![Bearing Witness 2016: A Fiji climate change journalism case study Hero image](../sites/default/files/articles/2017/07/1.%20apr%20panorama%20tja%20-%20Daku%20village%20-%20cropped%20550wide.jpg)
In February 2016, the Fiji Islands were devastated by Severe Tropical Cyclone Winston, the strongest recorded tropical storm in the Southern Hemisphere. The category 5 storm with wind gusts reaching 300 kilometres an hour, left 44 people dead, 45,000 people displaced, 350,000 indirectly affected, and $650 million worth of damage (Climate Council, 2016). In March 2017, the Secretariat of the Pacific Regional Environment Programme (SPREP) launched a new 10-year Strategic Plan 2017-2026, which regards climate change as a ‘deeply troubling issue for the environmental, economic, and social viability of Pacific island countries and territories’. In November, Fiji will co-host the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (COP23) climate change conference in Bonn, Germany. Against this background, the Pacific Media Centre despatched two neophyte journalists to Fiji for a two-week field trip in April 2016 on a ‘bearing witness’ journalism experiential assignment to work in collaboration with the Pacific Centre for Environment and Sustainable Development (PaCE-SD) and the Regional Journalism Programme at the University of the South Pacific. This article is a case study assessing this climate change journalism project and arguing for the initiative to be funded for a multiple-year period in future and to cover additional Pacific countries, especially those so-called ‘frontline’ climate change states.
Bearing Witness project grant from the Research and Innovation Office, Auckland University of Technology.
Robie, D., & Chand, S. (2017). Bearing Witness 2016: A Fiji climate change journalism case study. Pacific Journalism Review, 23(1), 186-205. doi:http://dx.doi.org/10.24135/pjr.v23i1.257 Article available at the Tuwhera OJS platform: https://ojs.aut.ac.nz/pacific-journalism-review/article/view/257