PRISA: committed to the fight against climate change

Throughout 2015, PRISA has sought to play an active role in environmental protection and has supported a range of initiatives to raise awareness and mobilize society to better tackle the challenges posed by climate change, the most serious issue that contemporary society faces.

As a media and education group, we take our responsibilities seriously, not merely in how we manage our businesses, but also by putting our power to lead public opinion and spread knowledge at the service of the global community. In this way, and through our content and operations, we mobilize society and give a voice to all those who champion concrete actions against climate change.

For the seventh consecutive year, the Group participated in the WWF’s Earth Hour, the world’s largest global mass movement for environmental protection, and we have lent our support to the campaign #NiUnGradoMás (Not One Degree More), asking governments to make a firm commitment to renewable energies. PRISA joined the initiative  Un Millón de Compromisos por el Clima (One Million Commitments on Climate Change), promoted by the Ministry of Agriculture, Food and Environment, and ECODES. The collected commitments were presented by Spain as a contribution to the Conference on Climate Change (COP21) in Paris. The group has also fostered a range of debates on the subject, including the inaugural session of the 10th Hay Festival Segovia, organized by the newspaper El País, in which numerous experts participated; and the forum ES+debate where, in collaboration with the Spanish Global Compact Network, two debates were organized: SDG, What Now?, on the renewal of the Millennium Development Goals, and COP21: ¿La transformación ya está en marcha? (COP21: Is transformation underway?) to analyze the conclusions of the conference.

The newspaper El País, all too aware of the urgency of addressing and incorporating these issues into all media, spearheaded, in May 2015, the Climate Publishers Network (CPN), involving 25 other newspapers from around the world. This pioneering initiative scrapped licensing fees for climate change content so that members of the alliance could freely republish articles  and improve information on this issue ahead of the Climate Change Conference COP21 in Paris. 

Meanwhile, Cinco Días participated in the publication of the special supplement Climate Change, in collaboration with a network of business and finance newspapers from around the world. And throughout the year, it publishes the monthly supplement Entorno covering a wide range of environmental issues. The paper also organized a series of events with experts in the field to analyze the role of companies in integrating environmental policies.

Over the summer, Cadena SER broadcast a series of four special programs, entitled Climate Change, kicking off with an exclusive interview with Wallace S. Broecker, the scientist who first alerted the world to climate change and global warming. An interest in environmental issues has informed the radio network’s programming for many years, with programs like El Viajero Cuántico; the recycling slot R al cubo: Reduce, Reutiliza, Recicla, in collaboration with Ecoembes; and the weekly Visión semanal. All take a look at the world from a perspective of environmental initiatives, energy policies, etc.

Santillana also develops content and materials to enable students from an early age to better understand the value of sustainability and to raise their awareness on climate issues and the misuse of available resources.