Conservation, Climate Change and a Clash of World Narratives

On Monday, December 4, 2017, Pulitzer Center journalist grantee Stephanie Hanes and student fellow Elham Shabahat speak during a lunch-time program on conversation and climate change in Africa as part of the Campus Consortium fall visit to the Yale School of Forestry & Environmental Studies. Dr. Anthony Leiserowitz, senior research scientist at FES and director of the Yale Program for Climate Change Communication moderates the Q&A.

In setting up the conversation, Yale FES noted, "Over the past decade, environmental practitioners have increasingly recognized the importance of communicating their research, expertise and goals to lay audiences.  But in many areas, particularly in the world's most vulnerable regions, these efforts have done little to change behavior."

Hanes speaks to the idea of a "clash of world narratives that leads to lackluster results at best, and at worst results in exacerbated violence to the land and those who live on it."

After her talk, Shabahat, presents her reporting on how climate change is reshaping relations between people, parks and the mountain gorilla in Rwanda. Shabahat is a 2017 Campus Consortium fellow - Yale's first  reporting fellow via the partnership between Pulitzer Center and the Yale Program for Climate Change Communication.

Hanes, a five-time Pulitzer Center grantee and graduate of Yale, is an award-winning journalist whose stories have appeared in The Washington Post, USA Today, The Baltimore Sun, Smithsonian, and PBS NewsHour. Her projects focus on the cultural aspects of human conflict and environmental change. Her first book, White Man's Game: Saving Animals, Rebuilding Eden and Other Myths of Conservation in Africa, came out in 2017. She teaches the Sharp Journalism Seminar in conjunction with the Pulitzer Center at the College of William and Mary, another partner of the Campus Consortium network.

Shabahat is a second-year Master's student at FES studying conservation, environmental justice, and climate change adaptation. She has also conducted research on the Domestic Violence Act in New Delhi, India, and xenophobia and immigration policy in South Africa. Previously, she worked in communications at the United Nations and the World Bank. 

The event is free and open to the public. Lunch provided.