Liu Jianqiang: The risks and side-effects of environmental reporting

Journalists need courage if they are going to write about environmental scandals and protests from the affected individuals in countries with limited freedom of the press. An example is China, where Liu Jianqiang is one of the pioneers of environmental reporting. As an investigative reporter for the influential Chinese magazine “Southern Weekend” he has written many articles about China’s up-and-coming environmental movement. At the Deutsche Welle Global Media Forum, he will be taking part in the workshop looking at “Risks faced by journalists during environmental reporting”. This year’s conference, entitled “The Heat is On – Climate Change and the Media”, will take place from June 21-23 in Bonn.

Even while the German Pavilion is currently highlighting the most modern environmental technologies at the Expo 2010 in Shanghai, journalists reporting on environmental topics are being repressed time and time again – in China as well. In July 2009, Sun Xiaodi and his daughter were sentenced to two years in a labor camp for reporting on the contamination of workers in a uranium mine. In Cambodia, three journalists received death threats after they reported on clearcutting and the involvement of relatives from the country’s leader Hun Sen.

For Liu Jianqiang, these are just two examples. He put himself in the spotlight with articles like his pieces on the dam at the Tiger Leaping Gorge on the Yangtze and the reconstruction of the Kunming Lake at the Summer Palace in 2005. At the Deutsche Welle Global Media Forum in Bonn, he will be meeting up with others who support independent environmental reporting: Tamer Mabrouk from Egypt, a blogger and newspaper reporter, who covered the contamination of the Suez Canal from chemical waste, and Grégory Ngbwa Mintsa from Gabon, who uses a blog to write about the largest oil companies in Africa and who was taken into custody for his critical stance.

On June 23, a group of 13 employees from Chinese environmental organizations will also be taking part at the Deutsche Welle Global Media Forum. The delegation was invited by the “EU-China: Civil Society Forum” and is part of a program that fosters the Chinese-European relationship.

More than 50 individual events

In 2010, the Deutsche Welle Global Media Forum once again offers more than 50 events including podium discussions and workshops, interactive presentations and exhibitions, networking and interesting side events. It takes place at the World Conference Center Bonn, close to Deutsche Welle’s headquarters.
Deutsche Welle is cooperating with many different organizations for this interdisciplinary conference, including the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC), the International Human Dimensions Program on Global Environmental Change (UN IHDP/ESSP), EU Commission and the World Bank, the Wuppertal Institute, World Wildlife Fund for Nature (WWF), NABU and the Climate Alliance, the Institute for World Business Kiel, German Development Institute (DIE), the Center for Development Research (ZEF) and many others.

Co-host of the Deutsche Welle Global Media Forum is the Foundation for International Dialogue of the Sparkasse in Bonn. The convention is also supported by Germany’s Federal Foreign Office, the Family, Women and Integration Ministry of the German state of North Rhine-Westphalia, European Funds for Regional Development, the city of Bonn, DHL, the KSB Group and Faber-Castell.

May 19, 2010