INTERNATIONAL GREEN PEN AWARD WINNER - 2009
Nanette Woonton - Cook Islands

Nanette Woonton was the News Director for television news with Cook Islands Television in the Cook Islands, however as an arm of the Pitt Media Group, Woonton also worked in producing documentaries, advertisements, radio news and print news.  In 2007 Woonton moved to Samoa to work with the Secretariat of the Pacific Regional Environment Programme (SPREP) as the Associate Media and Publications Officer. 
Woonton has been instrumental in a strong climate change media outreach for the Pacific islands region.  In 2008 she sourced funding for a “Capacity Building for climate change reporting project” which involved bringing over 10 Pacific islands reporters together in Apia Samoa to undergo a week of training with Climate change specialists and specialists in different environment fields.  She also brought them together to report on the Pacific Climate Change Roundtable (PCCR) which is a meeting of all climate change and environment stakeholders in the Pacific islands region.

Under this project Woonton facilitated training to help the reporters strengthen their knowledge on climate change and environmental issues and then provided them with an opportunity to use these skills by reporting on the PCCR, which was then uploaded on the SPREP website.  Attending the PCCR helped link these reporters to the Pacific specialists that attended in order to widen their environment ‘contact' list.  From this a pool of 4 reporters was selected, which made up the Pacific Communications Team, led by Woonton during the UNFCCC COP14 in Poznan, Poland.  This team were responsible for providing media and communications advice to the Pacific delegations at the meeting, as well as to carry out reporting on the Pacific delegations and the UNFCCC COP process, over the period of 2 weeks over 40 news articles were written and filed, which helped raise the profile of the UNFCCC and climate change in the Pacific region.  This was the first time that such an initiative took place which helped raise huge awareness in the Pacific about such a monumental meeting.

In 2009 Woonton continued to seek funding for the Climate Change Media Outreach for which there has been success.  The Vision Pasifika Media Award with a focus on climate change was launched with support from WWF.  This award is to motivate, encourage and reward good reporting on the climate change topic ­ the award closes 1 November 2009 and it is hoped that a strong number of entries will be submitted as part of the aim of the outreach is to equip the Pacific reporters with skills so they are able to report factually and more consistently on climate change.  Funding was also secured for a second Climate Change Media Training in Apia, Samoa at the SPREP compound from 21 ­ 25 September.  The training brought 13 regional journalists together for 1 week up journalism skills development, story filing and information sessions with environment experts that work at SPREP.  The participants learnt about climate change and other environmental issues so they have a fuller understanding of these concerns and will feel motivated to focus on these as news stories more often in the future.  All participants were expected to file one story per day and they have also helped by setting a target themselves of producing one climate change news story a month. 
Another project which took place in 2009 was the Climate change and Media poster in partnership with UNESCO, this poster acts as a ‘brochure on the wall' and outlines basic climate change information as well as story ideas and questions that can be asked.  It is to help encourage reporters to do climate change news more often in the Pacific.

  In December 2009, Woonton will lead a Pacific Communications Team to the UNFCCC COP 15 in Copenhagen to report on climate change issues as per 2008 in Poland.  The team is made up of participants who attended the 2009 Climate change media training, this team will act like a window for the Pacific to the happenings at the Climate Change COP.  Woonton will also lead an Alliance of Small Islands States (AOSIS) communications team who will work to assist AOSIS at the COP 15.  Further to that as part of the climate change media outreach Woonton is compiling a climate change toolkit for Pacific media so they will have all facts and figures on hand in order to report on climate change in their country, this toolkit is currently being developed and will be distributed throughout the Pacific region once completed.
While climate change may play a large part of the work conducted by Woonton, it is not all that she focuses on.  Woonton works to ensure that environment reporting is a strong consideration amongst Pacific Media, all environment issues from waste to biodiversity to climate change.  One of the projects she has undertaken was to conduct environment seminars with members of JAWS, the journalism association of Samoa, during lunchtimes as part of an education and awareness training.  SPREP staff spends an hour with Samoa reporters and interested people to present them with information on the environmental field they work in, over lunch to allow for as many reporters to attend.  Several of these environment seminars were staged in 2008 for the reporters in Samoa, as SPREP is based in Apia, Samoa.

Woonton has also acted as facilitator for several training initiatives that have taken place, including the Commonwealth Broadcasters Association meeting in Tonga in 2009 as well as the Climate change and Food Security training in Vanuatu which took place before the biannual summit of the Pacific Islands News Association.She is passionate about developing the skills of Pacific media so they become good environment journalists, although this work has taken place over the past 2 years there are so many other ideas forthcoming for the future.  Thank you for her consideration for this award.

Reasons why the candidate merits the Award

Woonton merits the Award for all the above reasons.  She has worked hard to ensure that Pacific reporters learn more about climate change and the Pacific environment so we'll see better awareness and understanding of the issues.  Climate change is having such a major impact upon the lives of Pacific people and being able to know more about it will help them adapt to climate change, Woonton is passionate about this and helping this cause.  Our environment in the Pacific is what helps give us our Pacific identities, without a strong environment the Pacific region is at a loss and it is this belief that encourages Woonton to work hard and develop new ways for reporters to learn more, understand more and be inspired to write more about the environment so communities can make bigger choices.

Taking a Pacific Communications Team to the UNFCCC COP meetings was a pioneering step for Pacific journalists - it challenged reporters to deliver good sound work so that their communities will fully understand why these meetings are important for the World, it also helps develop their interests in climate change and environmental reporting.  Good investments have been made in developing the skills of Pacific reporters with some on to receive international media awards and others to receive Reuters Fellowships.  Woonton was instrumental in that this project was her vision and initiative and now it has taken off and become successful, it is our Pacific reporters that are benefiting from these opportunities

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