Has Covid-19 Distracted Attention from Climate Change in Tajikistan?
Since the outbreak of the pandemic, Tajik media is neither enhancing public awareness about climate change by making expert reports more accessible to the local population nor advocating for climate action using their platform to highlight actions that need to be taken.
By Sharanya Rajiv, Senior Analyst and Manager of Operations
Tajikistan is the most climate-vulnerable country in the Europe and Central Asia (ECA) region due to its relatively weak social and economically productive structures and low adaptive capacity. High poverty rates among rural communities of Tajikistan increase people’s vulnerability to climatic shocks and stresses, and is further compounded by food insecurity, high rates of labor migration and poor provision of services. Moreover, climate change in the country threatens the entire Central Asian region. Tajikistan’s Pamir glaciers, coupled with Kyrgyz glaciers in the Tien Shan mountain range, provide around 50% of the annual stream flow to the region’s two main rivers. Retreating glaciers due to climate change and rising temperature threatens water availability and the management of transboundary water resources in the region.
As the pandemic worsens economic and social conditions in Tajikistan and, thereby, further exacerbates its vulnerability to climate-related shocks, has Tajik media’s perception of climate change worsened, remained the same, or improved? Along with functioning as a source of information for the public, given the nature of authoritarian control and influence over the media, media sentiment is also a good indicator of shifts in government priorities. This can help us determine whether or not the pandemic has distracted Tajik policymakers’ attention from the issue of climate change.
As the pandemic worsens economic and social conditions in Tajikistan and, thereby, further exacerbates its vulnerability to climate-related shocks, has Tajik media’s perception of climate change worsened, remained the same, or improved?
Climate Change is Mentioned Less Frequently, But More Positively
As Tajik media paid greater attention to the COVID-19 pandemic, with around half of all news articles published between January and July 2020 at least referring to the coronavirus, articles that mentioned climate change as a share of all published articles declined by 26% compared to the previous year. This decline is not surprising given that the outbreak of the pandemic has posed a more immediate threat to both citizens’ lives and the economy.
However, what is more surprising is the rising positive media sentiment toward climate change. Tajik media has not only covered climate change far more positively (even in previous years) than its coverage of the pandemic in 2020, but also displayed an increase in positive sentiment toward climate change in 2020.
Media sentiment toward climate change rose from an already positive 0.88 in 2019 to a whopping 1.03, an increase of around 18%. For context, a sentiment score of over 1 on the Hillhouse Sentiment Analysis Tool indicates very positive language used in the concerned articles. Moreover, a comparison of the variations in sentiment scores in 2019 and 2020 clearly shows that, after the pandemic broke out, media sentiment toward climate change had lower troughs as well as higher peaks. In fact, in 2020, media sentiment toward climate change first peaked in February — shortly after the World Health Organization (WHO) declared that the novel coronavirus outbreak was a public health emergency of international concern on January 30, 2020. Media sentiment toward climate change peaked for a second time in April, which was preceded by the WHO declaring the novel coronavirus outbreak a global pandemic on March 11, 2020.
Local Media Overlooked Expert Analysis About the Consequences of Climate Change in 2020
Examining what kind of issues related to climate change Tajik media discussed in 2019 and 2020 can help us better understand why media sentiment toward climate change has become more positive in 2020.
In 2019, the media reports drew on four different kinds of content:
- Statements and speeches by government officials, world leaders, and other influential persons such as this article which summarized an interview with an leading Angolan woman entrepreneur on her experience attending the UN Climate Action Summit;
- Multilateral and national (government-led) climate adaptation projects such as this article that reported on an agrometeorology study tour by Tajik specialists to Italy that was organized by the UN Food and Agriculture Organization and funded by the European Union;
- Interviews with local experts and professionals to highlight what climate change will transform citizens’ daily lives such as this article that highlighted how climate change has exacerbated infectious diseases in the summer. It is worth noting that the latter content, which is a good way to get people to care about climate change, was actually least frequent; and
- Reports by global experts such as this article summarizing a UNDP report on Central Asian population’s vulnerability to climate change.
Naturally, media sentiment in 2020 was more positive because the media focused more on statements and initiatives by the Tajik government as well as multilateral organization and less on expert analysis that highlighted the dire consequences of climate change.
What Threat Does this Positive Coverage Pose?
Media coverage of climate change affects how well societies respond to the problem. Highlighting this very fact, the UNESCO launched a handbook for journalists in the Asia and Pacific region in 2019 to help them report better to inform people about what is happening and what they and their governments can do about it.
Media coverage of climate change affects how well societies respond to the problem.
Tajik media’s reduced coverage of local and global experts’ analysis on climate change poses a two-fold threat — the media is neither enhancing public awareness about the issue by making expert reports more accessible to the local population nor advocating for climate action using their platform to highlight actions that need to be taken.
To make matters worse, these trends demonstrate that, when faced with the pandemic, the Tajik media might be perceiving a reduction in the threat posed by climate change. When compared to the overall baseline sentiment of Tajik media, the coronavirus was covered just as negatively as climate change was covered positively.
This in turn poses two additional threats. Not only will this shape a more relaxed public opinion toward climate change but it might also indicate that the Tajik government might pay less attention to climate change in the coming years. Along similar lines, Timur Idrisov, a senior adviser at a Tajik environmental NGO called Little Earth, recently highlighted that in the face of the socio-economic challenges posed by the COVID-19 pandemic, Central Asian countries “have given less priority to progress on climate targets.”
Not only will this shape a more relaxed public opinion toward climate change but it might also indicate that the Tajik government might pay less attention to climate change in the coming years.
Implications
This analysis shows that the novel coronavirus pandemic has distracted attention from climate change in Tajikistan. The Tajik media’s positive coverage of climate change in 2020 coupled with its prioritization of government-led initiatives over expert analysis risks slowing down climate action in the country. Multilateral organizations and advocacy groups looking to combat climate change and double-down on mitigation and adaptation efforts must pay more attention to environmental journalism in Tajikistan and the wider Central Asian region. Training journalists to report on climate change through news stories that frame climate data in more relatable terms and focus on its impact on local communities will be an important step toward helping Tajik citizens and governments find local solutions to mitigate and adapt to climate change.
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ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Sharanya Rajiv is the manager of operations and senior analyst at Hillhouse Analytics. Her research focuses on geopolitical competition and energy politics in Eurasia. Previously, she was a senior program coordinator at the New Delhi center of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, where she conducted research on India’s strategic interests in Eurasia. Sharanya is fluent in Hindi and Tamil and speaks intermediate Russian.
ABOUT HILLHOUSE
Hillhouse Analytics specializes in data driven analysis on issues related to sustainable development, infrastructure, and energy in frontier markets, helping organizations understand today’s challenges and opportunities. We bring world-class expertise to regional challenges by combining the best of international academic and research practices with a rigorous and informed local perspective, delivering the best of both words. We achieve this through our custom-built Hillhouse Sentiment Analysis Tool that tracks opinion trends across local news media. Our tool is shortlisted for the World Bank’s Global Disruptive Tech Challenge 2021. To learn more about retaining our team for custom analysis and reports, please click here.
