The guide, prepared by UNESCO, with the support of FB in its Spanish edition, is aimed at improving the capacity of communication professionals to report on the most complex issues related to the environment.

The guide, prepared by UNESCO, with the support of FB in its Spanish edition, is aimed at improving the capacity of communication professionals to report on the most complex issues related to the environment.

On Monday, June 27, at the Royal Botanical Garden-CSIC in Madrid, Unesco-Extea (UNESCO Center of the Basque Country) and the Biodiversity Foundation presented “Communicating sustainability. Guide for journalists”, a directory of resources for reporters developed by UNESCO. The publication, published in Spain by Unesco-Etxea, with the support of the FB, will also be presented on Tuesday, June 28 at the Palacio de la Bolsa in Bilbao.

“Communicating sustainability…” aims to facilitate the work of communication professionals in reporting on complex issues related to the environment, and to improve their capacity to address such important issues as climate change, the depletion of forestry, water or fisheries resources, pollution, biodiversity loss and species extinction, to elaborate messages on these issues in an agile, clear and positive way.

In addition, the guide also discusses how reporters deal with sustainability issues and how they can address difficult, contradictory and sometimes untempting issues for media editors, because of how complex or distant they appear to the average audience, and enhance their dissemination to promote social awareness of all these issues.

Aware of the fundamental role that journalists and the media play in raising social awareness of today’s main environmental problems, the Biodiversity Foundation seeks to direct all its actions to the improvement of knowledge and the promotion of dialogue and the exchange of experiences around these issues, supporting projects such as the publication of this guide, which fills a gap in publications of this type expressly aimed at the media.

To this end, the contents of the guide “Media as partners in education for sustainable development: a training and resourse kit” (UNESCO, 2008) have been adapted, including national references and experiences, and notions and reflections on the main environmental problems have been updated, in order to help the national media in their difficult task of informing and sensitizing citizens about the values inherent in sustainable development.

The guide is available online, in PDF format. To read it, click here.