NEWS

MUMBAI: BBC Hindi's radio documentary, Rising Mercury, Deepening Crisis, has won the Best Radio Documentary Award at the 44th ABU General Assembly in Tehran, Iran, on 3 November 2007.

Rising Mercury, Deepening Crisis was produced by Shivkant Sharma and presented by Mukesh Sharma. Says BBC Hindi's radio editor Shivkant Sharma, "The objective of Rising Mercury, Deepening Crisis was to report how climate change is impacting lives of millions of people in north India, how economic development and changing lifestyle are speeding up climate change and what people could do individually and collectively to tackle climate change. We had a very encouraging feedback from our audience, and now the ABU Award proves that we have been quite successful in our mission."

In Rising Mercury, Deepening Crisis, BBC Hindi examines the effect of human activity on climate change, and the affect of climate change on the lives of millions of people in India. The documentary takes listeners to places where the impact of climate change is already visible and looks at the evidence on the ground.

Starting in a busy street of Kanpur, one of the most polluted cities of India, the programme moves on to Gangotri, the largest glacier in the Himalayas, and Sunderbans, the largest mangroves in the world, tracing the natural path of the carbon-cycle. Along with explaining and highlighting the imminent and visible dangers of climate change, the BBC Hindi documentary examines the practical steps that governments and individuals can take to address the issue.

Rising Mercury, Deepening Crisis offers the testimonials and views of ordinary people coping with the effects of climate change, as well as comments and predictions from leading experts including Dr R K Pachauri, Chairman of the IPCC; Vilas Rao Muttemwar, India’s Minister of State for Renewable Energy; Prof Syed Iqbal Hasnain, former Professor in the Department of Glaciology in Jawaharlal Nehru University, Delhi; Prof Sugato Hazara, Professor of Oceanography at the Jadhavpur University in Kolkata; and Prof Mukesh Sharma, Professor of Civil Engineering and Environmental Studies at the Indian Institute of Technology in Kanpur.