The UN Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO), with financial support from Finland, is promoting the creation of a network of Latin American and Caribbean journalists and other communicators on forestry and other environmental issues to exchange information, promote cross-fertilization and in some cases stress common messages, such as the the region's importance to global food security.
19 September 2012: A workshop of Latin American journalists and other communicators organized by the UN Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) and the Tropical Agriculture Center for Research and Higher Education (CATIE) has led to the creation of a new “Network of Forest and Environmental Communicators.”
The workshop, the second of its kind organized by FAO’s Regional Office for Latin America and the Caribbean (LAC) with financial support from the Government of Finland, took place from 11-13 September 2012, at CATIE facilities in Turrialba, Costa Rica. It brought together communicators from both public and private entities in Chile, Costa Rica, El Salvador, Guatemala, Honduras, Nicaragua, Panama and Peru.
The new network agreed to link up with a similar one already created for South America in order to form a single large network for the entire region. The combined network will seek to strengthen the capacities of journalists, public affairs officers and other communicators to share success stories and promote learning among its members. The network agreed to stress common messages, such as the importance of LAC to global food security. [FAO Press Release (in Spanish)]