Scientific data, technical analysis and statistics alone cannot engage the public on air pollution and its mitigation. To be effective, media coverage of air quality issues needs to include the human dimension and human interest.

Both scientists and journalists emphasized this point at a regional media training workshop on cleaner air held in Yogyakarta, Indonesia, on 11 and 12 December 2006.

“Don’t believe for a moment that you can touch people’s hearts with numbers. To influence behaviour, we need to appeal to their emotions as well,” said Dr Axel Friedrich, a transport expert with the Federal Environmental Agency in Germany.

He acknowledged that vested interests often stood in the way of policy reform or law implementation. Clean air campaigns need to work closely with media to ‘scandalise, emotionalise and personalize the issue’.

He was one of several experts who addressed two dozen journalists from across developing Asia attending the workshop, co-organised by the Clean Air Initiative for Asian Cities (CAI-Asia) and TVE Asia Pacific (TVEAP) in partnership with the Asian Development Bank (ADB).

Journalists were granted media scholarships to attend Better Air Quality 2006 (BAQ 2006) being held in Yogyakarta from 13 to 15 December 2006. It has brought together over 900 representatives from industry, research, government and civil society groups committed to cleaner air in the world’s largest region.

Dr Friedrich suggested that the quest for cleaner air cannot succeed without journalists’ help to ‘translate’ the nuances and complexities involved. “Most law-makers and policy-makers are not technical people. They turn to the mass media to make sense of these issues and to weigh the various options and their costs.”

Dr Jitendra Shah, an expert with the World Bank’s Southeast Asia office, agreed. “Media can set and drive the agenda for cleaner air in Asia. Journalists are on the frontline in explaining the intricacies to both the public and politicians.”

He added: “Most policy makers don’t understand or bother about technicalities. If you talk to them in a language they understand, they will respond. That includes the health damage, billions of dollars of economic productivity and opportunities lost, and the decline in quality of life.”

He recalled talking with a Chinese child living in a particularly polluted city about the colour of sky. “The answer was grey – because that is what he is growing up with. What price can we put on a clear blue sky?” he asked.

“Polluted air is silently and slowly killing hundreds of thousands of people every year. Yet no one has declared war on this mass killer,” said Dr Dieter Schwela, Senior Scientist with the Stockholm Environment Institute based in York, UK.

The World Health Organisation (WHO) has estimated that at least 800,000 people die prematurely every year due to ill health caused by polluted air – two thirds of these (600,000 people) are in Asia. Schwela, who earlier worked with WHO, thinks that this too conservative, and the actual figure can be much higher.

Dr Schwela is the lead author of Urban Air Pollution in Asia Cities, a new assessment of selected metropolitan areas in the region. See separate story on this book.

In his opening remarks, Nalaka Gunawardene said that Asia’s quest for cleaner air was much more than an environmental story. “Cleaning up our fouled air involves governmental policy and regulation, industrial lobbies, technology choices, citizen action and much more. There are vested interests, big money and a great deal of intrigue – all the elements that typically interest the media.”

He added: “Our big challenge is to see beyond the ‘smokescreen’ of hype, misinformation and myths that surround many clean air stories. We have to make sense of it ourselves before we communicate it to our audiences.”

Darryl D’Monte described how some committed journalists have been effective campaigners for cleaner air. He cited the science-based advocacy of India’s Centre for Science and Environment, which has sustained a right to clean air campaign since 1996. “For this, journalists have to do detailed research, get their facts absolutely right, and stay with the evolving stories. Air quality is not a one-off story.”

He acknowledged how journalists have to struggle to publish or broadcast air quality and other environmental stories. “We have to first convince our editors how these concern real people – how polluted air affects health, especially in children; how it drives investors and tourists away from cities and countries.”

Making a detailed presentation on the Chinese experience in managing its air pollution, Lihong Shi traced the role played by environmental researchers, activists and journalists who often worked together. A good part of the credit for China’s progress in cleaning up the air is due to the awareness raising done by the print and broadcast media.

Commenting on the lack of investigative journalism on environmental issues in China, she said: “In China, media has so far been more like an educator than watchdog on air quality issues. Both the government and NGOs use the media to reach out to the public. The media have done a good job – but it’s still not enough. We have to dig deeper.”

She noted how some public interest TV programmes have recently been phased out as Chinese broadcasters became more conscious with audience ratings. “Our challenge is to mainstream environmental reporting in the Chinese media.”

To participate in this workshop, journalists from developing Asia were selected based on open, competitive applications. After the training workshop, journalists will attend and cover various BAQ 2006 events of their choice during December 13 - 15. TVEAP’s media resource team will provide on-site advice and support. Television journalists are being provided a professional camera crew and non-linear editing facilities to produce their stories.

CAI-Asia and TVE Asia Pacific pooled resources and efforts to come up with this multi-faceted media development initiative. They expect these inputs to improve the quantity and quality of clean air related media coverage in Asia.

Full agenda of the training workshop