Radio programme for the Amazon
Copyright 2001 WWF International
September 4, 2001
Brasilia, Brazil - The Acrean audience is the first in the Amazon Region to receive the radio broadcast of WWF-Brazil's environmental programme for the Amazon region, called Natureza Viva (Living Nature).
The programme is produced in Brasilia, tape recorded and sent by post to Rio Branco (the capital city of Acre), from where it is broadcast to the entire state of Acre by the Difusora radio network formed by 6 local broadcasters. That was the solution found after the programme broadcast was interrupted last December following the end of the 7 year partnership with Radiobrás (Brazilian public radio system), which is the only broadcaster capable of covering the entire Amazon region, including the most remote forest and rural areas. Acre state government and GTA (Amazon Working Group) support the new programme.
Natureza Viva is now a 15 minute long weekly programme but has kept the same magazine format, featuring environmental news, messages, interviews, discussion of the 21st Century Agenda, health and medicinal plants, gender and children, and in addition, a new section for the rubber tapers and other extractivists.
The second step will be to produce another weekly 15 minute long theme programme, for which the support of the governmental forest protection programme Proteger is already assured. Featuring deforestation issues, the new programme will be aired by 150 radio broadcasters covering the entire "Deforestation arch" (including the states of Rondonia, southeastern Amazonas, northern Mato Grosso and Tocantins, southern and southeastern Para, northeastern Maranhão and Amapá).
A recent opinion survey in the states of Acre, Rondonia and Pará revealed that WWF Brazil's radio programme is known by 24% of the population (47% when considering only the rural population) and that 16% of the interviewees had heard the programme in the week they were interviewed.