OUTSTANDING ENVIRONMENTAL REPORTING OF THE YEAR 2007

Mr. Max Martin
Freelance Journalist, currently editing ‘indiadisaster.org’

  MAX MARTIN is being honored with the Prem Bhatia Award 2007 for the best environmental reporting. He writes for several publications and agencies on issues related to environment and development and takes photographs. He edits indiadisasters.org, an humanitarian website run by a small group of independent media professionals. It critically examines human-environment interface in the context of disasters.

  Martin's reports trace the linkages between human environment, hazards, disaster vulnerabilities and the resilience of communities. Over the past two years, especially in the context of tsunami rehabilitation in southern India, his reports exposed how the resilience of local communities and their relationship with the environment were undermined by certain inappropriate rehabilitation and development measures. His writing stressed the need for better environmental, habitat and safety standards. His reports have contributed to and critiqued the emerging disaster management policy in India.

  Martin has an academic background in Development Studies and he writes about complex issues and concepts in an engaging manner, often from datelines on the edges of the map. He is one of the few journalists who reports regularly on coastal environment and the people dependent on it. His has worked and freelanced for Down To Earth, The New Indian Express, Inter Press Service and several other groups. Currently he is doing a series of reports on climate change for Inter Press Service and photo features on climate and disasters for indiadisasters.org and TerraGreen. He is an editor of the forthcoming edition of the India Disasters Report 2007 that will be brought out by the Tata Institute of Social Sciences (TISS), Mumbai.

  Significantly, Martin and his indiadisasters.org colleagues have walked that extra mile to make their journalism relevant to people they report on – by organizing a film festival Deconstructing Disasters that had several open-air screenings right on the coast in 2005, and initiating a community radio narrowcast for fisher folk in Thiruvananthapuram called Radio Alakal in 2006.

  Martin holds a Bachelor's degree in Botany from Kerala University, a Diploma in Journalism from the Centre for Mass Media, New Delhi, and a Master's in Forced Migration from Oxford University. He has written Women Builders: Breaking Barriers in Earthquake-torn Villages (Books for Change, Bangalore: 2003), co-authored From Debt Trap to Death Trap: an Enquiry into Farmers' Suicides in India (Vikas Adhyayan Kendra, Mumbai: 2006) and co-edited Miles 2 Go: Tsunami, Recovery and Future an online publication of indiadisasters.org (2007).