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Environment Reporting tion of China Environment News, which was targeted at foreign readers, went out of business in 1998 since it lacked this governmental advantage in the foreign market. The English edition was cofunded by UNEP and SEPA in the late 1980’s, but UNEP stopped funding it. The paper had few paid subscribers and focused instead on selected foreign and domestic environmental organizations, sending them copies free of charge. After several years of losing money, China Environment News stopped publishing it. As a developing country, however, environmental reporting in China suffers from financial strains. Because its main clients for advertising are environmental companies, and these companies don’t earn a lot of money, this revenue hasn’t been very high. This means that news agencies specializing in environmental reporting have few resources to do much investigative reporting or to send reporters to cover distant news events, especially when these events occur abroad. When the Kyoto climate conference was held in 1997, only Xinhua News Agency sent a reporter to the conference. Originally, China Environment News didn’t have an interview plan. I applied for funding from a European environmental nongovernmental organization to participate in the conference as its member. In this way, I was able to cover the Kyoto conference for China Environment News. The Urgency of China’s Environmental Cause China is the largest developing country Chinese environmental publications. Photo by Deng Jia. in the world, yet its per capita forest and water resources are far below the world average level. China cannot afford to further degrade the quality of its resource base. It must find ways to balance economic development with environmental protection. In recent years, several large events have given the cause of China’s environmental protection new impetus. In the summer of 1998, a rarely seen flood hit the upper and middle reaches of the Yangtze River. The flood, aggravated by the problem of logging trees in the upper Yangtze River, caused serious economic damage and loss of human lives. Due to degradation of the ecological environment in nearby Hebei province, dust storms have occurred frequently in Beijing in recent years. Such problems have aroused the concern of the general public and the Chinese government. To cope with environmental problems, the Chinese government has adopted measures to ban lumbering in natural forests on the upper reaches of the Yangtze River. And because China has been selected as the host country of the 2008 Olympic games, it must meet the Olympics’ environmental requirements. To do this, Beijing is taking actions to improve its air quality. As a responsible government, in the recent Earth Summit, Chinese Premier Zhu Rongji also announced that the Chinese government ratified the Kyoto protocol. As the Chinese government pays more attention to the environmental cause and the general public shows more concern about environmental problems, China’s environmental media are presented with a very good opportunity, and it is likely that more resources will be allocated to environmental reporting. Since the start of 2002, China Environment News has increased its publication from four to six issues per week and changed its name to China Environment Daily. China needs the media to advocate for the importance of environmental conservation, and the environmental media should continue to play an important part in this endeavor, as they have in the past. There is a long way to go, and the environmental media still face challenges, but the future for this kind of reporting seems more promising than it ever has before. ■ Sun Yu, the 1999 environmental Nieman Fellow, is an editor of Fortune China magazine (the Chinese edition of Fortune). She was reporter and editor of the Chinese and English editions of China Environment News for 12 years and was awarded the 1998 United Nations Correspondents Association bronze prize for her coverage of the Kyoto climate conference. sunyu65@yahoo.com 84 Nieman Reports / Winter 2002
Environment Reporting Reluctance to Read News About the Environment ‘…trying to convince people about the importance of protecting the environment sometimes falls on deaf ears.’ By Nanise Fifita In Tonga, an island nation in the Pacific Ocean, environmental journalism is a new idea. Many islanders have been reluctant to embrace the news this reporting brings their way, but during the past decade coverage of environmental stories has maintained a slow but steady momentum. Located in Western Polynesia, the Kingdom of Tonga consists of 171 islands, 45 of which are inhabited. On these islands, which are ruled by a constitutional monarchy, people have traditionally relied on the resources from land and sea for their livelihood. Skillful farmers have predicted the weather and chosen the best time for planting crops by studying the position and shape of the moon. Until recently, the use of chemicals, fertilizers and pesticides in cultivating the land was unheard of. Similar traditional methods were practiced for fishing and navigation. But those ways are changing, too. As a journalist who has reported on environmental issues in Tonga, I’ve found that trying to convince people about the importance of protecting the environment sometimes falls on deaf ears. Many people are simply not interested; they tend to assume that things like land, trees, plants, sea and fish— the resources they depend upon for their livelihoods—will always be there. Others cling to the belief that their Creator will constantly and endlessly supply everything for them; to them, overuse or abuse of resources is not an issue. Working within this landscape and mindset means that reporters must gain special skills for their work to be effective. Journalists must begin by understanding and respecting the traditions and cultures of an island or region. They need, then, to use that knowl- edge to work with community elders and other key people to allow them to communicate the particular threats or damage that is occurring to their most important sources of livelihood. At a regional environmental seminar for Pacific reporters organized by the Pacific Islands News Association (PINA) in 2001, many journalists expressed the view that the process of educating islanders about the importance of conserving natural resources would be a slow one. Even collecting information about this topic from a particular community or village would probably present problems for reporters. But participants felt that it is also very important to stress in their stories that safeguarding and preserving the environment is also a vital health and economic issue. The Difficulties of Reporting Environment Stories Let me share some examples. In the first one, a small village in Tonga was not aware that their next-door neighbor is the host ground for obsolete power transformers that contain PCB’s, a toxic and dangerous chemical. The area was located along the coastal lagoon in the main island, Tongatapu. When I learned about this situation, I was horrified to think that PCB’s might have leaked into this lagoon, which is the source of seafood for tens of thousands of people who live in the area and those who might buy seafood sold at the market. I quickly set up an interview with a local government environmental officer and his foreign counterpart, who measured the level of PCB’s present on each transformer. I gathered from the interview that people who live nearby and along the coastline were never made aware of the danger. The most challenging part of my reporting happened when I tried to talk to some of the people in the area. In my initial attempt, no one was willing to talk to the camera. People were afraid that they might say something that would offend government leaders or create some form of social disharmony; others felt that talking with a journalist would infringe on their traditional duty of respecting their leaders. Some of the residents who were fishermen, weavers or unemployed residents said they were not in a position to comment on matters that government might deal with eventually. Most people wished to express their opinions off-camera and with anonymity. In these private conversations, many people told me that they wished the government would quickly relocate the transformers and conduct an immediate and thorough cleanup. Others wanted medical checkups to be done on their health conditions. Some even went to the extent of questioning concerned officials on why they failed to inform them earlier or whether they chose to hide these facts. Given this experience, how best could a journalist collect the kind of information with which people could be effectively educated? The technique I used might be regarded as one in which it is difficult for me to maintain objectivity. But what I was trying to do was to convince people that what they had to say and the level of their concern could help speed up government attention and action in tackling the problem. Not speaking would lead them nowhere. I also wanted them to know that health issues and their livelihood are important issues to be emphasized and that they have the right to air concerns in matters which directly Nieman Reports / Winter 2002 85
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