 As you are not familiar with the Solutions Journalism Network, it's a network of journalists promoting a form of doing journalism that looks at how people are doing to solve problems. And I'm hosting this event in collaboration with LamPortal as part of my lead project. But before starting, I would like to say many thanks to LamPortal team, Laura, Lillian, Neil, and Romy for putting this event together in such a short time. Romy, if you want to say something. Thanks, Nieves. Yeah, I want to talk a little bit about our partnership with Nieves. And hello, everybody. Again, good morning, good afternoon, good evening, depending where you are. So I just wanted to say that we have learned about Solutions Journalism actually through Nieves. And she is also a researcher with LamPortal. Nieves is conducting desk research. And she writes about countries. And she research about the land governance context in different Spanish-speaking countries. And it's through her that then she became also a lead fellowship on Solutions Journalism. And she introduced us to this approach. So we saw a great opportunity here to better connect with environmental journalists, environmental journalists, because of the focus of her project. And it's an opportunity for us to better understand how to make information about land more accessible, more visible. Just for you to know a little bit about LamPortal. So we are a nonprofit organization established in 2014 with a mission to promote inclusive democratic access open as well and access to land information. And we think that this is a very, very crucial key condition to allow decision makers, civil society, researchers, practitioners, particularly in the global south, to improve the way that land is governed around the world, from the community to the global level. And our work focuses on opening data, promoting open data, on gathering and creating accessible knowledge, and on promoting debates about land rights. At the same time, we know that the issues about land are so closely interrelated with environmental degradation, because owning land or using land comes with the responsibility to also protect the environmental services that this land provides. So this is a little bit of a summary of why we are engaging in this partnership with Nieves. And we see that this is very complementary to both of us. I think on one hand, solutions journalism as the approach that Nieves is championing today. And LamPortal, both, we promote change through innovative ways. And both share a commitment to thorough and accurate high quality information that can transform the realities of people. So this partnership for us is really about enabling these two communities, journalists and the land community, to join forces and in shaping a more sustainable world. But very importantly, by focusing on solutions. That is, at least for me, the way I see it is really by changing the perception that environmental and land issues are part of a negative agenda and give room to a perception that challenges exist, of course, and we need to acknowledge them. But so should we acknowledge the solutions that these fields offer? Thanks, Nieves. Thanks, everyone. Thank you, Romy. So the goal of my project is to facilitate training, dialogue, story production, and dissemination on solutions repairing environmental damage and improving land governance. And if you are interested in participating in this project, there is an open call for solution stories until March 31st. So please have a look at the web page that we are going to put on the chat now, where you can find all the information about it. And besides producing a story, the participation in this project gives a lot of opportunities to keep learning about solutions, journalism, and to connect with other journalists. So check the web and reach out. My email is going to be there. Reach out if you have any question about it. So with this event today, we will like to contribute to an important conversation on how to report about the environment and land in a way that inspire us and empower us. And for that, we have a very special speakers that I will introduce to you in a minute. In the last years, environmental damage has become one of the main global concerns. And the media has played a very important role in increasing our awareness of the negative consequences on the environment that our economic model and our consumption habits are having. For example, the media has been informing on how the poles are melting because of global warming, how the life in the oceans is being polluted because of plastic, and how agriculture and livestock expansion is causing and unchecked deforestation in some parts of the world. In general, the stories that make it to the media are limited to describe problems. And when it comes to reporting about environmental climate change, actually, the headlines are quite dramatic and even sometimes apocalyptic. For example, in 2019, the New York Times said, had a headline saying, a climate change is accelerating, bringing world dangerously close to irreversible change. Or in 2021, the Guardian had another headline saying, major climate changes, inevitable and irreversible. So those stories may raise awareness, but they are kind of paralyzing as well. And when we read these headlines, it's very easy we can feel like, how a small individual like me can do something to stop this irreversible and dangerous change. And many people shut down and get depressed. In fact, research done by the Reuters Institute shows that the main reason for people to avoid news is that news tend to accept them and depress them. Another thing about environmental reporting is that often is based on scientific research. This is important because it gives credibility. But on the other hand, it's difficult sometimes to connect with science for many people and we miss to get the story closer to the reality of people. The recognition of the power of information and journalism to create a vision of the world and our role in it inspires the question we want to address in this online event, which is how best to inform about the environment to mobilize the agency of the audience to deal effectively with problems and bring positive change. One of the ways is by framing the stories to look at the responses of people, of communities, societies to those problems and to connect them to with real life matters such as access to land. We know that human activities resulting in damaging the environment have important consequences to land access. For example, in the Amazon, illegal mining not only brings deforestation, but also brings the displacement of indigenous communities from their land. So with this project, we want to find stories where solutions to environmental problems also involve improving land governance. But solutions-based journalism is not about positive news. It is about telling the whole story. And to talk about that, I'm very happy to introduce you to Alfredo Casares. Alfredo is a Spanish journalist and a founder of the Instituto de Periodismo Constructivo in Spain, an organization that works to develop training programs and consultancy on solutions journalism. Alfredo was a lead fellow last year. And for those of you who speak Spanish, he is the author of the book Laura del Periodismo Constructivo. And by the way, today is Alfredo's birthday. So happy birthday Alfredo and thank you for making the time to be with us in this special day. Our two next speakers are going to reflect on why and how to apply solutions journalism to report on the environment and land. And they are going to show concrete examples. First, Esvati Sanyal Tarafdat will address why solutions journalism works, especially for environmental and land reporting. And based on her own experience, she will talk about how to engage the audience through solutions journalism. Esvati is an independent journalist from India covering social justice and climate for international publications. She's also a lead fellow. And her project is about creating a YouTube series aimed at young adults in India covering solutions on livelihood, health, and environment. After Esvati, Mavic Conde will share with us a very concrete example on how a solution to report environment consisting of collecting seeds can improve farmers' land rights. Mavic Conde is a journalist from the Philippines, specialized on the environment. And also a lead fellow with a project to train and support agriculture reported in Asia and the Pacific to report on community-based innovation in food systems. And stay tuned because at the end of her presentation, she has a very special announcement. At this point, you may be wondering, okay, but how do I find solution stories? One way to find them is to look at data, to look for those positive deviants in data showing that they perform better than the rest. Land Portal is a fantastic source of data and information. And Romy Sato is going to share with us how we can use Land Portal resources to find and document our stories. Romy leads the development of Land Portal's country and thematic portfolios as well as the creation of land-related publications and statistical data sets. And you had the opportunity to meet her already at the beginning of this event. So after each presentation, we will leave time for one or two questions for each speaker. And at the end of the four presentations, we will have time for a general discussion. So please share your comments and ask your questions on the chat. So Alfredo, what is solution journalism? What does it mean to tell the whole story and how did you get involved in this kind of journalism? Over to you, Alfredo. Thank you, Neres, and thank you all. Let me just share my screen. Okay. All right, here we go. Let me introduce myself. I'm the eldest of four siblings, perfectionist, demanding, demanded as well, and very protective towards my brother and my sisters. And as a young reporter, when I became a journalist, eager to champion journalism as a public service, I played the same role towards my community. I became an investigative reporter and editor focused on what was wrong, finding what someone wanted to hide and looking for whom to blame. That was what many journalists we thought was major league journalism, the real journalism, the aspirational one, holding the powerful into account. And by then I was really interested in social initiatives that tried to solve problems, but I saw them as soft journalism features. Sometimes even close to public relations pieces. I now must acknowledge I was wrong, but the truth is that for many years, I was struggling with that feeling. As Neves said, in a scenario of an excess of information, lack of trust in the media and social polarization, news avoidance is one of the consequences. People feel overwhelmed. They believe that we focus on conflict and drama too much. They think that solutions are underrepresented in the media and that we've described the world as a place worse than it really is. But people are demanding something else, something really different. 64% of the BBC viewers under 35 years old want the news to provide solutions to problems. And according to the Reuters Institute, young Europeans demand stories that can inspire them about the possibility of change and specifically that provide a path to positive action. They need clues to participate in the decide. So our responsibility as journalists is double-sided, as at least on the one hand, we the media help the people to make an image of the world, but we also help them to make an image of themselves in the world and the role they can play in society as active citizens or as passive spectators. The way we tell the problems and challenges is a key issue here. If we show them as great and unsolvable, people will think that I cannot do anything and they will step back. But if we show and analyze the responses that our society is developing to solve these problems, to solve these challenges, and we share the learnings and the insights, maybe people feel inspired to take action and be really involved. So what's solution journalism, Neves, you asked? First was the answer to my struggles. That's the first thing that I saw. And understood that I could investigate solutions the same way I investigate problems with the same rigorous method and the same impact in my community. Solution journalism is rigorous, evidence-based reporting and responses to social problems. That's what it is. And it's based on what Solution Journalist Network calls the four pillars. It covers a response to a problem and how it happened. It provides evidence of impact. It looks at effectiveness, not yet intentions. That's very important. It produces insights, learnings that can help others to respond to and points out any limitations of the response. There's no magic answers for the problems. So I'm sure my colleagues will give later some examples about Solution Journalism applied on environmental issues. But as Sir David Attenborough said during the last UN Climate Change Conference, journalism can and must, I would say, give us hope based on facts and a path to collective action. If we need to mobilize the society, we need to give them hope. And we have a lot of reasons to be hopeful. We just need to find them and use them and use science to do it as well. So for those who want to learn more, I encourage you to attend the next free webinar that Solution Journalism Network is organizing for next week. You can do it on the web page, Solution Journalism Network web page or using the code on the slide. So there you'll understand what Solution Journalism is, why it's important, why you should do it and which is the effect on the community that you serve and also how to incorporate it to your daily basis journalism in a newsroom or outside a newsroom as a freelance. And if you need inspiration, as David said before or you want to check out good examples of Solution Journalism, you can access also the Storytrucker that is a database with almost 13,000 Solution Journalism stories. You can find them also on the web page or using the code there. So let me finish telling you what we're doing here in Spain. After some years developing Solution Journalism projects, last year I wrote, as Nieve said, a book La Hora del Peridismo Constructivo, The Time for Constructive Journalism. And I founded the Institute for Constructive Journalism here in Spain. I received a lead fellowship from the Solution Journalist Network and I started to train journalists and students and advise media outlets that wanted to include Solution Journalism in the editorial strategies. And so far, we've trained more than 100 journalists here in Spain and 250 students. The media outlets we're consulting with are getting the stories on the Storytrucker, which is really an achievement for them. And one of them have launched the first Solution Journalism section in a media outlet in Spain. Well, and finally, just let me share with you some of the main takeouts of some journalists that took our training workshops. They believe Solution Journalism systematizes something that they already do, but in a very intuitive way. So it gives you a method, which is very clarifying as well. They feel strong, they feel powerful. There are a lot of freelance journalists interested in Solution Journalism, many of them. And they really feel empowered because they can make a difference as well in their job. They also feel there is a very interesting point of view changing the perspective, the way they look at the world, even the way they look at journalism. And also it connects many of the journalists feel very connected with the reason because they wanted to be journalists in the first place. So they also believe it's not so difficult. Sometimes in the newsroom it's not very easy to try to start Solution Journalism project. It takes time, it takes resources, but as they say, we're just a step ahead of doing it. I mean, we can do it if we really feel we have to. And they feel motivated, as I said, to keep trying to change things and to do, I mean, to make a better world using journalism. Thank you. Thank you Alfredo. I want to say, I'm going to ask you a couple of questions, one or two questions before moving to our next presentation with Esvati. But I want to say hello to people joining us. I can see that there are people from Nigeria, Rwanda, Colombia, Brazil, Bangladesh. So it's a pleasure to have you here. Thank you for joining us. And please post your questions on the chat because we will have at the end a discussion and we will like to address all the questions that you have. So Alfredo, thank you for your presentation. One common question when we talk about Solution Journalism is that are we minimizing the problems when we focus the report or the news on the solution part? Oh, not at all. I mean, as you said before, this is not positive news or positive journalism or good news. It's focusing on the problem, but under the perspective of the responses, under the perspective of the solutions, we usually cover the problem from the problem point of view. And of course we have to, you have to face the problem and some of the consequences, but also you can look for these kind of responses that can give us learnings, insights and social knowledge as well. So no, it's not. I mean, you're not minimizing anything. I mean, I would say and Solution Journalism says you're doing a very job because you are explaining more. I mean, Solution Journalism helps you to explain the problems from other perspectives that helps people to understand them better, I would say that. Okay, so that's one a good reason to apply this approach. And I'm sure Svati now is going to expand our vision of why we should apply this approach. And also I am very curious to know how this approach in your part of the world in India in particular is received and how do you engage with the audience? Please Svati, the floor is yours. Thank you, greetings from India, everyone. And I'm so glad you all are here. So I'll start by sharing my presentation. So you can see. Yes, we can see it, Svati. Yeah. So I am an independent social justice and environmental justice journalist from India. And for the last 10 years, a little more than 10 years, I live and work from Andhra Pradesh, which is a South Eastern state of India. We are very close to the coast on one side and to the flat plains of two rivers, which yield very fertile soil and almost three times crops every year. And we have this innumerous factories in the state, including large thermal and fossil fuel using ones. So I can tell you there is no dirt of pollution and climate and global warming related stories in here. So as an independent journalist, I prefer to go into the remote villages and talk to people on the ground, fishermen, farmers, people who are working, you know, actually toiling and working and engaging with the natural resources for my stories. So in the last few years, what we have been noticing is that the gap between the social justice part of it and the environmental justice part of their lives have been diminishing. Sometimes it's getting very difficult to identify which is what, because although we are living in the cities, we are kind of away from the real problems. A lot of cushioning happens in our lives around us, but those are the people who are mostly invisible, less heard and very far away from our lives, but those are the people they're interacting with the natural resources and they tell us, they have been telling us for the last decade or more that their ancestral land and water have stopped supporting them. So there we see a lot of climate migrations that are not recorded. We see a lot of health issues because the groundwater is turning saline, the soil quality is changing. The crops that were used to produce in the past 100 years are not being produced in the same way anymore. So things are changing. The difference is that we are not recording. We were not recording a lot of those, although the environmental and climate change coverages have started going up in the past two, three years because of the COP and the doomsday news that are coming in from the scientists. So still it seems like the volume is not enough to reach our minds and hearts. And I'll go back to this article from Jeffrey Kruger in the Times, he wrote it in 2018. And he quite nicely, accurately, examined what is the reason and one of the scientists responded by saying that we are okay with imagining urgent problems, but we cannot identify with climate change. We don't know what it is, what kind of shapes it takes. And this is where I think we are talking about the middle income groups, the middle class people, as we say in India, who are the major consumers of our news productions, be it in the television or in the newspapers. So I'm a lead fellow for SJN this year and my project involves developing a series of solution journalism stories for YouTube. And yes, you heard that right, YouTube. So in January this year, I ran an online survey to ask my potential audience that why are you so disconnected from the news? Why are you not following the news? And I came up with, I don't think we didn't know all this, but this is for the records now. So they tell me very frankly, that we don't watch news, we don't watch TV, we don't read the newspaper, we don't read magazines, news magazines. Where are we placed in your news? Your information, your coverage is not for us. You get a, you meaning us, the media people, environmental journalists, the tribe here. We cater not to the people who can relate to the climate change of global warming and how that's affecting their immediate lives, their businesses, their livelihoods, their cost of living, the quality of living. They say that I am seeing a lot of coverage about people who are like the cream of the society and then then the poor. But why the fishermen are not getting the fish? It's not my problem. My problem is if I am getting all right fish, if that fish is okay for me to consume. So that is the gap here. That is one thing I figured we have to really communicate in some way with our primary audience. And we as a media people as experts in communication, we do so much of audience engagement and surveys and analysis. This I feel has been a major disconnect. So when I was kind of trying to figure out how to reach my audience and how to make my audience care for the kind of stories I do because I'm an independent journalist. I could have chosen to do something else. I do it out of passion and I want people to bother, get bothered with what I'm writing and you don't do something about it. So it's a funny anecdote here that my career as a journalist in a TV station for two months, I was kind of pushed into the lifestyle section. And before that, I had been covering crime, I had been doing human rights stories and I had been doing politics a little bit of it. And then to lifestyle. And that has been the most painful period of my journalism career. And I have started to appreciate the role of the lifestyle journalist. So when I was looking back, like, what do they do? How could they be so strong and influence people really from their pages? I came across Stellers and Francis A.C. which says that there are four dimensions in a lifestyle journalist's role. And that is to inform audiences, to motivate people, to provide a forum for the readers to share their concerns and to inspire an entertain. As journalists, we have always felt, we have always been told that, okay, you know, you should know your limits. There are boundaries. So if I follow this role, if I get so passionate about my environmental journalism and climate-related coverage and I start telling people, okay, you use this solution or you use this or you do this, where are my boundaries? Where are my ethics? Would I be wrong or right? Climate coverage is important, but it is also important that it is a science and I give out proper information, even when I'm talking of solutions that are working. Right? So when I was going to this turmoil and this kind of, you know, thoughts within myself and trying to find the solution, I landed upon Solutions Journalism. And that was around 2017, 18. And I thought, wow, that's it. That's it because Solutions Journalism tells me that you can do good stories. You can engage people. You can have characters, strong characters. You can resonate with your readers and you can inspire all within your limits because it gives me pillars, four pillars to create my boundaries. So what kind of boundaries do we have in Solutions Journalism that tell us the first one is response. Response to the problem that you're having. So the problems can be huge. The problems can be massive, but we can have smaller slices of those problems and people who are facing this kind of problems from the ground and kind of oblivious, we were oblivious to them, they have created their own kind of responses. So there is somebody who has used actions to create filters for water pollution, for drinking waters. There are people who, a lot of people are doing a lot of things which we don't know. We are still disconnected from, as a journalist, from the sources of our news because those kind of responses are still in the, you have to really go into the community for this kind of sources. So that's one thing. We have responses and we can find those responses. That's our first challenge. Then the second pillar is evidence. So it's unlike the Lifestyle Journalist colleague of mine, I just don't stop at telling, okay, this is a nice product you can use and it can help you sort something out in your life, but we give evidence. Let's see, this is working. And then the most important part of Solution Journalism is we talk of limitations and this is mandatory. We just don't talk about the problem and the response and finish it off, which we usually do when we talk about positive journalism. We give limitations why the solution is working or not working when it is not working. And then from all of these, we glean our insights so that people from other parts of the globe can replicate the solutions so that our government officials, administrators, policymakers can think of making this big and see if this can work on a large scale. There are innumerous examples of such Solution Journalism stories everywhere. And as Alfredo said that anybody can look up Solution Journalism tracker and there are over 13,000 stories there to learn and find out. So I looked through my older stories before Solution Journalism stories and I found that the most maximum stories that had worked for which I had got enormous reader feedback and engagement. Well, this kind of stories where I had a solution, a response to a problem and I had mentioned the evidence and how this can work or not work. So I won't go into the details of these but what I meant to say is Solution Journalism is not entirely non-intuitive. It is heavily intuitive. It is something we were supposed to do as journalists but we forgot on the way. So we can bring it back. We can bring our positive journalism solid with solutions but first by giving limitations and insights which is something one of my mentors, an eminent broadcaster, broadcaster journalist told me last week that there are cases, there are situations in fact most of the stories the evidence and the insights might overlap. The limitations and the data might overlap. So what do you do? You can allow one or two of the pillars to take center stage in your story and that is okay. That is okay. But when you do that, focus on the limits and insights. So this I wanted to say as a part of the how to and this is again the why of Solution Journalism because this determines that our journalism is not just the fluff that many people assume Solution Journalism to be. Without like if I just go by guesswork it might seem that the Solution Journalism is just talking of solutions. It is not, it is heavy work. It takes time and effort and why you should do this? You should do this because you want to add value to the journalism that you are doing. You want to add quality to it and you want to do something that you have always wanted to do as a journalist which is to affect administration and policy makers, right? So very quickly I come to the why. I told you my journey, my YouTube project is kind of a solution or kind of a deduction from these thought processes and I will suggest any journalist, any independent journalist or from the staffs in the newsrooms to try it out because it adds value to you and we have seen the SJN has recorded data and researchers that says that not only you feel good being a journalist when you are doing the solutions because your mental health is being taken care of. We know that so many journalists had to take a break during the pandemic because the news had turned so gory. So mental health, your well-being is important and then we are able to inform our audience and inspire and engage them because we are telling stories from their perspectives. We are telling stories that they can relate to. We are telling stories that actually belong to them. So if like one of my stories that I'm currently working on is on restoration of local water bodies. So if anybody is interested they can see what people are doing, local people are doing to restore these water bodies and they can try and think and implement the solutions in their own locality. So that is what makes it so much valuable. Encourage audience to adopt sustainable changes with your stories and solutions. This certainly makes us, you know, gives us the power to hold the government offices and policymakers accountable. And it's good for the newsrooms. It's good for the revenue side of it because it has been seen for one year some, the SGN had been running in collaboration some projects where newsrooms have been working as a solutions journalism and it has shown that audience engagement has increased. People are more willing to subscribe to their newsletters and the programs and revenue has increased. So it's true, it's true. So that's it from my side. Thank you very much, Swati. We got a comment saying nice discourse from Dr. Villanat, sorry if I'm not pronouncing it properly. Please engage with us in the conversation and ask your questions in the chat. Thank you, Swati, very inspiring presentation. And you have touched on many of the things that I wanted to address in the questions as well. For example, the accountability of governments because sometimes people, one of the reflections of some people regarding solution journalism is that maybe it's a way to distract the attention from the problem and that gets government out of the hook in being accountable. But you are suggesting that it's the opposite. Yeah, I would have loved to go into details. I would have loved to talk about this but what I'll tell since our time is short, I'll just tell that if we see a solution is working somewhere then people from other regions with similar problems can go back and tell their administrators, their policy makers, the government offices that how are they able to solve those problems and why are we not solving those? The solution is there and this has worked in many cases across Africa. We have a lot of stories, solution journalism stories coming up from Africa in health sectors, in social justice, in environment. Anybody can just take a look at the, as Jane Tracker to see those. This is possible. It's solution journalism is kind of valuable. It adds that kind of value and quality to our journalism because it doesn't just tell us about the, what is working, what is the response or what is the problem? It goes into the evidence that it is working, the data that it is working. Even if it is qualitative data, even if it is like a course from people, course of multitudes of people who are saying that, yes, this is working and this is how we are doing it. And we are capturing limitations which is a major difference because when we capture limitations we are able to understand at a higher level that, okay, in these situations, these solutions will not work. But are there ways we can surface this solution, this challenges and find or customize the solution? So in every way, it helps us look at solutions. It helps us customize solutions and it helps us for common people to come back and tell our government officials that why are we not doing this? So that's how we keep people accountable, right? Yeah, thank you. Thank you, Svati. So we're going to move on to our next speaker, Mavi Kondi, who tell us what example do you have to share with us that connects repairing environment and improving land rights? Thank you, Nia Ves and thank you everyone for being here with us today. So I'll be presenting about two complementing solutions which are agroecology and land rights. So with what Nia Ves, Alpred and Svati shared a while ago, there is indeed a need for us journalists to be proactive in looking for solution stories and speaking of rich, let me share my screen, please. Okay, so my presentation for today is about agroecology and land rights solutions and two sides of the same coin. So what is agroecology? It is the management of farmlands like ecosystems in order to make naturally beneficial interactions between organisms within an ecosystem possible. So for what ends? To boost crop yields without sacrificing the environment, human and animal health and not certainly at the expense of resource for smallholder farmers and farm workers which make up the majority of food producers at the community levels. So in agroecology, the application of ecological principle is extended to food systems. You know, there are big organic farms that don't practice co-creation of knowledge among farmers, nursery land and resources for access to food production or go for a short distribution web. So in other words, agroecology doesn't stop with organic practices. So food producers must also have the control in their food production and pre-dump enhance the power of local markets together with consumers. So systems thinking approach is a big part of solutions journalism reporting. So as on your best and Alfredo mentioned a while ago, it is important in telling the whole story. To do that, we have to understand the depth of the problem. So we can tell whether the response is addressing the root cause or merely the symptoms of the problem. So according to a report by the UN level experts on food security and nutrition, agroecology is one pathway for transforming our current food systems, which is the global industrial agriculture. So if you can see these enumerated items here, the two are very much in contrast. The current system is large scale, high input expert oriented while agroecology is community-based food production, monoculture, diversified. So if you notice, we only have, we are only producing 20 foodie species out of thousands of edible plants out there. So it's also dependent on agrochemicals while agroecology aims to reduce that dependence. So it's rely on a specific technology while agroecology is for interactions or management components and so on. So what problems that this global industrial agriculture bring to us? So one is there is surplus of food products yet hunger. We cannot address hunger. Even before the pandemic, it remains a problem worldwide. There's also labor exploitation, especially in the global South, cheap labor here for export products for land conflicts with indigenous peoples. And worse, they are killed, especially here in the Philippines. It's so dangerous to be an environmental defender. So then it's also the using agrochemicals resolve in chemical runoff, soil nutrient degradation. So in this time of climate crisis, so soil fertility or soil health is very much important in making or ensuring that our crops will grow despite the amid the crisis. So it's also threatened by diversity because if you can also see with our, there is a monopoly of seed producers. They are only a handful and they are patented. So if we are going to continuously use this, we will be neglecting a range of biodiversity crops. So climate impacts and then neglect of local sustainable practices. So here are some responses, agroecological responses to the problem. The first one is about saving seeds by a local government supported community seed library. And the next one, urban poor community, is about urban community gardening as an extension of community kitchen. So it is a response during the pandemic. And the third one is about creating an alternative currency for a more inclusive local economy through cooperation. And the last one is about seed banking and on-farm testing and mass production for distribution and exchange. So what evidences of results that these examples produce or give us? So the first one, it reduced planting costs with access to locally adapted seeds, meaning not dependent on agrochemicals. There was also mutual aid during the pandemic. These seed sabers were able to help those who found it difficult to access food in the city. And when type one hit them in 28, and they were able to plant sooner because they have this community seed library. And for the next one, continued access to safe and healthy food during the pandemic. And they were able to learn knowledge on land and resource management, farming planning as well. And the third one, it gives those who were able to participate, even they are cashless, they're able to participate in a thriving local economy. So it gives them a sense of belongingness. So it makes them happy. Although it's already stopped this kind of operation, it doesn't mean that it wasn't successful. So sometimes solutions, journalism stories are about this. It's not always successful, but it doesn't always mean that it's a failure also. So for the last one, crabs can withstand saltwater. So saltwater inclusion is one of the main impacts of climate change on farmers in the Philippines. So what are the limitations? Agroecology is more labor use and there is also limited government support and there is corporate monopoly obscene. So what insights can we get from this story? So first is the application of ecological principles will vary in extent due to differences in territories. Another one is that it is anchored on improving integration with natural processes. And the most important one, all this ecological knowledge and skills are futile if farmers are constantly displaced. So it should be complimented with land rights and land portal has a lot of information and data about this one that you can explore and use for creating stories, complimenting solution stories about agroecology and land portal. And okay, for the last one. So here we can see that that agroecology can help us achieve ecological balance, social equity, cultural vitality and economic viability. So what's missing here is the SDG number 13, which is climate action. And if we sum it up, it is the kind of climate action that all these scientific studies is asking from us. So in a way, it's also the kind of climate justice we deserve, don't you think? Okay, let's go. So I added some reading recommendations. That's all, thank you. Thank you, thank you very much, Mavic. I have a question for you, but I'm realizing that we are running fast with time. So I might give the floor to Romy now and then I will ask the question later in the general discussion, if that's okay. Sure. So Romy, over to you. What kind of resources we can find in land portal that can help us to document our stories, to find stories? Thanks, Miavez. I will share my screen with you quickly and I'll ask one of my colleagues on the land portal to share the URL, the link to land portal. So you can also navigate for yourself. I hope that you can see this now. Yes, we can see it now. Yes, and I'll take you on a quick tour on land portal. And I think this is particularly speaking to the pillar on evidence now that Alfredo also mentioned of Solutions Journalism. So this is really just to offer you one place where you can find some evidence, sources of information for your stories if you are focusing on environmental issues and particularly where it's also land issues. Land portal, as you see here, the first thing I wanted to highlight is actually that we have land portal in different languages as well. So it's four languages. Besides English, you also can have an interface even in French, Portuguese, and Spanish. Of course, most of the resources are still available mostly in English. But this year particularly, we are making a big effort to also populate our sites in the other languages. The way the land portal is structured is a lot of the information is cross-interlinked to each other. And I think the easiest way for you to find resources, first of all, of course, you will do what many of us would probably do when navigating the internet using the search, but also to maybe get more accurate results to what you want to look for. There are ways that you can find these resources through a geographical focus, through countries, and also through specific issues. I want to take you very quickly to the countries so you can see what you can get. So this is actually part of an initiative that we have called Country Insights. And this is also where Nieves is working with us. And basically what we offer here is a brief on the land governance context, the situation on land governance in different countries in the world. So for example, you have here South Africa. And if you click there, you have an overview of where you can click here and have access to a more detailed profile of South Africa and its context on land. And these profiles have been written by researchers such as Nieves. And they also have been peer reviewed by specialists on land in those countries. If I go back, you also see here an entry point to find all kinds of related information to South Africa. So you have here some socioeconomic indicators, data on these countries, but you also have news. You have related projects, development projects in South Africa on land. You also can find a whole collection of blogs, events, and publications, what we called our library resources. So this is one way to find evidence or information about land, also about related to the environment on coming from a geographical perspective. The other way is you can find this through by navigating our different issues. So let me take you for example on indigenous communities. And the same thing here, you have a structure where you can go and have a better insight into what it is about indigenous and community land rights, what's important to know on this topic. Again, this is a brief that has been written by a specialized agency organization that works also on these topics. At the bottom, you will have the whole list of references. You also have some selected indicators, data that relates to that topic. And again, if you go back, you also have the whole collection of related news to this topic, blogs, discussions, events, library, and you can also find organizations working on these topics. This is, okay, this is these two ways. And another part that I want to highlight is what you can find under community and under library. Libraries is of course, is our pool of publications. The first thing, if you arrive at the landing page, of course, you have an overview of the most updated, the most recent uploaded resources, as you can see, we have over 66,000 publications in land portal related to land. And of course, you can make a search. And I think that's very important. That's how we would go. So for example, if you go and you make a search with land and environment, you'll get over 15,000 resources here. And you can also make a filtered search through these resources, you can filter by the language of this publication. You can filter by the geographical focus, publishers. You can filter as well through this type of issues, the same that I showed you earlier, and then what's the thematic focus of each of these publications, and so on. As well of course, and very importantly, the type of resource, if you are looking for journal articles, if you are looking for legislations, regulations, et cetera. Finally, I want to take you to the community because this is also something that might help you on your research in building your stories. Maybe you are looking for people who can offer certain perspectives and stories. And here you have an entry point to organizations. And again, you can also make a search here. We have over 2,400 publications. Again, you can filter it by the type of organizations and a few other filters. And you can also find people. Of course, because of privacy data, we are not displaying here the contact details of these people. But you can find at least sometimes at the brief summary of who are people who have subscribed and created a profile land portal. For example, if we go to this person, you have a brief description that he is a student doing a bachelor's degree on environmental science technology. And I guess intuitively, you could probably find that person in social media. And lastly, we also have a whole pool of information about what projects exist on land and environmental issues or anything that is cross-cutting with land issues. These are development projects that takes place in different parts of the world. And again, here at the bottom, you can also make a search by the type of issue that the projects are focusing on, who is the funder of these projects, and so on. So I think this is really just a very quick tour to this resource. Do not hesitate to also sign up in a way to land portal. If you want to get information regularly through our newsletters, you can go here on Get Involved and you can either create a profile. So you can also have a profile which will be listed on the community. And here you can also input your address, email address and choose your languages to receive information from land portal. Thank you, Nia. Thank you very much, Romi. Truly the information collected in land portal is huge. I can say that as regular collaborator and user of land portal. And I believe that it's very helpful for us to know that there are all those resources there available. And it's true that it's not only about land, right? There are other cross themes connected to land that can be of great help for the stories regarding environment. So let's, I can see how the clock is moving fast. So let's start our general discussion and address some of the questions that we got from the audience. We have here a question from Pin Braval Brusch, cool? I'm sorry if I'm not pronounced it properly. It says when it comes to addressing global environmental problems like mitigating climate change, there tends to be over emphasis on encouraging individual behavior change, like for example, reducing energy consumption, eating less meat, and less on the urgent need for higher level changes like government policies and laws, businesses and industries. How can solutions journalism push for these larger systemic changes in addition to individual level changes? Who wants to address this question? Actually, that's a major, major opportunity for solutions journalism because as we always say, solutions journalism stories delete and optimize as excuses for inaction. So we always have to think of the systems thinking approach. So are we just responding to the symptoms of the problem or the root cause of the problem? So that's one way of really looking at it. And we always emphasize that with solutions, we really make a case for effective policies, effective action, effective responses that make those who are not taking that action, the needed action for this kind of crisis we're having. Do you want to add something to this, Isfati or Alfredo? I can, this is like one of my favorite points, of course. See, the main problem we have here is the disconnect with our audience. So if anybody has been following Indian news in the last couple of years, we had the people actually proved that people protest works. When people get united and ask for something, the others on the other side have to listen. We had the farmer protest going on for over two years. We had protests regarding the Citizenship Act that the present government was trying to bring into force and everybody protested and they pestered. This is not happening when it comes to climate news. This is not happening when it comes to environmental issues. We think that it's the government's job. It's the scientists and they're always telling gloomy stories. So it's not bothering us. We start bothering when we understand that there are things happening around us which we are not aware of for which I'm having to pay 50% more electricity bill. Things that are causing us bringing toxins into our body for which we are having certain kinds of illnesses. Once we start getting associated with this and once people understand that global warming or climate change or environmental issues or toxicity in the soil and water are not far away things. This is close home. We should be bothered. Then they'll probably start demanding the change and then probably our leaders will not be able to just simply do business and run away from the scene. They'll have to be accountable. They'll have to do something about it. So what do you think, Alfredo? Yeah, we'll very quickly say that I would say that it's true that focusing on individual behaviors change is the easy way and that's true. But we need everyone to be involved. We need this to be a global movement which involves individuals as well but also organizations, institutions, companies, governments, everyone. So if you put all the pressure on the individual behaviors that's not fair and it's not. So we need to put the pressure on higher level measures as the person who asked the question says. And you can do by denouncing what we're not doing. That's okay. But also we can do it pushing through making visible a lot of responses that collectives, communities, organizations, NGOs, even companies are trying to develop as a response to collecting. So you can push by making visible a lot of initiatives that are working and learn from them. Thank you. I'll just quickly add that I agree with PIN's point. I don't know whether it was evident from my answer but I agree with PIN's point. The onus is not on the individual because at this point at the stage we are in individual behavior will not bring the kind of change that we need. But what I'm trying to say is that probably through Solutions Journalism we will be able to bring all the individuals on board for a collective protest. So yes, the systems have to work and we have to get our leaders to work on the systems. Yes. Thank you. Thank you. Before moving to the next question I would like to remind our friends joining us that if you are interested in participating in this project, have a look at the webpage on the project and there is an open call for solution stories until March 31st. So feel free and we are hoping that you send your pitch and see the opportunities that participating in this project offers also to learn more on Solutions Journalism and to connect more with journalists applying this approach. So let's move on to another concern, which is we have a Joseph Sampotel saying that environmental and land issues requires deep knowledge and understanding for journalists to report. How can we reconcile the fact that maybe journalists we don't have the time sometimes to get that knowledgeable about the topics that we are reporting and also this reminds me this science based reporting on environment, which sometimes there is also a concern about if these solutions clashes a little bit with what scientists are saying of what the problems are. Do you have any reflection about that? How we can reconcile that? Any thoughts? Yes, Maviko. Can you repeat the question please? Yes, sometimes I mean reporting about the environmental land requires knowledge and sometimes specialized knowledge, right? And we don't always have the time journalists to get that knowledgeable about the topics of our stories and also in the case of environment that so far the reporting on environment has been very much based on what scientists say that what the problems are global warming, et cetera. So how by reporting on solutions is there a barrier there in terms of not having enough knowledge of what the problem that that solution is trying to address? Yeah, that's a valid concern, especially if you are not that into a particular environmental topic. So, but there are a lot of experts that you can talk to or you can fact check. You can vet what they are telling you by talking to a lot of experts, not only those that from the academe, but we also have these people-led signs that we can talk to and verify all these things, all these contrasting information we're getting and how we can reconcile them. So it also helps to talk to people who don't have the interest in the topic. It's very important. They're like the middle person for the pro and against. You really have to look for those people, those that don't have the interest in the story or talking about or writing about. I'll quickly join something, add something there with Mavic. I completely agree with Mavic, that we should talk to the scientists, we should talk to more people and we should all talk to the local people. Because as journalists, we are not supposed to always analyze if what somebody is doing right or wrong because our sources are kind of our trust trustees, right? And we have to trust them. So if a group of people tells us that, okay, this is working for us, then we have to listen to them and we have to report that. And probably we can incorporate the scientists' conversation as well because that's why we have the three other pillars, right? Insights, limitations, and evidence. The evidence will tell us if the solution is working and if it is not working, we will know from the data that we have. And we are able to collect that insight, whether this is... One thing I'll just point out here, I think we didn't mention anywhere, the solutions journalism just not only caters to the solutions that are working. The solutions that are failing in that sense. The solutions that are not exactly working. Those are also part of solution journalism because we are collecting insights, we are collecting evidence, we are learning that why, what is not working and why is it not working? So again, we have to trust the people that are telling us that these are working for us. There are a lot of information and wisdom with the indigenous people and we have to pay attention there. And of course, we have to listen to the scientists and like how they guide us and regarding how the requirement for deep knowledge and this is something we have to kind of incorporate into the workflow that we have as journalists. May I add also that there is this so-called transdisciplinary approach where researchers are required to work with the people they are studying, so that together they co-create knowledge. So it's not only the researcher who is producing knowledge, but they are required to co-create, to define what the problem is and what the recommendations would be together. Okay, thank you. Thank you, very interesting insights. We have a question here. Maybe Alfredo, you can address this one. Is solutions journalism the same as advocacy journalism? No, it's not. I mean, now you don't underline, you don't take sides from that. I mean, you just offer a response, you report, you investigate, you analyze a response and if you follow it before pillars, it's a method that drives you to complete solutions approach and that's it. I mean, you, at SWATI said before, it's not a matter of heroes or heroines doing things and it's not a matter that I write for taking the side with this story of this approach or this response. There is a very interesting, in the webinar I recommended before, you can learn what is solution journalism and what is not. And there is a very, very interesting chapter which is what it's not. So what is not is not advocacy and explain really well why it's not. So I would say the answer is not to the question. Thank you Alfredo. Here we have a reflection from the Janad Ja. Highlighting an environmental issue is one thing. Finding a solution to the issue is another. Honest journalists often suffer on this count often at the cost of their lives. Such cases need to be highlighted to make the discourse more comprehensive. Do you have any reflection about this? Do you share this concern? I'm not sure here if there seems to be not a specific question, but more a reflection. Is it dangerous to report on solutions? It is, no, that is what I wanted to point out, that when we, I mean, mostly in India, covering land access, covering rights to land, encroachment, deforestation, de-listment of forest lands. These are sensitive subjects and these are dangerous subjects. I have colleagues who have had great trouble reporting on sand mining kind of issues, but these are important parts of a journalist's work. We certainly have to highlight problems. We have to investigate. We have to sometimes, in fact, most times work as a watchdog when we say that, okay, somebody is doing something. Somebody is not doing things right. But when we do solutions journalism, we are looking at solutions. We are not just shouting about the problems. We are giving solutions. And this immediately turns the, changes the energy of the story, if I should say that. It gives you solutions. It tells you how to address these problems, how a small community in a small region probably are addressing these problems. And these are learning points that we have. So we are not putting anybody at risk there. Even people who are perpetrating any kind of falsity in those regions, they're probably not scared when we say, see, the land encroachment happens and this is one way we can solve it. So restorative justice, for example, is one way a lot of people are finding solutions to a lot of conflicts. So if we highlight those solutions, this is not dangerous for the journalist, I hope. Thank you, Svati. Here, I think there is one comment for you. Solution journalism seems to prove deeper in showing evidence that something works. I am keen to understand how the pillar on insights contributes to telling the story. Can you expand a little bit on that? Yeah, I'll start, I'll start, but I hope we can Alfredo also joins in because they have done a lot of work in this area. So insights help us because suppose one of our solutions are not working. People have found something that works and when they scale the project out, it is not working the same way as it was working earlier. So those are my insights. So if I start talking about like, there have been innumerable stories on police atrocities in the US. I remember immediately one story, I think I mentioned it once before, like in Mexico, I think some people in a very small area were using eggshells to clean up the water, clean up the drinking water. There has been so much pollution. The drinking water was contaminated. They were using eggshells. And we can immediately understand that this is, like this can only fit in for a small group of people in a small community because it's not easy. It's not possible to get that amount of eggshells, so that the entire district or the entire region can eat. So those are my insights. Those tell us like what can we do to probably surface the obstacles. Thank you, Swati. Rami, did you raise your hand? It was very quickly to actually comment on the earlier comments posed by one of the participants. I think in terms of the dangers now of reporting on solutions journalism. And I would also take this question to maybe a fear or danger in terms of reporting on land issues in general. And I think as Swati was saying, I think it's not dangerous per se in reporting about the solutions. But of course, in itself, but of course, when you're doing solutions journalism, from what I understand, you have to be very thorough, comprehensive. It's not just about the positive side. So I think in general, of course, reporting on land issues can be dangerous for certain people involved, of course. This is also something that we take very carefully in land portal. And we are an organization that advocates for open data. But of course, and there is a lot of confusion about open data and being open about private data. And that's not the same. I just wanted to reinforce that. And I think anyways, the work of a journalist is also to be very careful with his or her sources. So I think this is always at the bottom line when you are conducting, when you are building your story. And I think to help also with this and get better insights now relating to the earlier question is this is why we need to be very careful in where you do your research. So if you'll find sources that websites, data providers, data providers, they'll offer you a whole spectrum of perspectives. I think that's very important as well. Thanks. Definitely. Thank you, Romy, for that. We are having, we have five minutes left. And I would like to remind everybody of the open call for pictures on solutions repairing environmental damage, but with a positive impact on land access and rights as well. And something important is that the pictures should be in English, but the stories can be written in any language because translation will be provided. The idea is to publish the stories in local media and to disseminate them globally through land portal. So if you have any question, please reach out. I will be happy to answer any question that you may have. And there will be, as I said, not only the opportunity to develop a story, but also to get more training and more networking on solutions journalism. And now I would like to let Mavik tell us, because I think Mavik is also having a great training prepare, I think, for her own project. Can you tell us a little bit more, Mavik? Thank you, Nerves. Yes, we are collaborating for our lead projects. And mine is about producing agri-cology stories in Asia. So if you're interested, we are providing climate reporting training with Climate Tracker and Solutions Journalism 101 with a former lead fellow and then online consultations with me all throughout the story production. So if you're interested, please pitch us a story about agri-cology and land rights. And the call for pitch us is now live in the website of climate tracker.org. Thank you, Mavik. And we got the last question. I think we have three minutes. Let's try to address it. Much has been spoken about the potentiality of solution journalism in places like Brazil, Mexico, and India, the same places where land rights and environmental protection are generally understood in opposition to big corporations and big farmers' financial interests. Land conflicts and life threats to human rights, defenders and journalists are often seen. What are the steps you guys take to protect your sources and yourselves? Another one on protection and safety in doing journalism. That's a very fair question. And I will let someone who's doing these kinds of stories on the ground to take the floor and try to give an answer how yourself are doing them. In my experience, it pays to coordinate with, yes, people on the ground, with long-time campaigners, coordinate with them, tell your plan and look for someone you can trust from the local area. Don't go there as without coordination. It's very important. Okay, thank you. So we have one minute left to say thank you to all of you, to Romy, Svati, Alfredo and Mavic. And thank you to everybody who has joined us and those who are going to listen to the recording as well. We are very happy and pleased of having this conversation about the topic that we consider that is important. And we try to somehow create a positive impact in the way we do journalism and in this case, regarding the environment and land. So please check the webpage, send us a pitch and you will have opportunities to work with us and to learn more how to do solution journalism. And thanks again. Have a good night, evening, afternoon, morning, wherever you are. Thank you.