In the foothills of the Himalayas, a few hours north of the birthplace of The
Buddha is the Nepali village community of Madanpokhara. A dirt track leads up a
hillside and into the village. There is a school, a Hindu temple, a couple of tea
houses, workshops and stores. Homes and smallholdings are scattered across the
hillside. Beyond the village centre a narrow path leads through the woods to the
top of the hill. A white brick building at the summit bears a tall red and white
mast, the home of Radio Madanpokhara. Inside are the radio studios, powered by a
generator. A group of Tibetan refugees sit around the microphones chanting the
sounds of another country. Radio Madanpokhara is less than 12 months old, the
fourth community radio station in Nepal, a country where just 15 per cent of the
population have electricity, and the Internet is a world apart.

Contexts

If we start from the principle that empowerment and liberation is the goal of
social development, then a primary objective of any progressive global strategy
must include the appropriation of the means of information and communication. But
this is not simply a question of access to the technologies. Rather it is a
question of achieving the most appropriate local communications environment to
enable popular, contextualised and critical use of information.

Radio is a medium particularly well placed to support this objective. It is a
technology with low production costs and low distribution costs. As an aural
medium, it does not exclude those who are unable to read or write and it is well
suited to broadcasting in people's local and vernacular languages. Radio has become
an intimate and pervasive presence throughout the world and has penetrated into the
remotest areas of the poorest countries. It is the world's most widespread
electronic communications device, far exceeding, in numbers, the television, the
telephone and the computer.

Radio takes a diversity of forms - the commercial model seeks to conquer new
markets and to profit from delivering audiences to advertisers, while the
traditional public service broadcasting model seeks to defend nation state
identity. Community radio is the civil society of the airwaves defending human
rights and social justice against the intrusions of state and capital. Its presence
is an indicator of a participatory democratic culture.

Community radio has a rich history. Among the first examples were the radios of the
Bolivian tin mining communities which started broadcasting in the late 1940s. In
many countries community radio is now an established and recognised part of the
media landscape operating under distinct regulatory conditions, locally owned and
accountable, providing media access to citizens and communities, and supported
through a mixture of public and private finance. It is common throughout Europe and
North America but it is Latin America which has the most diverse and widespread
community radio movement.

In Africa and Asia community radio is a more recent phenomenon. State broadcasting
was the norm throughout the African continent, at least until the mid 1980s, and
with little real or pretended distance from the Government of the day. In 1985
there were less than 10 independent radio stations in the entire African continent
but the last 15 years has seen the opening of the airwaves to hundreds of private
and community radio stations.

In post-apartheid South Africa, the establishment of community radio was seen as a
tool to empower the majority, previously excluded from the airwaves. South African
community radio has a distinct status in law and regulation as a third tier,
alongside state and commercial radio, and over 80 community radio stations have
been licensed.

In Asia, community radio has barely begun to develop. Radio Sagarmatha in Nepal,
the first independent community radio station in South Asia, started just five
years ago. In South East Asia a new generation of community radios is emerging in
Thailand, the Philippines and East Timor. Australia has nearly 30 years of
community radio experience but elsewhere across the Pacific the airwaves give voice
to the people for the first time.

A community of 100,000 people can easily be served by a single community radio
station, broadcasting on either FM or AM. The cost to the listener amounts to the
price of batteries or electricity. The radio production centre and transmission
system takes a few thousand dollars to establish and the costs of staff and general
overheads to operate.

With a single Internet connection the radio station can act as a gateway to the
wealth of information and resources available on the Internet. The radio station
acts not simply as a conduit for information on the Internet since most of this is
in text form, in English and from a northern perspective. Instead it adds value to
the information by interpreting it into a local context, by broadcasting it in
local and vernacular languages, and by providing a platform for feedback through
local discussion and networks of local correspondents.

Issues

The appropriation of the means of communication by community-based media is
spreading rapidly but not without constraints and challenges to be addressed and
overcome. Four interacting parameters can be identified as key drivers of change
and development which can be summarised in brief as convergence, liberalisation,
the knowledge economy and the new social movements.

* The convergence of telecommunications and broadcasting is a technological reality
driven by economic interests and interpreted in legislative and regulatory change.
It is characterised by the technological transition from analogue to digital. At
the legislative and regulatory level, convergence is accompanied by a culture clash
between telecommunications regulation, which traditionally has been largely content
neutral, and broadcast systems which have traditionally defended particular forms
of social content. Across the world the technological and regulatory environments
are changing rapidly and opportunities will be siezed or lost as a new
communications order is put into place.

* The liberalisation of information and communications is driven more explicitly by
a simple economic agenda - the appropriation of the worlds information and
communications flows by a handful of global multinationals mainly dominated by the
US. If their agenda succeeds it will lead to the privatisation of the radio
spectrum and the end of special concessions for public service broadcasting and
social uses of the media. In the US radio spectrum pricing has already been
replaced by spectrum trading and Europe is following closely behind. The airwaves,
part of the global commons, are being appropriated in the same way that land has
been appropriated in the past.

* The rise of the knowledge economy is characterised by the replacement of
traditional goods and services in the worlds economic markets by symbolic goods and
virtual distribution networks protected by global intellectual property agreements.
The new economy brings new working patterns and jobs which present opportunities as
well as threats. Community media organisations have a vital role to play in
enabling people to gain a critical understanding of the new economy and to learn
the skills of media and communications which are needed for survival in the
information age.

* The new global social movements represent a counter trends to the rise of
information capital and the power of the global communications multinationals.
Wherever political and legislative reform is on the agenda, at the national or
international level, there are voices to be found arguing that change must be
linked to insistence on human rights, democracy, good governance, sustainable
development and policies to make the world a better place for those most in need.
Without this wider context, and the recognition that community media can contribute
to empowerment, democratic participation and social justice, the community media
movement would not be the growing force it is today.

Proposals

Community media in general and community radio in particular have demands that need
to be met if we are to build a world in which another communication is possible.

* First, we must demand that Governments and intergovernmental bodies, including
the International Telecommunications Union, ensure that planning of the radio
spectrum is based on the principle that the radio spectrum is part of the global
commons belonging to us all and guaranteeing access for social use and public
benefit.

* Second, we must demand legislative reform take account of the specific
characteristics of community media and to provide for this within the policy and
regulatory framework. The many examples of good practice need to be reinforced by
international protocols such that community media provision becomes the norm and
not the exception.

* Third, we must seek effective mechanisms to ensure that community media has a
viable economic base and is not marginalised by the mainstream commercial media.
Support and assistance is needed for existing community media to adapt to new
digital production technologies and for new community media to get underway.

* In doing so we must raise awareness of the educational, developmental and the
transformative potential of community media among civil society organisations and
the new social movements, and among policy makers, regulators, and international
institutions. The right to communicate is fundamental to a society based on human
rights and social justice. Community media are a vital means of achieving that
right.

Porto Alegre, 1 February 2002

* Steve Buckley, Deputy President, World Association of Community Radio
Broadcasters (AMARC)

** Paper presented for the Seminar: "Communication and citizenship", organized by ALAI, APC and APRESS at the 2nd World Social Forum.