Wazzup Pilipinas!?
Sunway University, Malaysia – A crucial two-day Capacity Development and Training Workshop dramatically sharpened the skills of Asian media professionals, plunging them into the high-stakes intersection of climate, health, and global power. Highlighting the Philippines' critical role on the climate frontline, the training featured a significant delegation of Filipino journalists, including Ross Flores Del Rosario, Founder and Editor-in-Chief of the well-known platform, Wazzup Pilipinas.
The "Planetary Health and Power" workshop, held on September 3 and 4, 2025, in Kuala Lumpur, was organized to help thirty journalists from across Asia effectively cover how health, climate, and global governance intersect. The core message was clear: the planetary health crisis is not just an environmental story—it is a brutal narrative of power, finance, and profound governance failure.
Filipino Voices Amplify the Crisis
The presence of five participants from the Philippines, a nation severely impacted by extreme weather and climate finance issues, underscored the urgency of the workshop's objectives. Ross Flores Del Rosario of Wazzup Pilipinas, alongside four other Filipino journalists, received training designed to translate complex multilateral discussions into accessible, human-centered stories.
The workshop emphasized the need to challenge the dominance of Global North perspectives, amplify local and Indigenous voices, and use accessible languages (like Tagalog or Urdu) to make climate stories resonate with regional audiences. For outlets like Wazzup Pilipinas, this focus is vital for connecting remote UN negotiations to the tangible, lived experiences of Filipino communities and addressing domestic issues like fast-spreading misinformation.
The Unseen Battle: Finance as the Defining Issue of Trust
A central discovery of the workshop was that the battleground for climate action is in the fine print of financial commitments, where finance emerged as the defining issue of trust.
The Debt Trap: Climate funds, often announced with high ambition, are frequently delayed, fragmented, or tied to conditional loans that dangerously deepen debt burdens for developing nations.
Following the Money: Journalists were urged to track financial flows and expose the disparity between what is pledged, what is disbursed, and who ultimately benefits. This is considered essential for holding both donors and recipient governments accountable.
Fossil Fuel's Shadow: The crisis is political, reflecting failures in governance, equity, and accountability. The colossal sum of USD 7 trillion in annual fossil fuel subsidies—equal to 7 percent of global GDP—was highlighted as a clear example of incoherent governance that journalism must expose.
Health: The Urgent and Powerful Narrative Bridge
Health was identified as the most potent, relatable entry point for reporting on the planetary crisis. Framing stories through the lens of health instantly connects abstract policy to lived human experience.
Connecting Crises: Extreme heat, pollution, food insecurity, and displacement all manifest as health emergencies. Journalists were encouraged to frame planetary health as an issue of justice and wellbeing, not solely environment or science.
Mental Health as a Climate Story: The emerging issues of eco-anxiety and PTSD after disasters remain under-researched, with stigma being a major barrier. Storytelling plays a key role in destigmatizing mental health, linking it to systemic inaction, and engaging professionals to raise awareness.
The Data Gap is the Story: The absence of reliable data on adaptation, mental health, and local impacts signals a form of neglect that itself warrants investigation.
The New Mandate: Scrutiny, Verification, and Accountability
The workshop's hands-on simulations reinforced a new mandate for Asian journalists, focusing on political and information integrity:
Continuous Scrutiny: COPs and summits should not be treated as one-off events, but as part of a long-term story requiring consistent scrutiny of policy implementation and financial follow-through.
Fighting Disinformation: Participants examined how to navigate misinformation and greenwashing without amplifying it. They were advised to investigate the financial and corporate influences behind false claims and to consult independent experts for verification.
Ethical Judgment: The simulation exercises, testing real-time reporting from conflicting sources (including government press releases and fossil fuel announcements), reinforced the importance of verification, critical evaluation, and avoiding the uncritical acceptance of government spin.
By deepening their understanding of how power, politics, and finance intersect with local realities, participants—including Ross Flores Del Rosario—left the workshop equipped to transform complex global processes into credible, impactful, and justice-oriented journalism.
The "Planetary Health and Power" workshop was funded by InTent and organized by the Sunway Centre for Planetary Health (SCPH), in partnership with the Global Climate and Health Alliance (GCHA), the Global Strategic Communications Council (GSCC), Healthcare Without Harm-SE Asia, and Internews.
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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