ST journalist wins second 'green' award in a year

SINGAPORE - Straits Times environment correspondent Grace Chua has been named Singapore's winner of this year's Siemens Green Technology Journalism Award.

Ms Chua, 28, triumphed for her commentary "Towards a robust clean air strategy", which covered a wide spectrum of causes and effects of air pollution, strategies proposed by academics, and government and private sector efforts to manage it.

Dr Faizal Yahya, a research fellow at the Institute of Policy Studies and one of the judges, said: "The article will be useful for policymakers and provides a brief but informative piece on an evolving clear air strategy in Singapore."

This is Ms Chua's second award in a year - last August, she bagged the City Developments Limited Environmental Journalist of the Year award.

She has been with The Straits Times for five years and was a recipient of the Singapore Press Holdings journalism scholarship in 2003. After her undergraduate studies, she completed a master's degree in science writing at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and has since covered a wide range of topics such as land use change and biodiversity.

"The environment beat is fascinating," said Ms Chua. "A lot of issues can be boiled down to environment and science, and you're always learning something new with every story."

In the Siemens contest, the second of its kind, Ms Chua faced four other journalists in Singapore. In all, Siemens had more than 170 entries from the Asia-Pacific region, including those from local news dailies, trade publications and online media.

Ms Chua wins $1,000 and a trip to the award ceremony in London, where she will also attend an environmental conference. She will be considered for the regional round of the competition along with six other country winners from Australia, Indonesia, Malaysia, the Philippines, Thailand and Vietnam. The results of this round will be announced next month.

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