Africa is one of the five priority areas identified by the United Nations Environmental Programme (UNEP);and accordingly, environmental journalists need to be trained in environmental reporting.
Journalists need to be supported in their attempts to interpret complex environmental issues. Since environmental issues, especially climate change is the topical issue of the 21 Century, one would expect the majority of journalists to be conversant with matters concerning the rapid changing of the environment. That may not be enough if journalists cannot report environmental issues the African way. Understanding climate change information is one thing and reporting climate issues is quite a different aspect altogether. As such, African journalists are always found wanting on bolstering the African voice in their reporting and this is quite a monumental challenge.
Fortifying the African voice in their reporting is not always reporting environmental issues in their indigenous and local, but the thrust of the matter is that, can the audience identify the Africanness and its related paradigms in the journalists’ style of reporting. Are the readers in a position to interpret that, indeed yes, the scribes are talking about Africa, Zimbabwe or any other African setting in particular? What types of lenses do these journalists want the people to visualise environmental issues with? Do they want us to continue seeing the environmental issues, particularly the climate change aspects, through the eyes of the West, rich nations that are guilty of polluting the environment or any other foreign country guilty of carbon emissions? Are these journalists challenging the myths that Africa is poor or rather perpetuating the same unfortunate myth that Africa is perennially poverty-stricken and helpless? These are the critical issues that the environmental reporters need to place at the heart of their reporting.
By engaging in African voices, first and foremost, the journalists would be consolidating the fact that African voices need to bring people into the heart of sustainable development rather than leaving them out of this vital eco-friendly discourse. With the way climate change issues are being reported in Zimbabwe and many other African countries, the African voices will continue to be elusive as well as being a perennial missing link. Most of the stories we write on environmental issues, especially the discourse of clean energy, has done a lot to cloud our thinking and perceptions. In most of the reported environmental issues, it always appear as if the clean energy and green technologies are easier to come by, just like manna from the rich countries. Whilst it is a noble idea to shift from dirty forms of energy to clean ones, the African voice is very silent in these initiatives, for it is always dead and buried.
What we continue to hear is the omniscient representations from the reporters themselves, rejoicing in bombarding the innocent and unsuspecting audiences with misplaced concepts of environmental reporting. Concepts like the indigenous knowledge systems that are largely African are not even heard of. They always sound that the Pope has taken a new twist on climate issues. Rarely do we hear that the chiefs and other traditional leadership are of this view regarding the forms of energy on offer.
Definitely we need to improve on the element of the African point of view in our reporting so that it is only us who can tell our African story as well as providing insights into what is missing in our African media coverage and how the gaps can be fulfilled. This is in line with Kwame Nkrumah’s assertions that, “we face neither East nor West: we face forward.” But our leaders today are forcing us to face the Eastern direction, yet we have to be largely ourselves in heart and soul. The African way of thinking is punctuated by using the heart to think, which brings us closer to the environment. Our pain always emanate from the heart, the same thing applies to our love, hatred and anger.
To suggest ways of improving the current nature of communicating environmental issues, we need to cultivate and be guided by the spirit of ubuntu (hunhuism or humanism). If we cannot respect ourselves, our identities and culture as well as not valuing our languages then we cannot expect others to respect us. We would want to see the centrality of ubuntu/hunhuism/humanism and the heart in our environmental journalism. Although it is the mind that thinks, it is always superseded by the heart in our African philosophy. Let us make our African philosophies a point of call when reporting about nature. The African way of according respect to the sacred places in the forests has since died a natural and painful death.
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Although it is common knowledge that the odds continue to get stack against Africa and that there are still inequalities at the heart of climate change reporting, we need to be seen rising up and shinning by sticking to our African point of view. We can only do that, first by engaging in intensive media campaigns conscientising the people on how we present ourselves in writing. That can only happen if, as journalists we have been sufficiently and adequately trained and educated in telling the African story the African way. Right now, many Africans cannot link and justify the prevailing problems of climate change to what is currently happening to our environment because the majority has not been trained into identifying these issues and relate them to their daily lives. African journalists are tasked with the vital opportunity of bolstering the African voice and make people see themselves as victims of climate injustices not as equal partners with the major polluting nations.
Since climate change is accelerating, it is not only the environmental journalists who are going to be held accountable when people fail to grasp climate change issues, it should be made clear that climate change reporting should not be a preserve of the environmental journalists only as it affects cross-cutting sectors of the economy. In this regard, it is essential for all journalists, editors and media proprietors to understand at least the basics of climate change. Let us use our local landscapes and physical features to tell the real climate change story in a true and uncontaminated African way.
This does not mean that we are completely disregarding some sound aspects of globalisation that is why research always recommends us to localise the global or rather to go glocal. The other weak point about our environmental reporting is the dearth of research in climate change issues. The few people who are undertaking research in environmental issues encounter funding or arrogance as stumbling blocks. As a result, climate change news is not particularly selling in Zimbabwe and Africa. Newspapers can sell the information but there is an exclusionary effect because of costs. Only radio can be successfully integrated in this valuable discourse.
Peter Makwanya is a climate change communicator. He writes in his own personal capacity and can be contacted on: [email protected]
