Omiete Blessing
Journalists across Nigeria and Africa at large has been urged to task policy markers to make laws that are climate friendly.
The Executive Director, Renevlyn Development Initiative, Mr Phillip Jakpor, made the call during a one-day virtual training on reporting climate change and the water sector, organised by the Citizens Free Service Forum
(CFSF).
The group also charged journalists to humanise their reports in order to drive the needed action, emphasised that reports on climate change should not only inspire action among policy makers, but should also inspire change.
Presenting a paper titled: “Climate Change Reporting: Key Issues and Concepts”, Jakpor advised journalists to visit environmental flashpoints, obtain statistics, and amplify solutions in reporting climate change effectively.
He emphasised that journalists should abreast themselves with key industry language and drivers of climate change and the impact on people and communities.
Jakpor further 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.
According to him, “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.
“The report must muster civil society, communities on the frontline to take their destinies in their own hands by demanding climate justice, it must urge policy makers to make just and climate friendly laws, it must urge delegates to climate talks to uphold the demands of their people,” Jakpor added.
Earlier in his remarks, Executive Director of CFSF, 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.
He emphasised that CFSF realises 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.
Baba noted that the floods that have ravaged Maiduguri and spreading to other parts of the country, as serious concern, 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.
“Realising 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.
Also speaking, Executive Director of Child Health Organization (CHO), Vickie Onyekwuru, 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, adding that lack of water leads to migration, conflicts and different diseases.
