Imphal, November 18 2009: How successful has been the 18th annual congress of International Federation of Environmental Journalists (IFEJ), which was held at India Habitat Centre, New Delhi from October 28 to 30 in realising its stated objective of bridging the north-south differences in reporting climate change and the journalists' role in reaching an ambitious agreement at COP 15 ? .

The result is yet to be seen, but it did succeed in exposing a divide of a different kind which is more deeper than expected.

While the issue over the north-south gap seems to have been rested when Bryan Walsh of Time magazine, New York, who presented a paper on US media and the US perspective on climate change, said 'we (US and its media) spend more time talking about climate change than doing anything about it'.

This promptly fell in the line of firing by Sunia Narain, Indian environmentalist and editor of Down to Earth magazine, New Delhi, who reminded the historical responsibility of the developed countries in reducing the global carbon emissions and the need to ensure that US President Barak Obama really deserves the Nobel Peace Prize awarded to him prematurely.

Shortly after this the congress threw open the gap within the Indian journalist fraternity in looking at the issue.

Regardless of the sizeable representation of Indian environmental journalists in comparison to their foreign counterparts, the complete absence, or rather the self-imposed boycott by journalists based in the host city New Delhi was a sad commentary on how Indian environmental journalists in the Green National capital take on the issue of climate change.

Out of the six journalists from Delhi, who were invited, none showed their face during the three-day long congress.

Interestingly, one lady journalist from Delhi, who happened to be an acquaintance of one of my friends from Guwahati, and had just come for the registration on the day of the inaugural function and to collect the delegate kit comprising a bag, notepad, pen, programme schedule and dinner invitation card, cheekily contended, 'What is there to learn anything new, anyway', before leaving with the promise she would be there for the Leh trip.

''Thats the only attraction" she said.

Among the Indian States, Maharashtra had the largest share of participants with 13 of them alone from the financial capital of India.

From the North East, we were lucky to have seven, including two from Manipur with the remaining five from Assam, to present our case.

Adding salt to the already wounded sentiments of the participating foreign as well as Indian journalists, failure of Shyam Saran, India's ace diplomat and Prime Minister's Special Envoy on climate change, to show up at the last minute to share his observations on the country's position on climate change threw cold water bloating out completely the roadmap of the journalists for arriving at a meaningful climate deal at COP 15 due to be held at Denmark capital, Copenhagen in December this year.

Talking of the chasm within Indian media, how can the gender divide be far behind.

On the concluding day, while registering the feedbacks of the participants, one of the lady journalists took great pain in pointing out the impropriety of choosing only the women as a tradition to present mementos to the guests and speakers.

Though her sharp observation deserved applaud and appreciation, viewing everything through the prism of gender equality would itself become an issue.

Dilemma of Indian environmental journalists: Reluctancy on the part of the Indian scientists and climatologists from giving their comments on issue related to climate change is one major concern of the Indian environmental journalists in reporting on the issue, it was emerged during the congress.

In the words of Darryl D'Monte, chairperson of Forum of Environmental Journalists of India (FEJI) and International Federation of Environmental Journalists (IFEJ) , the Indian scientists and climatologists are reluctant from saying anything on the issue related to climate change until crossing of all the 't's and dotting of the 'i's, thereby posing difficulty to the journalists in reporting.

However, he had a word of caution for the journalists against the tendency of trying to link every individual weather events to climate change.

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