Headaches at the Copenhagen climate change summit
This week - like plenty of other World Service programmes - one of our topics is the conference - although as you would expect, our special interest is in worldwide media coverage of this important event.
But the news story threatened to derail our plans. We'd arranged for Rajan to talk to Tanim Ahmed, the Assistant Editor of the Bangladeshi newspaper, , and he kindly said he would go to the Â鶹Éç's studio in the conference centre.
We were surprised when he didn't turn up at the appointed time - and not a little concerned about the potential gap this might leave in the programme.
Riot Policeman stop activists during a protest in Copenhagen on December 16, 2009. Credit: Getty Images.
When I managed to make contact with him he'd been waiting - in the snow - for over an hour to get into the conference centre. The large demonstration that was taking place that day - and made headline news - meant that no one could get in or out.
Eventually he made it to the studio, to give Rajan an idea of how the climate change discussions were being reported in Bangladesh - a country where the effects of global warming are already keenly felt.
In the course of the interview he made the point that the problems facing Bangladesh are more of a story elsewhere than in Bangladesh.
"People living in Bangladesh face climate change every day", he told Rajan in the interview. "So to them, they hadn't realised that it was that big a news story for the rest of the world that the monsoon was not coming when it was supposed to."
By contrast, making contact with Matt Frei, the presenter of Americana, was easy.
He responded to a comment from a listener, Ulric Schollaert from Brussels, Belgium, who feels that Americana shouldn't be covering the same American stories as other programmes - and he also talked about the challenges of being a non-American, presenting the United States to an audience which is, in parts, American.
Another listener, Ibrahim Umar Abdulkarin, contacted Over To You from Nigeria to ask whether it might be a good idea for the World Service to broadcast a programme for the disabled.
I phoned him to find out more, and he told me that he's blind, and so has a special interest in the topic. He felt that the type of programme he was suggesting would be useful for those who are disabled - and also for those who aren't but whose preconceptions might be challenged if they knew more about the subject.
Rajan discussed this with Peter White, the Â鶹Éç's disability affairs correspondent, who has some interesting - and not entirely predictable - views on the matter, as you can hear in this week's programme.
But you may not agree with Peter - or Ibrahim. It would be interesting to know what you think.
Cathy Packe is the producer of Over To You.
Over
To You is your chance to have your say about the Â鶹Éç World Service and
its programmes. It airs at 10:40 and 23:40 every Saturday, and atÌý02:40 on Sunday (GMT).Ìý
- Listen to previous episodes ofÌýOver To You
- Subscribe to the podcast
- Send the team your feedback by email (overtoyou@bbc.co.uk), telephone (44 144 960 9000), SMS (447786 202006) or by leaving comments on this blog.
Comment number 1.
At 19th Dec 2009, voice_germany wrote:According to the principle of sustainable development it would have been the task of the two main polluters - China and the US - to come to an agreement. We do have not only a rough economic climate, we do have a real rogh climate. The first recognition is more important for the US as they have an unemployment rate of 17 % according to European unempolyment statistics. National interests are more important to the US Congress. The US fears the upcoming economic strength of India and China.
In the US and the UK there is no strong lobby of environmentalists. In Germany for example, the "Green party" achieves about 10% at general elections.
China doesn´t want to allow international authorities to controll their emissions for political reasons, only in a very low scale.
On this background there is no breakthrough at the Copenhagen Summit! But it can be said that the costs the for the environmental damage is growing more and more!
Complain about this comment (Comment number 1)