Following UN Morocco Climate Meeting from Home

November 1, 2016

TipSheet: Following UN Morocco Climate Meeting from Home

As the historic Paris Agreement goes into effect this Friday, Nov. 4, the question is whether nations can up their game. That means the climate negotiating session in Marrakesh, Morocco, Nov. 7-18, 2016, will be news that many environmental journalists will want to follow.

Will the nations move toward a goal of holding global warming to 1.5 degrees C above pre-industrial levels, for example, tightening the screws from the current Paris-set 2 degree goal? Another key issue, as always: Who will pay (and who will get paid)? Also, can the agreement be implemented and enforced? And how will we be able to know?

The 22nd Conference of Parties to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change, known as COP22, will be hard enough to follow for the hundreds of reporters who will actually go there. But that doesn’t mean you can’t track developments from home.

Here are some tools to help you keep tabs:

Reuters covers climate negotiations pretty thoroughly, via reporters like Alister Doyle. Their material is here and here.
The Daily Climate aggregates a range of open-source climate news, and is pretty complete. Find it here.
ClimateWire usually does some of the very best coverage of UNFCCC negotiations, but some of it is behind a paywall. You can see the climate headlines here and the material that is publicly accessible here.
BBC News usually has good coverage from journalists like Matt McGrath or Richard Black (who now works for ECIU).
Climate Home, a UK publication edited by former BBC producer Ed King, did a good job covering the Paris meeting.

There are lots of other outlets likely to offer quality COP22 coverage for free.

Check in with the New York Times by looking here and here. Most important climate stories are covered by the prize-winning InsideClimate News. And you will find more suggestions at SEJ's Climate Change Guide and a Paris Agreement backgrounder in the Reporter’s Guide to Climate Adaptation by SEJournal Online Editor Adam Glenn.

Beyond those general-audience news outlets, there are some more wonky and technical sources:

Earth Negotiations Bulletin, published by the International Institute for Sustainable Development, publishes daily.
The Marrakech Conference Information Hub from the UNFCCC will carry official news.
The Newsroom of the UNFCCC itself will carry official announcements and documents.
The COP 22 conference site also offers a wealth of information about agenda, events, logistics and accreditation, and is available in multiple languages.

For the U.S. perspective on COP 22, the State Department offers additional information sources:

The Main State Department site may be the U.S. Center at COP-22, an interactive streaming video service.
Also important will be the State Department's general media page.

* From the weekly news magazine SEJournal Online, Vol. 1, No. 1. Content from each new issue of SEJournal Online is available to the public via the SEJournal Online main page. Subscribe to the e-newsletter here. And see past issues of the SEJournal archived here.

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