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LATAM-ENVIRONMENT: Community Radio Stations Join Hands with UNEP

By Gustavo Gonzalez

SANTIAGO, Jun 11 (IPS) - Community radio stations from throughout
Latin America and the U.N. Environment Programme (UNEP) committed
themselves to a concerted effort toward promoting environmental
consciousness in the region.

The regional networks associated with the World Association of
Community Radio (AMARC) plan to undertake activities oriented
toward sensitising the population of Latin America with respect to the
objectives set out in ''Agenda 21'', which was approved at the 1992
Earth Summit in Rio de Janeiro.

A two-day workshop (Jun. 9-10) held at the headquarters of the
El Canelo Corporation, in the town of Nos, south of Santiago,
concluded that awareness-raising, through radio broadcasting and
training, would contribute to generating concrete citizen action
in favour of the environment.

Attending the meeting was Alicia Barcena, the director of the
UNEP Environmental Citizenship Programme, which focuses on
prompting participation by civil society in tackling environmental
challenges.

At the workshop, Barcena and other UNEP experts worked with
radio broadcasters, reporters and social communicators from
Mexico, Cuba, Guatemala, Colombia, Ecuador, Peru, Bolivia,
Uruguay, Argentina and Chile.

AMARC, comprised of more than 3,000 local radio stations
worldwide, has a network of 400 affiliates in Latin America,
including community stations, social communicators and research
and training centres.

The workshop laid the foundations for the ''strategic
alliances'' which UNEP seeks with organised sectors, as a means of
mobilising society as a whole.

The three working groups into which the workshop split came up
with some 40 recommendations, compiled in a single text at the end of
the meeting, for launching joint efforts with UNEP and other U.N.
agencies.

The resolutions focus on bolstering the contribution of
community radio stations toward the diffusion of Agenda 21 and
training and education on the environment, as pillars of a process
that should continue with interactive communication that generates
concrete environmentally-oriented action among citizens.

One of the resolutions proposes the creation of a ''Radio
Tierramerica''. Tierramerica is a regional UNEP supplement
distributed every two months with newspapers in 11 countries in
the region, which reaches around four million readers.

The workshop concluded that the experience of Tierramerica was
applicable to radio broadcasting, on the basis of the production
and exchange of programmes focussing on issues of regional
interest, with contributions from national stations and regional
networks.

Workshop participants said the strategy was to tackle
environmental problems in their local as well as regional and
global dimensions.

''We have to achieve simple and attractive formats in our radio
messages, establishing a permanent link between environmental
issues and day-to-day problems,'' said Ernesto Lamas, a
broadcaster from Argentina.

The meeting also proposed a broader diffusion of U.N. news
services, and the creation of a web site of environmental-oriented
radio stations on the Internet.

Several resolutions on training and education were adopted in
concordance with the objectives of the Environmental Citizenship
Programme. ''Radio broadcasters must be trained in environmental
issues, and environmentalists in radio broadcasting,'' said
Armando Soto from Colombia. Participants also pointed to the need to
work with schools and faculties of journalism and communications, in
order to prepare future professionals with respect to the environment.

Organising environmentally-oriented communicators, including
media professionals, was another of the objectives laid out in the
conclusions of the El Canelo workshop.

A short-term project to be carried out is a study of the local
impact of the messages of community broadcasters in order to
better orient the future production of programmes on the
environment.

''Radio has the capacity to generate values as well as active
participation,'' said Chilean journalist Gabriel Sanhueza. ''For
that reason, we have to make an effort not to commit errors, and
to know what happens with our messages and listeners.''

The media, and community radio stations in particular, are
''mobilisers of values'' from and toward civil society, Barcena
underlined.

While resisted in some countries - such as Chile - by
commercial stations, community broadcasters are active throughout
Latin America, although their degree of influence differs. According
to AMARC, the stations presently constitute one of the key
instruments in the democratisation of communications, as a means of
expression of grassroots groups marginalised by the traditional
media. (END/IPS/tra-so/ggr/dg/sw/97)
___________________________________________________
Bruce Girard             Agencia Informativa Pulsar
Email: bgirard@pulsar.org.ec
http://www.web.net/amarc/pulsar.html
Fono/Fax: +593-2-501 180 o 551 674
Fax en Montreal, Canada: +1-514-221-2009
Av. Atahualpa 333, Casilla 17-08-8489, Quito, Ecuador