Summit. Each

A scaled down version is to have at least 5 recorded sessions, if
the Organisational Committee doesn’t raise enough funding for the production.

The sessions would be produced by ABU members such as ThaiPBS,
NHK, ABC, MediaCorp, DDI, CCTV etc.

Partners would be offered an opportunity to have exhibition
booths.

Another supporting parallel  event is the ABU competition on
best documentaries in two categories – Climate Change and DRR.

There will be also an exhibition attached to the Summit.

The idea to run an architecture exhibition on affordable and
disability accessible housing for disaster relief and disaster reconstruction
has been parked for this year because of lack of funds.

Day 1 – 12^th May
2016

Day 2 – 13^th May
2016