Wazzup Pilipinas!?
It was meant to be another briefing — slides, speeches, nods of agreement. But midway through the session, frustration boiled over.
“Wake up, speak up, ask us exactly what you need,” one facilitator urged the room of journalists. The silence was deafening, not because the participants had nothing to say, but because they were carrying questions too big to be neatly answered.
And when they did speak, the floodgates opened.
The Missing Links Between Climate and Health
One journalist stood up with a plea: “I see a very low awareness of the climate crisis among health professionals. I struggle to find doctors or medical researchers who can even respond to questions about extreme heat and its impact on health.”
The challenge was clear. While research exists in some corners of the globe, vast gaps remain, particularly in Asia. Alzheimer’s, reproductive health, fertility rates, brain health — all are being quietly reshaped by rising temperatures, yet hardly anyone is connecting the dots.
Japan, for instance, wrestles with a plummeting fertility rate, but how much of that ties back to climate stressors remains unstudied. Across Southeast Asia, children displaced by typhoons and floods are growing up with invisible scars of climate anxiety, but their stories remain anecdotal, undocumented, and uncounted.
Mental Health: The Silent Emergency
Perhaps the most emotional interventions came when journalists touched on the link between climate change and mental health.
“How are these disasters shaping children’s psychology?” asked one reporter. Another followed: “I want to explore climate anxiety — but finding experts is nearly impossible. Mental health data is rarely categorized as ‘climate-related.’”
The dilemma is brutal: people are suffering, yet the science and data lag behind. Clinics record anxiety and PTSD, but no doctor writes “climate” on the diagnosis. Without that categorization, the numbers don’t exist — and what doesn’t exist, policymakers ignore.
Still, the stories are real. A Philippine journalist recalled covering survivors of Super Typhoon Haiyan, whose panic resurfaces whenever storms threaten again. A South Asian father spoke of buying mosquito repellent for his daughter for the first time, after insects climbed to altitudes they’d never reached before. These lived anxieties aren’t waiting for peer-reviewed journals; they are already here.
The Data Desert
Reporters also vented about a persistent roadblock: lack of localized data.
“I’d love to do a story on heat-related deaths in Nepal,” one journalist admitted, “but there’s no data. It’s like trying to write about a ghost.”
The response from experts was blunt: “Then make the absence of data the story. Push governments to track what they are ignoring. Anecdotal evidence is not worthless — it is the seed that pressures institutions to start measuring.”
It was a reminder that journalism is not just about relaying facts, but also about forcing accountability where silence reigns.
The Tariffs Question
Amid the emotional weight of climate-health intersections, another thread tugged at the room: trade. Questions circled around the EU’s Carbon Border Adjustment Mechanism (CBAM) — a set of tariffs targeting carbon-intensive industries like cement, steel, and aluminum.
Would these tariffs cripple export-oriented economies in Asia? Could they push industries to cleaner practices, or would they simply punish developing nations already reeling from climate damages?
India, one expert explained, opposes the unilateral imposition of CBAM, seeing it as a sovereignty issue. But the negotiations remain unresolved, underscoring how climate change is not just about storms and droughts, but also about markets, geopolitics, and livelihoods.
The Struggle for Impactful Storytelling
Perhaps the hardest question came last: “When we tell these stories, what should the call to action be?”
It was asked by a journalist reporting on sex workers in coastal communities, whose mental health is deteriorating as climate impacts strip away livelihoods. Her interviews were heartbreaking, but she worried the story would end in despair.
The advice was pointed: don’t just end with statistics or sorrow. Connect with civil society groups, amplify community voices, and frame demands in ways policymakers cannot ignore. Journalism, after all, is not just about describing suffering — it is about provoking response.
A New Kind of Journalism
By the end of the session, the room was no longer silent. It was buzzing with urgency, with a realization that climate reporting must break old molds.
It’s no longer enough to write about floods, fires, or rising seas. Journalists must expose how climate change is infiltrating hospitals, homes, and even the minds of children. They must document the invisible costs — the anxiety, the infertility, the untreated trauma — and insist these be counted, studied, and addressed.
The conclusion was sobering but empowering: lack of data is not a dead end. It is an invitation. An invitation for journalists to push harder, to turn anecdotes into evidence, and to make silence impossible.
As one speaker said, almost as a rallying cry:
“Our job is to keep the public best informed so that they can make the best decisions for their own interests. Lack of data? That itself is the story. And it’s up to us to tell it.”
Ross is known as the Pambansang Blogger ng Pilipinas - An Information and Communication Technology (ICT) Professional by profession and a Social Media Evangelist by heart.
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