Last December 10, 2021, the Oscar M. Lopez Center, in partnership with The Climate Reality Project Philippines (Climate Reality PH) and the Asia Society Philippines, held a multi-stakeholder forum to put the spotlight on some of the climate stories of the Center’s Umalohokan Fellows.  More importantly, the forum aimed to engage key actors and stakeholders who can play a critical role in taking action. 

Through a roundtable discussion, the forum invited a panel of reactors to help expand the discussions on the challenges of, and opportunities to, taking action related to each featured story.  This served as a jump off point for the solutions brainstorming that followed, where a breakout session was organized around each story and with the active participation of the forum participants.

Led and moderated by the various thematic clusters of Climate Reality PH, the breakout sessions yielded a rich array of insights and ideas on how the issues featured in the climate stories could be taken a step further.  The main discussion points of each cluster have been summarized in a synthesis report.  

When taken together, the breakout sessions also provide valuable insights as a whole towards climate reporting and action. Many of the climate issues continue to highlight pervading development concerns such as climate impacts to livelihood, food security and communities at large. Sadly, limited knowledge and capacity in understanding climate information and putting it to good use remain a challenge to many of the issues.  Surprisingly, most if not all of the breakout sessions saw networking and collaboration as an important element to solving issues, as if a recognition that climate action is no one person’s responsibility, but everyone’s. Multi-stakeholder forums, in this sense, could play a vital role in providing spaces for various actors and stakeholders to come together where trust and shared mission can help guarantee open and honest dialogue where each one is accountable.

Lastly, the forum was able to highlight the role that communicators play in making the voices of the underreported heard, and in pushing the conversations closer to action. An important insight was ensuring that communicators allow communities to speak for themselves, not just on their behalf.

For those who participated in the forum, the full synthesis report on the breakout sessions can be found here. The feedback form can also be found here for participants still interested in receiving e-certificates.

Read “Multi-stakeholder forum looks into how climate storytelling and reporting could help bring about community action” for more details on the program. The plenary session, team presentations and panel insights are available for viewing on the OML Center YouTube channel.

If you would like to know more about these stories, or would like to organize a multi-stakeholder forum, please visit the Balangay Media Project page or email the Oscar M. Lopez Center at [email protected] or [email protected].