Article and Image courtesy: d-sector.org
Author: Ashirbad S Raha
Ashirbad S Raha spends a day with experts and journalist in a workshop to discover that it is time now for issues related to environment to make it to the headlines. And it's not because Climate Change is the buzz word these days but also because of the intrinsic linkages that environmental issues have with our everyday activities starting from the water we drink, clothes we wear to the air we breathe.
Journalists during one of the sessions.
Photo courtesy: UNEP
Environment Journalism is still waiting for its cake in the national media space in India. At a time when the country struggles to balance its developmental aspirations with sustainable environmental management and continues to be one of the most vulnerable spots on the global map fighting the changing dimension of climatic conditions, perhaps time has come for environmental issues to capture the imagination as cricket, crime, bollywood and politics do in India. A workshop organized jointly by the Ministry of Environment and Forests and UNEP in New Delhi precisely talked about this and highlighted the importance of media in green reporting.
Titled as “United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) Workshop on Journalism and the Environment: Reporting Green”, it was led by top environmental experts and policy leaders, focusing on the role of forests in combating climate change, conserving biodiversity and catalyzing social and economic development. Aimed at providing journalists with in-depth knowledge and access to information about pressing environmental issues, the workshop had more than 54 journalists, 48 from India and eight from different South Asian countries brainstorming on environmental threats and challenges.
Explaining the objective of the workshop, Shereen Zorba, Head, Newsdesk, Division of Communication and Public Information, UNEP said, “the idea behind bringing all the experts, leaders from business and government and journalists under one roof is to mainstream environmental issues into everyday reporting and at the same time build communities in practise. And as these happen, the increased information exchange and flow is bound to create that push required for green reporting to become a regular feature of the national media”. Since 2010, over 230 journalists from 38 countries have participated in UNEP's Reporting Green programme, which have previously conducted similar workshops in Bali and Nairobi.