How do people in Asia live with climate change now? How will its impacts shape their future, and how will they, in turn, shape their environment? What are the most effective ways to support people to adapt to climate change and how best can the media, governments, organisations and businesses communicate with them?

These are the questions behind Climate Asia, the world’s largest study of people’s everyday experience of climate change in seven Asian countries – Bangladesh, China, India, Indonesia, Nepal, Pakistan and Vietnam. The project surveyed 33,500 people across the seven countries. Using audience segmentation, BBC Media Action grouped people into five groups – ‘the surviving’, ‘the struggling’, ‘the adapting’, the willing’ and the ‘unaffected’.

This evidence-based, beneficiary-centred approach has enabled us to support people in project planning by identifying different target audiences for work, understanding their specific communication needs and designing communications to target them. It has already been successfully applied to creating a reality television programme showcasing community based adaptation in Bangladesh, to supporting a youth programme on state television in Vietnam, capacity strengthening a local broadcaster to create alternative livelihoods programming in Indonesia and to helping devise radio content directed at rural female farmers in Nepal. The Climate Asia team has also generated concept notes and business development opportunities for a water-related output in India, a major resilience output in Nepal, and Disaster Risk Reduction research led by the American Red Cross in Indonesia.

All the data and reports can be found at www.bbc.co.uk/climateasia

Sonia Whitehead has 16 years research experience across commercial and social sectors. She has worked at the Research and Learning Group at Media Action for 9 years where most recently she has been Global Research Lead. This group conduct research across Africa, Asia, Middle East and Europe to inform the production of programmes and evaluate their effectiveness. During this time she has managed, developed and trained researchers based in Asia, Africa, the Middle East and UK and conducted innovative quantitative and qualitative research in challenging environments. In her current role, she oversees research across Africa, Asia Middle East and Europe, is the business development contact for Research and Learning and communicates insights to the organisation to inform business development and project strategy. Previously, she managed the research of a seven country research and communications project on climate change in Asia. She has also managed research projects across Africa and Asia including spending two years as a Research Manager in Bangladesh where she managed research to inform development of a multiplatform project ‘English in Action’ in Bangladesh, including mobile phone products (audio English lessons) and a Bangla English teaching website, research for BTV, the state broadcaster and research to evaluate the impact of the debate show Bangladesh Sanglap.

Prior to working at BBC Media Action she worked in TNS, India for two years doing ad tracking and audience segmentation for companies such as Nestle, Motorola and Dabur and five years at FDS Internationl in the UK doing research across social and commercial sectors.

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