A three-day workshop on sensitization of media in the area of climate change Thursday concluded, with experts calling for evidence-based reporting over climate change vulnerability, adaptation, mitigation and impacts.
The workshop themed “Climate change reporting in theHimalayas” was jointly organized by the Centre for Media Studies (CMS), theIndian Himalayas Climate Adaptation Programme (IHCAP) and the State Departmentof Ecology, Environment and Remote Sensing.
Delivering the valedictory address, Commissioner SecretaryInformation, Forest Ecology and Environment, Manoj Kumar Dwivedi urged mediapersons to highlight issues relating to climate change in the context of thestate climate action plan with an objective to generate awareness about climatechange among people.
He announced that the Green Skills Development Programme,which was launched in the state last year, would be soon expanded to newsubjects. “We need a large number of people trained in different skills with acapacity to deal with various aspects of climate change and environment such asrenewable energy and data science,” he said.
Later, he also gave away certificates to the participants ofthe workshop which was attended by journalists and researchers from Srinagar,Leh, Jammu, Poonch and Kargil.
Director, Department of Ecology, Environment and RemoteSensing, B Siddharth Kumar, was also present on the occasion.
Earlier, in the morning, a roundtable discussion was held inwhich environment journalist Athar Parvaiz, Dr Majid Farooq, Nodal officer,State Climate Change Cell, Salman Khursheed (People’s Environmental Council),Dr Danish Nabi (north campus, Kashmir University), Dinesh C Sharma (ManagingEditor, India Science Wire) and Annu Anand (Head, Advocacy, CMS) participated.
They stressed the need for bridging the gap between mediaand scientists as well as policy makers for improving quality of climate changereporting in media.