Journalists Need to Know Oversight Extractive Industries
event 2015-11-01 local_offer Testimony , Training edit Tommy Apriando
Three years ago I decided to work as a journalist. I joined one of the media focuses on the environment issues, named Mongabay Indonesia. Initially, it was not easy for me to cover the issue. I graduated from the Faculty of Law, Islamic University of Indonesia, that is the oldest one in Yogyakarta. Thereby, I have never learnt about the environment, forests, biodiversity and mining. However, I am concerned about those issues, and now every day I learn all of them. An eye opening look into environment issues makes me know a lot of things. This encouraged me to go deeper into journalism.
If you want to become a journalist, then you need to make sure that the choice was coming from your conscience. This job requires responsibilities that is (not) light but not heavy at all. It's - exciting to do however sometimes exhausting and depressing to do so.
Hence, how does a reporter prepare a manuscript journalism for extractive industry issues? The first thing to do is knowing what you want to do. It is important to know the issues you are going to hunt and know who you are going to interview. Then you need to do research to understand the circumstance. Through research, you are able to identify carefully what has happened as well as what people need. Certainly, it is necessary to realize that there are other journalists who have been working on covering the same issue. In addition, not only research, occasionally journalists also need training to develop “nose for news”.
The opportunity to improve my knowledge and skill finally came on October 18, 2015 until October 31 2015. I got the scholarship to attend training course on extractive industries that is organized by Department Politics and Governance, University of Gajah Mada in partnership with Natural Resource Governance Institute (NRGi). The training was followed by participants from four countries in Asia Pacific, including Indonesia, Myanmar, Philippines, and Timor Leste, as well as participants from Germany, , united Kingdom, Tunisia, and Dominican Republic.
There are 27 participants in this training who come from a diverse backgrounds, specifically government, civil society, parliament and journalists. Through this training, I targeted to achieve better understanding on the extractive industries governance, from the positive impact to the negative impacts. On top of that, I wanted to understand soci0-environmental impact of extractive industries.
Through the eyes of a journalist, that the training gave me a lot of perspectives to cover the extractive industries. By following the decision chain, the oversight on extractive industries governance can be started from the agreement, exploration, production until post-mining activities. I can obtain information about how an agreement was made, who the parties are involved, whether or not the agreement is beneficial for a country, as well as attain scrutiny whether or not there is an indication of the corruption. Now I also understand what should be done by mining companies before starting exploration, including obtain the license to carry out environmental impact and social attention.
All this time, mining companies deliver sweet promises when they will operate the mining in the region, for example in Indonesia. They are always promising employment opportunities for local people, doing good practices mining activities that are environmental concern, as well as giving all the best externalities to the neigbouring society. Unfortunately, the promises have never proven in practices. It's very sad.
In addition, the training encourage me to assign specific area of coverage, notably the existing mining productionand post-mining production. I am capable to find information about what the companies do after mining activities has completed. It is important to assign whether or not the companies are going to do reclamation responsibilities. I am concerned that many mining companies have no commitment to reclaime their mining areas. I will bear in mind that every single environmental damage on the land should be concerned. It is essential to arrange cost banefits analysis (CBA) to calculated carefully the state income from mining revenue compared to social beneficiary of the society.
So that, as journalists I need to go deeper on how the process of the presence of an extractive industry. Society requires a lot of information about the presence of a large investment in the extractive sector. Hence, the responsibility of the journalist is providing pithy and clear information about the extractive industries.
I am very committed that journalists should verify their report. It is essential to obtain quick respond to see immediately what is happening . Occasionally, journalists need do in-depth reporting in the extractive industries sector, to reveal who get the advantages as well as the disadvantaged from extractive activities.
All in all, I am grateful to have been selected for this opportunity to attend the Asia Pacific training course on extractive industry governance. I eager to apply the knowledge that I have acquired from the course on the field of journalism. Once again, I thank you.
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Tommy Apriando serves as Journalist for Mongabay Indonesia