Local journalists will today take part in the first training of the Pacific GeoJournalism Project by Internews in partnership with the Secretariat of the Pacific Environment Programme (S.P.R.E.P), funded by USAID through the Pacific American Climate-Fund (P.A.C.A.M).

The training will be lead by renowned environmental journalist and educator, James Fahn.

Mr. Fahn is the Global Director of Internews’ Environmental Programmes and a Lecturer at UC-Berkeley’s Graduate School of Journalism. 

He also serves as the executive director of Internews’ Earth Journalism Network, which connects over 4,500 journalists covering environmental issues around the world.

Fahn is a journalist who has primarily focused on environmental and science issues in developing countries. For nine years during the 1990s, Fahn was based in Thailand where he was a reporter and editor for The Nation, an English-language daily newspaper based in Bangkok, and hosted a television show. His book, “A Land on Fire” recounts the issues and scandals he uncovered while working on the environmental beat in Southeast Asia.

He has also written for the New York Times, The Economist, Newsweek, the San Francisco Chronicle, the Jakarta Post, SciDev.net, Nature.com, the Huffington Post and the Columbia Journalism Review.

Fahn will be training 15 journalists in Samoa as part of the two year Pacific GeoJournalism Project. The Project is funded by the Pacific American Climate-Fund and implemented by the Internews Earth Journalism Network.

The project aims to equip local media in Samoa, Fiji, and Vanuatu with the right skills and knowledge to build and improve the reporting of climate change impacts and resilience strategies to enable the communities to make well informed decisions and take effective action on the climate change issues affecting them. 

The grant will also support increased transparency in natural resource management and climate change adaptation policy-making leading to better governance.