The Mexican government and U.S.-based Pew Center on Global Climate Change hosted the Climate Change Communication Forum in Playa del Carmen on Friday to address that mainstream media play in bolstering public support for climate initiatives. Juan Rafael Elvira Quesada, Mexico's Secretary of Environment and Natural Resources and Pew Center president Eileen Claussen gave the opening address. Throughout the series of panel discussions, key speakers included British policy adviser Simon Anholt and Rajendra K. Pachauri, director of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), along with Nobel Prize-winning Mexican chemist Mario Molina and José Sarukhán, former Dean of the National Autonomous University of Mexico (UNAM). Patricia Espinosa Cantellano, Mexico's Foreign Affairs Secretary, closed the communications forum.

Playa del Carmen, Mexico. - According to a survey conducted by the government of Mexico and the Pew Center released in the panel Public opinion against expert opinion of the Forum on Climate Change Communication, most of the attendants at the COP16 believe that the actions around the world to fight Climate Change will not happen if they do not have a genuine public support.

"The costs of climate change will be larger than the efforts to stop it," said Mario Molina, Nobel Laureate in Chemistry, in the Communicating the Science panel of Forum on Climate Change Communication organized by the Ministry of Foreign Affairs (SRE) in Mexico and The Pew Center on Global Climate Change.

Panelists discussed the importance of the messages issued in the media at the Forum on Climate Change Communication. Media specialists and journalists discussed the role of media in transmitting the message on Climate Change to different audiences. The panelists agreed that the media have all sorts of liabilities and the growth of new electronic media (internet, blog and social networks) have created the birth of a new generation, not the replacement of one, with responsibilities for a long coexistence.

"It is important for the negotiations on the sixteenth editions of the Conference of the Parts (COP16) to be transparent and responsible," said Christiana Figueres Olsen, Executive Secretary for the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC), at a press conference this morning in the Moon Palace venue.

"Our priorities in mitigation are basically two: energy efficiency and forests ecosystems," said Fernando Tudela, Undersecretary of Environment of Mexico, during the presentation of the results of the Special Climate Change Program, (PECC in Spanish), at the Mexican Pavillion, in the Cancunmesse venue.

Mexican cities must focus their growth in unused spaces to reduce greenhouse effect gas emissions, stated Juan Carlos Zentella Gómez, Deputy General Director for Land Planning of Mexico's Ministry of Social Development (SEDESOL). "There is a very important relation between the model of the city, compact in this case, and carbon emissions", he explained during the conference Towards sustainable and safe cities in the Mexican Pavillion at Cancunmesse, one of the venues of the 16th Conference of the Parties (COP16).

Carlos Campos Quezada, National Coordinator of Biodiesel Campaign and winner of Initiative Mexico, was in the Green Forum on Climate Change Village to share the experience he has had with children from different elementary schools in Quintana Roo.

Dr. Rajendra Pachauri, Nobel Peace Prize 2007 and director of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) was the Guest of the Day at the Climate Change Village, within the activities at the Conference of the Parties (COP16).

Keywords
cop16, cmp6, SEMARNAT, climate change, cancún