Western Balkans Environment Programe

Media briefing on Bajza Project

On 8th of May, the Project organized a one day seminar with journalists of written and electronic media of Shkodra (city situated 15 km from Bajza railway station). A similar activity was performed with the main written and electronic media of Tirana on 30 May.

What coverage do the environmental issues have in the media today in Albania? Do journalists have a good understanding of the correlation between human health and environment? How to cover these issues in a cogent and thoughtful manner?

Though it was not possible to perform a comprehensive analyzes of all these interrogatives in one day, the seminars were conceptualize in a way to give them the road map that leads to the identification of the fundamental steps to be taken to cover Bajza hot spot issue in the most efficient manner.

Bajza hot spot came to national and international attention thanks to documentary movie “Death Train” realized by Xhemal Mato, the main Albanian authority in environmental journalism. During his presentation in both seminars, Mr. Mato stressed the power of media to highlight and solve many problems of the society, to include the environment. The movie was also projected.

In addition to this, Ms. Klodiana Marika, technical coordinator of the project “Identification and prioritization of environmental hot spots in Albania”, gave an overview of what were considered hot spots, with figures illustrating the global situation with a special focus on the Bajza environmental hot spot.

The efforts of UNDP Project to rehabilitate Bajza hot spot had broad coverage on the main Albanian newspaper “Shekulli” and Koha TV, a leading TV station in Albania.