Climate Airwaves: Community Radio, Action Research and Advocacy for Climate Justice in Ghana

This 18-page journal article discusses lessons learned from Climate Airwaves, an initiative working to develop new approaches for supporting community radio broadcasters to investigate, communicate, and engage in broader debates on the impacts of climate change on vulnerable communities in Ghana. According to the article, lessons learned have highlighted the challenges of addressing complexity and uncertainty appropriately, the importance of framing climate change in the context of rights and responsibilities, the role of sustainable partnership models, and how this work can contribute to broadcasters' and communities' longer-term visions of change.

Launched in June 2010, the Climate Airwaves initiative is a pilot project designed to pilot and validate a methodology for strengthening community radio capacity to draw upon technology and intermediary networks to engage in action research and advocacy. According to the paper, community radio can and should be an active participant in action research on climate change adaptation within communities. Its abilities to convene community representatives, ensure democratic representation within the community, keep communities appraised of work being conducted, and collect local testimonies are all important principles of action research which are often overlooked in conventional research. The three stations participating in the project are Radio Ada, Radio Afram Plains, and Radio Tongu, which all lie on the Volta River in Ghana.

Through capacity building workshops paired with field visits to communities affected by climate-related impacts, participants report having a much more concrete understanding of the challenges that climate change may present to their communities. Capacity building which has emphasised both the social and physical dimensions of vulnerability has helped them to identify those populations who would most likely be at risk within their own communities, and to consider how these new vulnerabilities intersect with existing vulnerabilities they are already working to address through their broadcasting, such as health, sanitation, women's rights, and social or political marginalisation. This points to the strength of many community radio broadcasters as partners in action research, as they are able to quickly re-frame new issues within the contexts of the local communities for whom they are advocates.

According to the article, another significant outcome of work thus far has been progress made in developing appropriate language and analogies to explain key climate-related concepts in local languages. Research conducted by the BBC World Service Trust noted that there is no local-language equivalent for the term climate change in Ghana, and that the technical and political discourses of climate change are virtually inaccessible to those who are most at risk. A key area of focus has been the development and testing of a glossary of climate-related terminology into the three languages used by the participating stations. Terms and concepts such as adaptation, vulnerability, greenhouse gas, and resilience were described in local languages with accompanying analogies, and participants developed strategies for discussing these concepts with differently-situated community members, such as village elders or district representatives.

The article further notes that there are already concrete outcomes beginning to emerge from the process at the level of the communities themselves. Among the more marked outcomes to date has been the initiation of new dialogue between community members from Azizanya (Ada), local and traditional authorities from the area, and neighboring communities facing similar challenges. Azizanya is a community facing rapid coastal erosion and a tense related conflict over land tenure rights between fishing communities and authorities looking to develop coastal land for tourism. Broadcasters report that the community durbar helped to renew an open (and broadened) dialogue on these issues, which have been the source of significant conflict and secrecy to date. In Afram Plains, the durbar organised by broadcasters brought district authorities into direct contact with island-dwelling communities for the first time outside of an election drive.

On the other hand, the article outlines that while the pilot research has produced some early outcomes, it has also been useful in revealing some key challenges and lessons to be learned from the initiative. A first such difficulty is the challenge of maintaining coherence in a complex, multi-stage process amid competing priorities. In the context of a capacity building initiative, this can sometimes mean that certain individuals are involved in some elements of the work, but may then miss other key steps. Closely related to this first challenge is a second on the delivery of capacity support. One area for improvement in this approach which was noted by broadcasters was the need for capacity support to be maintained throughout the entire process, as opposed to having it emphasised at the outset. The importance of support in validating findings, designing broadcasts, and conducting community forums was noted, particularly as stations are using this approach for the first time.

The complexity of the climate change issue has generally led either to limited coverage of the climate change agenda, or to the use of scripted kits developed outside of the community, which are then customised for local language and context. Initiatives seeking to help broadcasters produce their own reporting on local dimensions of climate change must invest heavily in ongoing capacity development and partnerships that can support these efforts. The time and resources needed for this type of investment present a significant challenge for stations that are largely run by volunteers, have limited financial resources to draw upon, and are often expected to cover the full breadth of issues relevant to community well-being, including health, governance, and other environmental concerns.

While broadcasting that is uniquely designed to raise awareness of current and anticipated impacts of climate change and promote behavioural change is already used through community radio, the action research findings suggest that these broadcasts tend to provide insufficient engagement with broadcasters or stations themselves, seeing them largely as conduits for transmitting messages produced elsewhere. This not only undervalues the broadcasters' agency and the contributions they can make, but it also risks compounding the confusion they experience in relaying the latest trends that science and policy actors wish to see passed on, potentially leading to the spread of misinformation. The article argues that broadcasters will serve as better intermediaries with local communities if they are actively engaged in processes of inquiry, interpretation, translation, and transmission of information and messages.