‘Newspapers can help all, from children to MPs, develop vital climate awareness’

Seema Mundoli teaches at the School of Development in Azim Premji University (APU). Speaking to Times Evoke, she discusses how newspapers and other media can help people read climate science:

My research explores how we can communicate a complex idea like climate change, which is very data-heavy and can be intimidating to a layperson, to a wider audience. The acceptance of climate change is growing now but a lot of the information about it is very scientific, involving modelling, etc. I am interested in how we can tell a child or an adult what climate change is in simple ways.



I began my research by looking at urban commons and nature in cities. With my colleagues, I studied Bengaluru’s lakes and wooded groves known as ‘gunda thopes’. These have deep ecological value, compose social spaces and people form long attachments to them. But since we began our research, Bengaluru experienced many environmental changes, with disruptive floods, heatwaves, etc. We found a fair amount of discussion around these events in mass media including TV — but this was rapidly forgotten after the events receded.

ONCE UPON A FESTIVE TIME: Open-access ecological communication by Mundoli et al showcases how ‘gunda thopes’ or wooded groves in Bengaluru formed the focus of community life, where festivals and special occasions were celebrated
Illustration Courtesy: ‘Where have all our gunda thopes gone’ Azim Premji University, 2021, via S. Mundoli

There is some discussion of the environment in mainstream media but these reports usually treat ecology as a stationary entity, hit once in a while by extreme weather. We began to think of how we could help people see nature as an evolving being, altering over time as well as globally. During our surveys, we found children relate powerfully to the sensory environment all around them. So, one good way of communicating climate information to kids (you can’t really tell an eight or ten-year-old, ‘It’s grown much hotter’ because s/he has a small timespan to compare temperatures over) is by helping them experience nature directly. We advocated strategies like taking kids to the Bellandur lake, which is infamously polluted, to show them the state of a water body which provides us so much. We then contrasted this with a clean lake, so the children could understand what had gone wrong and discuss its consequences.

A FAMILIAR TREE: Bengaluru is known for its sprawling old trees which, with urbanisation, represent its ecological heritage and loss — publications about these help to raise deeper awareness. Illustration Courtesy: ‘Where have all our gunda thopes gone’ Azim Premji University, 2021, via S. Mundoli

Such visits also help young people see the complexities behind environmental needs. Recently, students from a well-to-do school in Bengaluru visited a lake and a village next to it — there, they met children who wanted the same lake closed up. The reason was, the lake flooded the villagers’ homes every time it rained, causing distress. So, the school kids confronted the idea of ecological justice and different needs. We teach environmental science and sustainability and emphasise that students go to such sites, see the dynamics and listen to local people to understand how ecology and climate change actually unfold in everyday life.



It is also important to recognise the power of vernacular communication about climate change. The communities facing its full impacts now know that something has changed. But while they don’t know the science around it, they are adapting daily — we should learn from them as opposed to us speaking at them. From Sundarbans islanders to slum dwellers in Bengaluru, we find a host of climate adaptation methods are in place. These communities have a lot to tell us.



We are also working with journalists now to help them develop the most effective ways of writing climate stories. Readers perusing environmental reports find either very data-heavy stories or emotionally draining narratives of weather events upending people’s lives. Often, neither helps develop a fuller understanding of global warming. Also, considering the kind of crisis global warming is, the fact is, there are hardly enough stories in mainstream newspapers covering it. We need more editors and publishers to grow sensitive to the fact that we are living in an enormous crisis that is just starting. Usually, politics, sports and movies get far more coverage — yet, these events will come and go but climate change will last, have a global spread and reshape millions of lives. In the interest of news, newspapers should cover this far more. In another study, we examined 20 years of the questions asked in Parliament and researched how many were related to climate change — only 0.3% of climate-related questions were asked. An MP often asks a question based on newspaper reports and articles which they research. If the proportion of climate reporting increases, so will climate queries in the Question Hour — this can only help India prepare better in the face of this huge challenge.

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