Shades Of Green

In one of the essays in the book, journalist Lyla Bavadam quotes on African proverb: "Till lions have their historians, tales of hunting will always glorify the hunter."This sums up the requirements of an environmental journalist. In times when corporates have the ear of the government, environmental journalists have to represent the environment to people who make laws.

As Richard Mahapatra writes in his essay, representing the environment is always about representing poverty. Every story written from an environmental angle also has global perspectives. The environmental journalist must unravel how global developments impinge on villages of India.

Is the environmentalist journalist an activist with a pen then ? Yeas and No. Reports about mining giant Vedanta in a New Delhi newspaper can have visible reactions in the London Metal Exchange. As Mahapatra writes global markets take note when reports of rising rates of suicide by groundnut farmers in Andhra Pradesh, Maharashtra and Madhya Pradesh appear.

We also live in times when the environment has gone mainstream. A sports or an urban affairs reporter today is likely to write a story on golf courses in Gurgaon using lots of water. If a reporter writes about the environmental aspects of a story in an intelligent fashion, most editors will carry the story. Today is a strong case for ghettoizing environmental journalism by giving a page to the environment. .

But there is also a flip side to environment going mainstream.