By Gulnura Toralieva

There is no environmental journalism in Kyrgyzstan, said Almaz Ismanov, an independent journalist based in the Kyrgyz town of Osh in the south of the country. According to him, there are only occasional publications about environment, which usually occur within contests or “green” projects funded by international donors.

In Kyrgyzstan, political journalism is a priority. The remaining areas of journalism- including environmental, business reporting and reporting on social issues- are not popular, said Ismanov. The reason is that only political coverage, according to most newspaper editors, makes their newspaper popular amongst the people. Environmental reporting does not promote better sales of newspapers because it is not interesting for the readers. It is only interesting when some ecological disaster happens, he added.

The second reason is that Kyrgyz society and authorities are certain that there are no serious environmental challenges in the country.

“In Kyrgyzstan, we think we live in a paradise, where environment is not an issue at all. This idea is supported with the promotion of different tourism projects. Nobody really cares about the environment,” Ismanov said.

The lack of access to information and experts on environment, as well as the loose or nonexistant ties between journalists and not-for-profit organisations, are also problems.

There is also the problem of the unwillingness of editors to include the environmental coverage to their editorial agenda. “In my experience, there was a case when I was preparing an article about genetically modified foods and was not able to find the necessary information,” said Ismanov.

To promote better coverage of the environment, there is a need for large-scale information campaigns to attract the attention of journalists and the general public to environmental problems. It is also important to extensively train journalists.

One of the biggest obstacles is funding. “Once I wanted to conduct a serious investigation on uranium waste, but didn’t find the financial support to allow myself to focus on it without doing other jobs. So I only did a few interviews. Unfortunately, media owners today are not ready to sponsor investigative projects on environmental issues.

Environmental issues are closely intertwined with political ones. This means that without the permission of authorities, it is very difficult to cover the problems.

“For example in Naryn and Jalal-Abad regions of the country, Chinese mining companies destroy local ecosystems. But because of the lack of access to information and restrictions on publishing, it is not possible to cover the issue. The situation is the same with nature reserves. Nobody knows about them.”