Every day from Monday 7th December to a special closing edition on Saturday 19th December IPS published an online TerraViva from Copenhagen. You can find them all available for download.

The international IPS team did a tremendous work in less than ideal circumstances, led by one of our new Editors-in-Chief, Diana Cariboni. Managed by IPS Latin America with the largest contingent of reporters coming from IPS Africa, and Darryl D’Monte president of our partner IFEJ strengthening the Asian dimension, the team was South-South co-operation in action, with colleagues from Canada and Romania adding their expertise too.

Kumi Naidoo, Kerry Kennedy, Mohan Munasinghe, Ashok Khosla, Saleemul Huq, Laura Tuck, Bill McKibben and Nnimmo Bassey are just a few of the experts who contributed opinion pieces or granted interviews to TerraViva. Read more »

Some 225 participants, the bulk of them journalists from Mekong countries, are set to discuss, debate and take stock of their media environment against a backdrop of changing and often quite different news cultures at the Mekong Media Forum, which started in Chiang Mai, Thailand on 9 December. Follow the event through the daily IPS TerraViva Mekong Media Forum.

The four-day media conference brings together a mix of participants, from print, television journalists and photojournalists to civil society, academics and development workers, who will be discussing a menu of issues such as changes in the Mekong media scene, new trends, citizen journalism and new media, training, media challenges and reporting on water governance, children, as well as gender and sexuality. Read more »

The UK daily The Guardian, an IPS columnist client that over the last years also linked to some of our Africa stories, has now started to publish IPS stories on its environment website. IPS has become a partner in the Guardian Environment network. For a trial period of three months, the Guardian can publish up to two IPS environment stories a week. If the cooperation is successful, the agreement can be continued.

Among other issues, the Guardian is interested in IPS coverage of climate change and the COP15 meeting in Copenhagen. The first story that appeared on the Guardian site was written by Claudia Ciobanu from the Danish capital “Brazil defends biofuels at Copenhagen summit - As the world’s largest producer and exporter of ethanol, it’s no surprise the Brazilian government advocates biofuels as the only real alternative to fossil fuels”.

From IPS, part of the Guardian Environment Network.

Almost 80 million smallholder farmers in Africa, supply about 80 percent of its food. In order for Africa to establish a prosperous and sustainable economic future, the voices of its farmers must be amplified.

To enable this, journalists from across the West Africa region attended a media workshop in Accra, Ghana, hosted by Inter Press Service IPS Africa on behalf of the International Fund for Agricultural Development.

The workshop aimed to build the capacity of local journalists and editors from West and Central Africa to gain the skills and knowledge they need to report on the food crisis and how it can be solved, particularly with the contribution of smallholder farmers. Read more »

Will the climate change summit taking place Dec. 7-18 in Copenhagen make deals that are fair, ambitious and binding? IPS news agency has mobilised a team of journalists, drawn largely from Africa, Asia and Latin America, to go to Copenhagen and find out. IPS’ independent TerraViva newspaper will produce the latest news on the conference every day in English, Spanish and French, complete with photos, videos and other multimedia content. Read more »