Ugandan journalists who specialise in reporting on environment and science tell me there's growing public demand for stories about climate change, but they still come low down the newsroom pecking order compared with the political and business beats.

Environmental issues shot up the media agenda in Uganda last year when protests erupted over plans to give thousands of acres of the Mabira rainforest to an Asian-owned sugar company. The proposal was put on hold after three people died in the demonstrations, but as a recent interview in Uganda's Weekly Observer suggests, there are concerns it could be resurrected.

A few weeks ago, Oxfam researcher John Magrath was in Kampala to launch a report on climate change and poverty in Uganda, where he found that the Mabira controversy is still pretty hot. The deputy prime minister, who attended the Oxfam event, got a grilling about the issue from the 25 or so journalists in the room. "They feel there's enough popular anger and concern about this, and they have a duty to keep it going," says Magrath.

Mabira seems to have done for Uganda what Al Gore's film, "An Inconvenient Truth", did for North America in terms of awakening public awareness on climate change.

Magrath was impressed by the high level of interest in the Oxfam climate change report, which got wall-to-wall coverage on radio and TV channels and significant column inches in national newspapers, including New Vision.

"Journalists said this report confirms our perceptions that climate change is happening, and helps establish it as a fact," explains Magrath. "They were interested in what people can do here and now on the ground to adapt. They also said anything can happen when African governments have a problem and don't care enough about human rights. They were probing issues about how money for adaptation is going to be spent properly."

Uganda is an example of a country where the media is getting its act together on climate change. But that's mainly thanks to the determination of a small group of journalists who take a personal interest in the issue and have tried to access international opportunities for training and education.

One of the key figures is Patrick Luganda, a veteran journalist who has covered agriculture for years and founded the Network of Climate Journalists of the Greater Horn of Africa, which recently launched a new website.

Still, Kampala-based journalists have told me many editors don't understand the importance of climate change coverage, and it's a struggle to get their stories on the front pages. Better access to training and resources would improve their reporting, and help them fight their corner in the newsroom, they say.

James Fahn, executive director of the Internews Earth Journalism Network, argues in a recent opinion piece on SciDev.Net that journalists and media organisations in the developing world who want to cover climate change deserve more support - from research organisations, climate-related agencies and particularly aid agencies - multilateral, bilateral and private.

"Donors who fund climate change work usually treat media and communications support as an afterthought. But the research and action plans they fund will have limited effect if they are not communicated to the public and policymakers," Fahn writes.

This chimes with my own experience. Britain's Department for International Development has plans in the pipeline to set up an international climate change network to provide research and advisory services. But when I asked a senior official what role they envisioned for the media, he told me they hadn't really thought about it. Hopefully they have now.

So what's out there for journalists with limited resources who want to sharpen up their climate change reporting?

RESOURCES AND TRAINING

At AlertNet, we've tried to untangle some of the challenges involved in covering the humanitarian impact of climate change in our new online training module. It gives an overview of some of the potential pitfalls and highlights some interesting story angles. It's about 45 minutes long, and will hopefully get you thinking on the right lines, even if it doesn't answer all your questions. And, of course, it's free.

The Thomson Reuters Foundation also runs training courses for working journalists on reporting climate change and disasters. We provide bursaries for journalists from developing countries to attend. You can find information about upcoming courses and how to apply on the Foundation website.

Canada's International Development Research Center (IDRC) and the Brighton-based Institute of Development Studies (IDS) are working on a three-year project to support communication and networking on climate change adaptation in Africa, in which they plan to involve media. The initiative will explore how the livelihoods of vulnerable people can be improved by sharing knowledge between research partners, policy makers, civil society organisations and vulnerable groups themselves.

The London-based International Institute of Environment and Development (IIED), independent news agency Panos and Internews run a scheme that brings journalists from Africa, Asia, the Caribbean and Latin America to the annual meetings of the U.N. Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC), and gives them training and support. In the U.N. climate change conference in Bali, Indonesia, last year - where the scheme ran for the first time - the 40 or so journalists sponsored by the Climate Change Media Partnership produced over 600 media reports during the meeting. As IIED's Mike Shanahan points out, this allowed millions of people in their home countries to receive locally relevant information about what was going on, instead of having to rely on recycled reports from Western news agencies. And the participants have continued to file stories on climate change.

In Asia, the All India Disaster Mitigation Institute (AIDMI) is setting up a civil society and media network involving Commonwealth countries in the region. It aims to feed stories on key climate change issues being debated at global level to local groups, and to relay their concerns to international decision makers.

While this isn't an exhaustive list of everything that's out there, it points to a growing recognition that developing country media need to be included in efforts to understand and cope with the consequences of climate change.

Yet, as James Fahn argues on SciDev.Net, there's a long way to go. At a climate change workshop earlier this year in Vietnam's Mekong Delta, most local journalists admitted to knowing almost nothing about the issue, he writes. And he cites a study of coverage in major Vietnamese papers in late 2007, showing that only a couple of stories were published on climate change each month, and these were pretty dry.

On the bright side, Oxfam is planning to release a Vietnamese report next month similar to its Ugandan briefing. Perhaps that will help shake things up a bit.

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