Second
Bio-Diversity Reporting Award A Great Success
First
Prize Winners From Colombia, Guatemala and Guyana to Attend 8th
World Congress of Environmental Journalists in Cairo
Washington,
DC, October 3 – Thirteen print journalists from Colombia,
Guatemala and Guyana were the winners of the Second Biodiversity
Reporting Award presented by Conservation International, CI, the
International Federation of Environmental Journalists, IFEJ
and the International Center For Journalists, ICFJ. The awardees
were among a group of 33 professionals who entered a total of 85
articles in the contest.
In Colombia, the First Prize
winner was Zilia Castrillon Marquez, with the article “Illegal
Crops and Use of Pesticides Damage Biodiversity in Colombia”,
which was published in El Occidente newspaper. Asociación
Luna Roja and Rafael Cervantes were the winners of the Second and
Third places, while Nubia Esperanza Paez Torres and Adriana Varon
Molina won Honorable Mentions.
The winners in Guatemala
were all from the newspaper Siglo XXI. Jorge Manuel Jimenez Terron
won the First Prize for his entry “Forestry Concession
Changes the Life of a Community”. The Second and Third Prize
were awarded to Jacqueline Torres and Michelle Garzaro. Edgar
Arana Paredes, the 1999 First Prize winner, received an Honorable
Mention. In Guyana, Miranda LaRose, a journalist with the Stabroek
News who had won last year an Honorable Mention, obtained the
First Prize with her article “Slaughter of Marine Turtles On
the Rise”. Second and Third Prize winners were Andrew
Richards and Linda Rutherford. Sharon Lall received an Honorable
Mention.
The three First Prize winners have been invited to
participate in the 8th World Congress of Environmental Journalists
in November 2000, in Cairo, Egypt. They will have an opportunity
to meet with colleagues from around the world to share experiences
and examine important issues related to environmental reporting.
The Second and Third Prize winners in each country received cash
awards. Also, all winners received a two-year membership in the
International Federation of Environmental Journalists and a
professional kit courtesy of the International Center For
Journalists.
The contest was first introduced in 1999 in
Guatemala and Guyana to promote high quality coverage of
environmental issues and acknowledge the work of communication
professionals in that field. The winners last year were Robert J.
Bazil, Chief Reporter of the Guyana Chronicle and Edgar Arana
Paredes, with Guatemala City’s Siglo XXI. Both attended the
7th World Congress of Environmental Journalists in Bogota,
Colombia. Owing to its initial success, the award was launched
also in Colombia in 2000.
“We are very pleased with
the results of the contest and the quality and fairness of the
judging process. Many entries show an excellent quality, which
adds force to the credibility and value of environmental
journalism”, says Haroldo Castro, CI Vice President for
International Communications and General Coordinator of the Award.
“For instance, in Colombia, the first 11 articles –in
terms of rating- were written by the five award winners. In
Guatemala, the four prizewinners authored the eight first entries.
Likewise, in Guyana the three prizewinners wrote the 10 highest
rated articles. This proves not only the quality of the writers
but also the consistency of the judges in their evaluation”.
The
entries were judged by three (one per country) separate panels of
prominent journalists, conservationists and communications experts
associated with such prestigious institutions as the International
Center For Journalists, ICFJ, the International Federation of
Environmental Journalists, IFEJ, the Colombian National
Association of Environmental Journalists, ANPA and several U.S and
international universities.
“We congratulate the
winners. This contest encourages journalists to publish more and
better articles about key environmental issues that contribute to
public knowledge and debate over critical issues of biodervisity
loss, development and conservation”, says David Anable,
president of the International Center For Journalists.
“The
Award was created to encourage colleagues to discover the
environmental dimension that is hidden or forgotten in nearly
every story and to report on it”, points out Michael
Schweres, Executive Director of the International Federation of
Environmental Journalists. “When we met the first winners of
this Award in Bogota, we had the pleasure to welcome some
enthusiastic colleagues in the IFEJ Network - now we welcome the
winners of the Year 2000 Award to join us in Cairo and to
strengthen IFEJ and the global Network of Environmental
Journalists.”
One major feature of the Biodiversity
Reporting Award is the extensive use of the Internet as its main
working platform. The entries were both evaluated and published on
the Internet, in pages especially designed for that purpose. The
use of the Internet made it easier for the judges to access and
rate the articles from anywhere in the world. All wining articles
were posted on CI’s award page
www.conservation.org/intercom/award.
This year, the
Biodiversity Reporting Award was made possible through the
economic support of Conservation International, the John D. &
Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation, and the Virginia W. Cabot
Foundation. In 2001 the contest will be held in six countries:
Bolivia, Brazil, Colombia, Ghana, Guatemala and Guyana.
For
more information, contact :
David J. Hall – Tel. (202)
533-9528, E-mail: d.hall@conservation.org
