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Delhi Sustainable Development Summit 2002
Ensuring sustainable livelihoods:

challenges for governments, corporates, and civil society at Rio+10
8 - 11 February 2002, New Delhi

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8 Feb. 2002 9 Feb. 2002 10 Feb. 2002 11 Feb. 2002
                                   
    10 February 2002: Lunch session
               
                                  
Chairperson

Real video

Mr Gilbert Parent
Ambassador for the Environment, Department of Foreign Affairs and International Trade, Canada

 

 

 

 

          
Speaker

Real video

Dr Sanjaya Baru
Editor, The Financial Express, India

"The real challenge for the media is to make environment a mainstream issue and not a niche issue."

 

 

                                             
Session summary

Dr Baru highlighted the media’s role in catalysing environmental awareness. He expressed concern that Agenda 21 negates the media’s role. The focus has been more on collecting and disseminating information rather than interpreting and mainstreaming it.

He referred to the media as a battleground for addressing sustainable development issues. It collects myriad, incoherent ideas from society and converts them into powerful, collective social opinion, which becomes a critical tool for policy-makers. Since the media is a constituency of policy-makers, the challenge of addressing issues of environment, poverty, and unemployment essentially lies with it. Since media has to grab public imagination, it also feels the need to sensationalize some issues, a phenomenon that has generated heated international debate.

He highlighted the media’s limitations in the context of events like DSDS, for instance, the print media operates in a framework meant to be read and not heard or voice concerns. It can only communicate through the medium available. However, he acknowledged that the debate on environmental issues is a global movement in itself, which the media cannot ignore.