By Andrew Blok
Three journalists recently shared hard-won lessons from reporting on environmental regulation and enforcement.
Economic records are valuable, but be careful, they told a room full of journalists at the Society of Environmental Journalists annual conference in Fort Collins, Colorado.
Andrew Blok, Dave Poulson, Brian Bienkowski and Andy McGlashen
Knight Center director Eric Freedman and senior associate director Dave Poulson represented MSU at the recent annual conference of the Society of Environmental Journalists in Fort Collins, Colorado. At the conference Poulson finished his second three-year term as the academic representative on the SEJ’s board of directors.
The MSU team included, in alphabetical order:
Margie Bauman and Natasha Blakely
The SEJ conference, “Headwaters to the Plains: Where Rivers, and Politics, Change Directions,” took place October 9-13 at Colorado State University.
Environmental journalists around the world face physical, legal, emotional and economic perils for doing their work. Meanwhile, more than 25 years after the USSR collapsed, the Soviet legacy of environmental degradation still plagues the 15 countries that emerged from its dismantled empire.
Eric Freedman with agroforestry workshop team members at the “me Convention” in Frankfurt
Those were the broad stories that Knight Center director Eric Freedman told during two presentations at the recent “me Convention” in Frankfurt, Germany. The convention featured a wide variety of international speakers on technology, education, futuristic visions, exploration, diversity, entrepreneurship, story-telling, science fiction and societal changes.
In “At Distant Ends of the Soviet Empire: Environmental Challenges Today,” Freedman focused on major ecological problems in three parts of the former Soviet Union – overfishing in the Baltic Sea, poaching and illegal logging in the Republic of Georgia and the near-death of the Aral Sea in Central Asia. The presentation drew on his teaching, professional trainings and research as a Fulbright Scholar in Uzbekistan, Lithuania and the Republic of Georgia. Continue reading
Chiku Mtegha, a researcher at the Lilongwe University of Agriculture an Natural Resources, explains to African journalists research into using chemicals from local plants to deworm goats.
Knight Center Senior Associate Director David Poulson contributed to a recent article on building the capacity of academics to do relevant research at African universities.
“How design thinking united researchers and farmers” appears in the African edition of The Conversation.
It reports on a strategy that encourages academics to create, develop and implement their own research agendas to more directly address the needs of people. Continue reading