WORK OVERVIEW

Centre for Science and Environment’s bonds with media go back almost to the days of its infancy. CSE’s founder-director, the late Anil Agarwal, himself a journalist, well appreciated the role that media could play in carrying CSE’s voice and message to the world outside. From that appreciation has emerged an enduring relationship over the years, sustained by a belief and understanding that media is one of the key ‘multiplier’ communities which support CSE’s work. We believe that the mass media can help in analysing the linkages between environment and development, spark debates on crucial issues, and lead to positive change.

The CSE Media Resource Centre (MRC) is the primary agency whose task it is to nurture and build on this relationship. For ensuring better and strategically more effective impact, the MRC works in close coordination with other communications teams in CSE. Over the years, it has developed a well-structured portfolio of programmes whose main aim is to build capacity of journalists, writers and communicators to understand issues of science, environment and development, and write/communicate about them in an informed manner. The portfolio includes press briefings and conferences organized for the benefit of mainstream, regional and local media in India, as well as workshops for African journalists; and training programmes for young journalists and students of journalism and communication.

The community of media and journalists remains a key target audience and multiplier, and The CSE Media Resource Centre functions as a dynamic, real-time resource hub for it. The Resource Centre’s primary function is to share timely and relevant environmental data and insights with the community through briefings, press interactions, regular updates, capacity- and skill-building programmesetc on issues that CSE is engaged with and which are being reported in Down To Earth. Besides managing the Resource Centre’s functions, the team now also plans the communication and outreach – through social media – of all the key events and engagements of CSE.