On March 11th, the SLYCAN Trust Youth and ClimaComms launched in partnership Climate 2.0 as a platform to connect people through sustained discourse surrounding climate change, environmental concerns, and intersectional issues. This event continues a series of sessions done in Bangladesh, Germany, and Sri Lanka. 

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As the first session in Bonn, the discussion focused on the topic of climate communications, delving into the coverage on climate-related policy processes in the media (such as COP28) and how this can be improved. The dialogue was interactive, allowing participants to share sources of information and discuss their level of credibility. Public awareness was also discussed and how public knowledge could be transformed in order to incentive action towards preparedness and capacity building. Additionally, we explored the use of multimedia for reporting climate related news, how public perception varies based on news values given and the risk of sensationalism during the coverage of these news, highlighting the importance of preserving the integrity of key messages in the news. Therefore, this open dialogue provided a platform to share insights and collaborate in a small group setting.

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KEY POINTS

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1. News associated with COP28's final agreement were repetitive, still didn’t go viral, were biassed and the viewers’ own beliefs play a role in the perception of its degree of success.
2. News related to COP28’s final agreement covered more the ambition perspective than the financial mechanisms to achieve this agreement. 
3. The general public usually is not effectively informed with enough time and transparency regarding climate policies adopted in the future, in order to participate actively in the decision making process. These could be inserted in popular newspapers as a separate sector in order to provide regular updates to people.
4. Recommended sources for public awareness in climate related topics should be entertaining in order to make it easy to “consume” by people, such as instagram accounts, songs, motivational videos and public campaigns on social media to engage into individual good practices, as well as movies and comedy series on streaming platforms. Although, documentaries and books should also be promoted more often to attain this same goal, as well as authors and artists involved in climate change communication.
5. The shock factor is usually prioritised when publishing news and science should be communicated more often, explaining the impacts and other possible consequences of climate related events (if business-as-usual remains) in a less technical language. Unfortunately, usually people understand this topic until experiencing its consequences.