[Assam] Media needs to be social auditor

[Nava Thakuria]

http://www.sentinelassam.com/ghy_city/story.php?sec=1&subsec=0&id=38253&dtP=2010-06-07&ppr=1#38253

‘Media needs to be social auditor in anti climate change campaign’  
  
Guwahati, June 6: The Assam Chapter of the National Union of Journalists (NUJ) and Gramya Vikash Mancha (GVM) organized a State-level media workshop on “Disaster risk reduction and climate change” in a hotel here today. The workshop, which was supported by Actionaid, was organized with the objective of sensitizing mediapersons about the issues of climate change and disaster.
The workshop was attended by over 35 journalists from different parts of the State and the region as a whole. The entire initiative was supported by the European Commission.
While Dr Arabinda Mishra, director of Earth Science and Climate Change Division, Energy and Resources Institute (TERI) and dean of Faculty of Policy & Planning, TERI University, attended the workshop as the main resource person, Dr Dulal Chandra Goswami, former head of  the Department of Environmental Science of the Gauhati University, presented a paper in the workshop titled “Changing climate and we – A northeast perspective”.
Dr Mishra, while delivering the keynote address, highlighted the effects of climate change in the northeastern region and said that the governments or the policy-makers of the northeastern States must come up with State specific action plan to deal with the future situations that might arise out of climate change.
“The Northeast will have 3 to 4 degree temperature increase and that the region will have more rainfall in another 50 to 70 years. During the rainy season there is the likelihood of at least 25cm more rainfall in the region,” Mishra said while adding that these weather variations might have severe impact on various fields – agriculture, health and others.
Dr Mishra mooted the idea of having a climate centre for the Northeast in Guwahati or any other parts of the region. “The issue of climate change is not prominent in regional media. Media has a great role to play here by becoming a social auditor. Media is a strong stakeholder which has the capacity to transform knowledge into information,” he said.
Dr Goswami said that the northeast had become a place, where disasters were hitting the region one after another – while it was heavy drought sometime, it was heavy hailstorm in some other place. “Erratic behaviour of climate has been observed in the region which was never observed earlier,” he said.
Goswami called for an environment database in the State. He also stressed the need for developing an interface between high and low areas while formulating development policies.
After the panel discussion, the participants interacted with the resource persons. The workshop was conducted by Nava Thakuria, senior journalist and advisor to the Assam Chapter of the NUJ.