As last year, IFAT India will in 2014 again be supporting the Indo-German Environment Partnership (IGEP) of the GIZ (Deutsche Gesellschaft für Internationale Zusammenarbeit) and, on October 9, hosting the award ceremony for the “All India Environmental Journalism Competition”. The “Clean Ganga Award”, a special prize for reporting on the rejuvenation of the Ganges, will be presented by Michael Steiner, the German Ambassador in India.

The “All India Environmental Journalism Competition” has been organized by GIZ since 2013, under the patronage of the German Embassy in New Delhi, and in cooperation with the Asian College of Journalism, Local Governments for Sustainability (ICLEI) South Asia, thethirdpole.net, IFAT India and the Deutsche Welle Akademie. The awards, which are divided into the categories of print, TV, radio, internet and photography, are presented for accurate, critical and profound media coverage of environmental topics in India.

New this year is an additional category – the “Clean Ganga Award”, a special prize to be presented at IFAT India by the German Ambassador in India, Michael Steiner. The Ganges is India´s second-largest river and it is suffering from considerable levels of pollution. The new Indian government, under Prime Minister Narendra Modi, is therefore planning to expand and clean up “Mother Ganges”. The award initiative takes up this theme by honoring the best journalistic reporting on the rejuvenation of the Ganges.

Applicants are invited to submit entries up until August 15. Further information is available online at: http://www.igep.in/e48093/e59184/. The winners will be announced at the end of August and they will be presented with their prizes on the first day of IFAT India.

The second edition of India´s Leading Trade Fair for Water, Sewage, Refuse and Recycling, takes place from October 9 to 11, 2014 at the Bombay Exhibition Centre (BEC) in Mumbai. Already many big-name companies have signed up to exhibit at IFAT India, for example, Bilfinger Water Technologies, Endress + Hauser (India) Pvt Ltd, Excel Industries, Ion Exchange Waterleau Ltd, Roots Multiclean Ltd, Organica Biotech, ThyssenKrupp Bauservice GmbH and WTW Wissenschaftlich-Technische Werkstätten GmbH – a Xylem Brand.

Alongside national pavilions of exhibitors from Austria, China, Germany and Switzerland, there will also be a pavilion organized by the German Water Partnership (GWP).