IslandBeat Radio - Caribbean

Professional regional reporters produce the short segments, which focus on an issue affecting the sustainable development of a town or city, country, or the Caribbean as a whole. These segments feature problems that Caribbean people are facing, and attempts at finding solutions. Specific subjects include sustainable practices in tourism operation, community management of environmental resources, sustainable agriculture, migration issues, sustainable fisheries, women's employment, and environmental health and public health issues. CERN correspondents are also being commissioned to produce features on efforts to reduce the impact of natural disasters on small Caribbean islands, homegrown science and technology solutions for sustainable development, and successful ongoing businesses/projects related to the environment. The first month's programmes featured the Casuarina Beach Club in Barbados, whose green operations have been internationally recognised. Programmes examining the future of the Caribbean's freshwater resources have also been produced to coincide with the 3rd World Water Forum in Kyoto, Japan. A complete guide to the weekly shows may be found on the IslandBeat website (no longer active as of this writing.).

To prepare for this task, more than two dozen Caribbean radio journalists attended weekend workshops in Antigua in late January, 2003 on environmental journalism for radio.

Because the correspondents of the series are located in widely dispersed islands and countries, digital technologies are used to provide audio and printed reports to the editors. Many radio correspondents record their reports on conventional sound equipment, but send the digitised pieces via email to the studio, where digital editing is done. IslandBeat is distributed on compact disc and the Internet free of charge to the region's largely commercial radio stations. Organisers expect that radio stations worldwide will pick up the series. In addition, CERN and Panos will produce environment features for Caribbean newspapers. These features will be available in English, French, Kweyol, and Spanish.

Environment.

IslandBeat was first launched in 1997 as a weekly 15-minute English-language radio series, produced and disseminated by CERN in association with the Caribbean News Agency Radio Service (CANARadio), the Caribbean Natural Resources Institute (CANARI, based in St. Lucia and St. Croix) and the Panos Institute.