By Obiabin Onukwugha
Journalists covering climate change issues in Nigeria and across Africa have been charged to humanise their reports in order to drive the needed action.
The experts gave the charge at a one-day virtual training on on reporting climate change and the water sector, organized by the Citizens Free Service Forum ( CFSF), on Tuesday.
They emphasised that reports on climate change should not only inspire action among policy makers, but should also inspire change.
Speaking on the topic; Climate Change Reporting: Key Issues and Concepts, Executive Director, Renevlyn Development Initiative, Phillip Jakpor, emphasised that joirnalists should abreast themselves with key industry language and drivers of climate change and the impact on people and communities.
He stressed the need for journalists to focus their reports on the differentiated impacts of climate change on women, children, indigenous people, frontline communities, wildlife and the African continent. He added that journalists must leave the comfort of their offices and visit environmental flashpoints, obtain statistics, and amplify solutions in reporting climate change effectively.
“Our reports criticising the current industrial model must go in tandem with recommended and proven solutions. It must expose drivers of climate change and water stress, it must muster civil society, communities on the frontline to take their destinies in their own hands by demsnding climate justice, it must urge policy makers to make just and climatr friendly laws, it must urge delegates to climate talks to uphold the demands of their people,” Jakpor stated.
Comrade Michael Oche, on his part identified part of the gap in reporting climate change to the fact that it is an emerging issue in Nigeria. He stated that many Nigerians are still ignorant about climate change and it’s impacts.
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He pointed out that strategies for developing climate change stories include; identifying the key message you want to pass on, target audience, utilising social media and new technological tool, data generation, factd snd figures and as well human angle stories.
On her part, Executive Director of Child Health Organization (CHO), Vickie Onykwuru, who spoke on “Gender Impact of Climate Change and Water, stated that climate change negatively impacts availability of water through changes in temperature and precipitation. She stated that increased temperature and low levels of precipitation have negative effects on availability of water and decreases water availability as well.
Onyekuru, who noted that lack of water impact differently onwomen, children and men, adding that lack of water leads to migration, conflicts and different diseases.
Earlier in his address, Executive Director of Citizens Free Service Forum (CFSF), Comrade Sani Baba, said the event is part of its series of engagement to bring crucial issues of national concern on climate change and water crisis to the public.
He noted the indispendabbility of the media in reporting climate change. He also emphasised that CFSF realizes that the media is key not only in keeping the public informed as part of its watchdog role, but also in eliciting robust discourse that ultimately translate into policy responses and actions.
Dada mentioned such issues as the shrinking of the Lake Chad and it’s attendant impacts, which include migration of locals and pastorists who depend on the lake to other regions along with its fallouts in form of land owner-settler crisis. He also mentioned floods that have ravaged Maiduguri and now spreading to other parts of the country, saying it will leave behind a trail of further stress on water because the flood waters have polluted the few available wells and other sources of water that our people depend on.
“Realizing that Nigeria, like most African countries and countries of the Global South carry the biggest burdens of the climate change impacts, we conceived this training to capacitate the media to report the issues from informed perspectives.
“We deliberately linked the climate crisis to water stress because this issue is often overlooked in the climate discourse in Nigeria. Yes, the situation in coastal communities facing inundation is dire. Yes, the deforestation issue is alarming but the mother of all crisis is one that affects water that we all consume and depend on for survival.
We are all witnesses to the downward march of the Sahara which has led to scramble for the few available areas where water is available,” he stated.
