A case of climate change communication and miscommunication, where science, satire, politics and the media collided with a crash.
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Author: mike shanahan
Climate change needs a Gandhi not a Gore
Was Al Gore’s 24-hour climate-change information marathon a world-changing event or just ‘more of the same’? Continue reading
“We use arrows to kill outsiders who threaten us” — Really?
If anything is sure to entrench ideas that the West is best — and that our materialistic civilisation represents the pinnacle of progress — it is a TV show that portrays people who live in rainforests as mean, sex-mad and savage. Continue reading
One Year Under the Banyan
Under the Banyan is one year old today. Thanks to everyone who has visited these pages and especially to those of you who have left comments on the posts here. Continue reading
Postcard from Qatar: A rainbow of rabbits and soft fluffy chicks
We don’t need to paint our way to paradise — it is outside, waiting to be found or forgotten. Continue reading
25 tips for climate change journalists
This collection is based on training presentations to journalists from around the world, and especially the global South, that I have given in recent years. Continue reading
Ask not what you can do for nature… Ask what nature can do for you
In 1997, a British barrister uttered three words that left my sister and me speechless and gave us a glimpse of the future. Continue reading
You’ve got to be in it to win it
A journalism competition with international development as its theme should not exclude journalists in developing countries from entering. Continue reading
The dark history and uncertain future of edible pink gold
The former shrimp farmer made me nervous. He was at least 6’4″ tall in his cowboy boots and he looked just like Pablo Escobar. He was driving fast, taking me away from his grand gated mansion in a suburb of Ecuador’s port city of Guayaquil and towards a private airstrip and a plane he had built with his own hands.
They were the biggest hands I have ever seen. As they gripped the steering wheel he told me how another plane he had built had crashed a week earlier, killing his friend the pilot. “That’s life,” he said with a sigh. Continue reading
More climate change but is it the right climate change?
Newspapers in developing countries are publishing more stories about climate change, but how much is locally relevant and how much is just recycled from the West? Continue reading
Under The Banyan 