In February Reuters Foundation in cooperation with UNDP held a three-day workshop on Climate Change in Kyrgyzstan, for 15 journalists from former, now independent Soviet republics and from central Europe. It was the fourth Climate Change course, after the inaugural one in London in June 2007, Nairobi in September and one in Beijing in November.
UNDP was holding a parallel course for their staff in the region on how to use video, run by former Reuters TV staffer Boaz Paldi.
After meeting in the national capital Bishkek, and attending the Kyrgyzstan launch of UNDP’s Global Human Development Report which focussed on climate change, the two groups and Foundation trainers Colin McIntyre and Oliver Wates were taken by bus up to lake Issyk-Kul at 1,600 metres (5,250 feet) above sea-level, described as the third largest alpine lake in the world. The lake faces the eventual prospect of shrinking as glaciers on the surrounding mountains disappear through climate change. The course was held in a sanatorium on the lake shore built in the Soviet era for officials of the Communist Party Central Committee.
The spirit of Climate Change was definitely in evidence as the new private owners of the vast building turned down the heating, with snow carpeting the surrounding landscape, forcing many participants to go through the programme in coats and scarves. Chinese-made fan heaters were eventually supplied to bedrooms.
A field trip wedged between two days of class-based programmes saw the two groups heading around the huge lake to visit UNDP-funded alternative energy projects, a farm powered entirely by biogas from animal manure and another small community sharing a fresh-water pump powered by solar energy. The journalists were then asked to write a feature on the trip, and these were discussed by the group the next day.
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