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How Are You Celebrating World Radio Day 2025?

UNESCO offers up 13 ways to get involved

With World Radio Day 2025 rapidly approaching next month, organizers have shared a list of 13 ways radio stations can mark the occasion. The theme for World Radio Day this year is “Radio and Climate Change,” which focuses on “empowering radio stations to enhance their journalistic coverage of one of the most critical issues of our time,” according to UNESCO.

Proclaimed in 2011 by the member states of UNESCO, and adopted by the United Nations General Assembly in 2012, the international day is recognized each year on Feb. 13.

Thirteen ideas to boost audience engagement and spur climate action are shared in part below. Quoted text is pulled from UNESCO’s website. 

Put more emphasis on facts

“Set yourself the challenge of reflecting on and enriching your sources of information on climate change. Use the theme of World Radio Day 2025 to ask your team a few key questions: Are our sources reliable? Do they help with fact checking? Does our radio station have a sufficiently broad and relevant range of information sources?”

World Radio Day organizers offer up this list of sources to help stations collect data, evidence and information on climate change.

Review your programming strategy

“Do you really know what your journalists, assistants, technicians, researchers, digital developers, directors and others expect from you when it comes to radio coverage of climate change?”

Organizers say WRD is an opportune time to pose a survey to colleagues asking what they want to know about climate change.

Present realities from elsewhere

“Let your listeners hear about the diversities of every town, country and region. Discuss common environmental topics, regional phenomena or local issues related to climate change. The angles and topics offer an extremely rich plurality of voices and perspectives, while enhancing your networking.”

Radio stations can use the UNESCO WRD map to contact other stations interested in partnering.

Inform from an intersectional point of view

“In addition to explanations of and solutions to climate change, there are a large number of business stories, daily news items and public interest editorials that intersect with other themes.”

WRD organizers share a list of topics stations can explore to portray climate change issues including: climate change and the stock market, the ski industry or the cheese trade; technology, astronomy or legislation; public health, population displacement or elections; and antiques, films or music.

Start an “On the way to COP30” chronicle

“Let your audience know that you have already started journalistic coverage of the 30th Conference of the Parties to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (COP30), to be held in November 2025 in Brazil.”

Give the audience a say

“Do not just leave it to the ‘experts.’ Give people a voice and see how affected, concerned or worried they are about climate change.”

Organizers suggest an outdoor public broadcast to gather opinions, and advise stations to “share human stories, not just a stream of data.”

Prepare for the storm

“Media professionals are often trained to cope with war and terrorism, but not so much with climate events.”

Organizers say stations should launch their climate emergency plan on World Radio Day 2025. “It should include pre-prepared mapping of at-risk areas; contact lists of experts and authorities for various disaster scenarios; response routines; safety instructions specific to each natural disaster; and a list of improvised broadcasting ‘rooms.'”

Raise the safety awareness of environmental journalists

“Anyone covering climate change, including radio reporters, is potentially at risk as it often calls political, business and property interests into question.”

An UNESCO brief on the safety of environmental journalists provides the data to inform audiences about different threats media professionals may be exposed to, such as kidnapping, legal attacks, material damage, threats, online harassment and murder, among others.

Redouble your efforts to combat disinformation

“On World Radio Day, it is essential to recognize the power of journalists and broadcasters to expose climate disinformation, promote informed dialogue and raise environmental awareness through the production of accurate and reliable information.”

WRD organizers suggest that stations talk to climatologists and other experts about the impact of disinformation on their work and on society’s overall understanding of climate change.

Encourage your audience to listen to the radio critically

UNESCO has a new online course it says will help people acquire the skills needed to combat disinformation about climate change. The course lasts around 90 minutes, consists of four main modules and is accessible free of charge and open to all.

Strengthen staff competencies in relation to climate change issues

On Feb. 13, all staff could collectively commit to taking a training course to enhance their knowledge and skills on climate change, write WRD organizers.

Set the tone

Organizers say, “do not limit yourselves to human voices.”

“All day long, broadcast the sounds of nature in your programs. Sounds can vary from lava to wind, forest fires to floods and storms. These are all sounds that need to be heard on air to make your coverage of climate change as vivid as possible.”

A sound library from UNESCO is available to stations wanting to expand their coverage.

Green your radio

“What if you applied the theme of ‘radio and climate change’ not only to the airwaves and to other people, but also to you in your daily life at the radio? Talking about climate change without taking action does not give your radio station the same legitimacy as being an agent of change yourself.”

Organizers encourage stations to identify their main sources of pollution, and subsequently get help from WRD 2025 partner radio networks and from local climate change specialists.

[Related: “Radio Bridges Contest Connects Global Stations for Climate Action”]

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