Moderator Felix Koltermann, PECOJON Germany, opened the session by presenting a selection of photos on Climate Change to the audience. The more than 50 participants were challenged to explore their own visual approaches and then enter deeper into conflict sensitive aspects of photography. Key inputs in the discussion were given by Marco Siebertz, creator of this year's Deutsche Welle Global Media Forum theme picture. Christoph Bangert photojournalist of the photo agency „life“ analyzed the relationship between climate and conflict and during the following discussion it became apparent that emotional reactions triggered by pictures can lead to concrete actions by the audience and readers.

Elke Grittmann from the University of Augsburg spoke about the "Iconography of Climate Change". Photographing Climate Change, she stressed, is especially challenging since the concrete cause of Climate Change - the green house effect - in itself is not comprehensible in pictures. Peter Bitzer, marketing director of "laif and Bildberg" recognized an increasing demand for pictures on Climate Change especially after the Kopenhagen conference. He concluded that photo agencies have to give more emphasis on distributing conflict sensitive pictures and his agency will take this into account during the next Photokina-convention in Cologne, Germany.

 
Climate Change and Conflict Sensitive Journalism in the Philippines

Climate Change threatens crisis-ridden societies in a special way. This became apparent during the second PECOJON workshop. In this workshop practitioners and conflict researchers discussed questions of conflict sensitive reporting looking at the example of the Philippines . A conflict sensitive approach is especially important since changes in the environment can have a variety of consequences in society, explained Antonia Koop from PECOJONs International Secretariat in Cebu, Philippines. This requires journalists to develop a new culture of collaboration and exchange despite the existing competition for stories and pictures. 

What consequences arise from humans living in conflict with their environment elaborated photojournalist Charlie Saceda, who came from the Philippines to the conference in Bonn. Taking into account the miserable working conditions and personal threats and dangers journalists in the Philippines are confronted with, Conflict Sensitive Journalism is hard work which, however, the journalists have taken on with dedication.

Michael Brzoska, professor at the Institute for Peace Research and Security Policy at the University of Hamburg stressed the role of climate conflicts as multiplyers for resulting conflicts with long term impact. Not only climate change but also other extreme events involving nature, such as draughts and earth quakes need to be looked at with regards to their impact and relevance for conflict reporting. Especially in such situations journalists need to show options and potential solutions.

Bernhard Lichte, journalist from the German broadcaster ZDF pointed out that his station gives high relevance to environmental stories. The Philippines are currently handled by the ZDF office in Peking. However, in the future ZDF wants to give more emphasis on conflict sensitive reporting and strengthen local perspectives in those stories.  

The German version of the article is available at
http://pecojon.de/2010/07/02/the-heat-is-on-pecojon-auf-dem-global-media-forum-2010/