Kyrgyzstan hosted the Central Asian “#ЛИВЕНЬLivingAsia – Environment&Media” Forum for representatives of the media and environmental experts from all Central Asian countries on September 18-19, according to the European Union Delegation to Tajikistan.
One of the forum objectives was reportedly to summarize the results of the Media for Improved Reporting on the Environment and Natural Resources in Central Asia Project. Another important objective was to facilitate and elaborate recommendations and proposals on further development of the environmental journalism in Central Asian countries.
Claudia Hock, Program Manager of the Delegation of the European Union to Kyrgyzstan, focused on the fact that the forum is aimed to summarize the achievements, problems and lessons learned from implementing one of the many EU initiatives in the most important areas of the environment and natural resources.
The Media for Improved Reporting on the Environment and Natural Resources in Central Asia Project is funded by the European Union and implemented by Internews from January 2016 till October 2017.
Project’s goals were to improve communication and collaboration between CSOs and media professionals from Central Asian countries through regional exchange reporting trips, thematic educational events on the environment and natural resources, and professional networking events.
In a period of 18 months of the project, more than 400 journalists and media representatives have reportedly built their capacity in covering environmental issues, 34 media advertising managers trained in the sale of environmental content, 38 projects were implemented within the scholarship program, developed and published more than 200 multimedia stories on problems and best practices in the field of the environment.
Working together with local CSOs and media companies, the project developed and deployed sustainable interactive tools and platforms including data visualizations, mapping, and ways to improve civic engagement with environmental protection issue.
An important outcome of the project was the www.livingasia.online with regularly updated content on environmental and natural resources issues in the countries of Central Asia, prepared with use of multimedia technologies and taking into account the main media trends.
The Forum joined all project partners engaged into the project activities, who presented and demonstrated environmental media projects, produced by joint efforts of experts and media, national and regional multimedia stories in the framework of media-tours and informational campaigns, which resolved the environmental issues in Central Asia.
