IPS and partners are celebrating International Biodiversity Day, May 22nd, with the launch in Rome of biodiversity reporting guidelines for journalists covering this vital but complex topic. The guidelines are part of a wider communication initiative for 2010, the International Year of Biodiversity. IPS worked with partners Bioversity International and the International Federation of Environment Journalists (IFEJ) on the guidelines, within the COM+ sustainable development communication alliance.
The 30-page publication was authored by Pankaj Sekhsaria and is available in English and Spanish. The main section provides context, definition, linkages and story ideas for journalists, supplemented by a calendar of biodiversity-related events and a list of international conventions and agreements. Mario Lubetkin, the Director General of IPS launched the guidelines during the “Settimana della Biodiversita”, a week-long celebration of agriculture, food and biodiversity organised in Rome by Bioversity International.
Throughout 2010 IPS is giving special emphasis to reporting on biodiversity and you can see all the coverage at One Planet - 1.4 million species. Recent popular stories include Ecosystem in Peril after Gulf Oil Spill, a series of stories from Namibia about the efforts of the San people to keep their land and harvest wild produce sustainably, and a story from Tokyo Prized Bluefin Tuna Adrift in a Sea of Conflicting Interests.
As part of this coverage, IPS will have a small team of reporters reporting from Nagoya, Japan in October 2010 for the tenth meeting of the Convention on Biological Diversity, the major international agreement to protect biodiversity, that came out of the 1992 Earth Summit.
Download available:
Putting life on the front page - Bioversity Reporting Guidelines (English)
La vida en la portada - Guia Para Reportear Sobre Biodiversidad (Spanish)
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