15 provincial reporters just completed a climate change training course, and produced over 37 radio and television articles on the subject of climate change.

The training took off on a high note with a launching ceremony attended by both the Minister of Environment, H.E. Dr. Mok Mareth and the Minister of Information H.E. Khieu Kanharith along with a key development Partner figure, the Swedish Ambassador Ms Anne Hoglund, and over 150 participants. Three months later and after a lot of paper scratching, the training course on media and climate change run by the Ministry of Information and the Ministry of Environment closed with a large number of lessons learned.

Ouk Kimseng, Deputy Director of the Agence Khmer de Presse in charge of the training explained that: ‘A part of the challenge was the combination of both media and climate change. Senior reporters needed to learn about climate change but for the less experienced, it was a double challenge : learning about good reporting and learning about climate change.’

So Simean from Siem Reap province is not usually asked to produce reports. In fact it was the first time she wrote one by herself. But she surprised everyone by producing two very well balanced radio articles – and one that got brought her among the three best reporters of the promotion. One of her biggest challenge was not the content but access to information or sourcing: ‘Because of my position, most of the times, my requests for interviews get turned down or delayed.’ This view was shared by many in the training : at subnational level, government officials prefer to avoid interviews – and often explain to the reporters that they worry about saying something wrong.