Arturo Larena, environmental journalist and director of EFE Verde, participated in the twentieth session of the Planeta UAB lecture series, an initiative of the Gabinete de Comunicación y Educación aimed at students of its master’s degree programs.
This lecture series is part of the project “Planet UAB: The journey to the other – equals in differences” organized by the Gabinete UAB during the academic year 2020-2021, with the support of the Fons de Solidaritat of the Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona, which organized a series of activities and awareness-raising actions based on the concept of the UAB campus as a “planet” and dealing with major issues such as the culture of peace, sustainability, the environment and interculturality, among others.
Students of the Master in Travel Journalism, the Master in Environmental Communication and the Master in Communication and Education participated in this twentieth session with Arturo Larena, entitled ‘EFE Verde: A global platform for news and environmental journalism’. The journalist spoke about the work carried out within the environmental news and journalism platform EFE Verde, a news division of EFE that works on different environmental issues such as renewable energies, biodiversity and sustainable development. The director of the agency analyzed the evolution of environmental information in the media and stressed the importance of keeping this journalistic specialization away from eco-fatigue, a concept that refers to fatigue due to excess of information on ecological issues. In this sense, he showed the students the routines of journalistic production in the field of environmental journalism.
Arturo Larena is an environmental journalist. Director of EFE Verde and the area of Science and Future of the EFE Agency. He has been awarded the National Environment Award, the BBVA Foundation Award for Biodiversity Conservation and the WWF Golden Panda Award, as one of the five Spaniards who have contributed most to environmental culture from the media.
The Gabinete de Comunicación y de Educación is a consolidated group specialised in scientific research and dissemination, which belongs to the Department of Journalism and Communication Sciences of the UAB. Recognised by AGAUR (Agència de Gestió d’Ajuts Universitaris i de Recerca) of the Generalitat de Catalunya as a Consolidated Research Group on the basis of its trajectory, projection and development, it develops projects and research in the field of convergence between communication and education. Since its creation, it has developed initiatives aimed at integrating, with awareness and freedom, communication technologies in the so-called global or knowledge society. Under the direction of Santiago Tejedor, the Office organises different master’s degrees, such as the Master’s Degree in Travel Journalism (on-site and online), the Master’s Degree in Communication and Education, the Master’s Degree in Environmental Communication and the Master’s Degree in Political and Electoral Communication Management. The group has a wide and varied collection of publications, in the form of scientific articles, books and book chapters, and other works, which is constantly being renewed. It also has a laboratory for teaching innovation projects, transfer and new formats that are conceived and developed from a perspective based on creativity and multidisciplinary work. Every year, the Cabinet organises an academic expedition that travels the world with students from different universities and degrees. This is the Tahina-Can Expedition, which has been awarded as the best educational project in Spain. It also has the portal Tu Aventura, the educational platform infoEDU and the newsgames and science project Reporteros de la ciencia.
