The International Labour Organisation (ILO) and Citizens Free Service Forum (CFSF) have urged journalists to write only stories that are fact-checked and advance the cause of climate resilience.

At a two-day training for the media in Abuja on climate change and just energy transition, Executive Director of the Renevlyn Development Initiative (RDI), Philip Jakpor, expressed disappointment at the way Nigerian media report climate change stories.

He noted that the imagery that is used to depict climate change is that of cyclones, hurricanes, forest fires, desertification and melting glaciers.

Jakpor also argued that the focus of most of the reports in the indigenous media is usually climate impacts outside the country, with little attention paid to Nigeria’s climate-induced developments.

He mentioned that the unreported or under-reported climate issues in Nigeria include the drying Lake Chad, which was 25,000 square kilometres in the 1960s and now well below 1,500 square kilometres, the Great Green Wall initiative, which is supposed to build resilient ecosystems in 11 states of Nigeria, which is yet to be fully implemented.

Painfully, he explained that the challenge of climate change has grave implications for the people, identifying loss of livelihoods, loss of lives, displacement, and food security concerns, which should raise the curiosity of the media.

Speaking further, he stated that the equation has deeply embedded itself in the management of ecological funds and other funds that are allocated to curb ecological degradation.

In his presentations, ‘Basics of Reporting Climate Issues in Nigeria’ and ‘The Art of Storytelling,’ Jakpor highlighted the tools that are needed to write impactful stories.

Acknowledging the role media is expected to play in mitigating the impacts of climate change and energy transition, Stephen Agugua, who represented the ILO, said the global labour watch body is convinced that the two-day training would influence the quality of stories that would be churned out henceforth.

He stressed the readiness of the ILO to continue working with the media to amplify unreported impacts of climate change on frontline communities and the workspace, which go unnoticed in mainstream media outlets.

In his presentation, ‘The Science of Climate Change and the Evolution of the Struggle for Just Transition’, Coordinator, Nigeria Labour Congress (NLC) Climate Change, Green Jobs, and Just Transition Programme, Echezona Asuzu, traced the emergence of climate change as a global concern. He explained that the climate crisis first emerged during the Industrial Revolution in the late 1700s and mid-1800s when capitalism surfaced.

Asuzu said the industrial revolution era heralded disastrous extractive processes that altered the balance of the ecosystem and nature with a massive increase in greenhouse emissions.

He added that the dependence on fossil fuels and its impacts continued to spiral, leading to the clamour by the scientific community for global action to halt the increasing emissions to save the planet from extinction.

Continuing, he said the agitations started yielding positive results with the initiation of the Kyoto Protocol, an international treaty under the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) adopted in 1997, which came into force from 2005.

Under the protocol, countries pledged to reduce greenhouse gas emissions through a framework that included mechanisms like the Clean Development Mechanism (CDM) to help meet targets.

On his part, Executive Director of CFSF, Sani Baba, said the organisation conceived the training based on its belief that the media is key not only in informing the public as part of its watchdog role, but also in instigating robust discourse that would ultimately translate to policy responses and actions.

Represented by Mohammed Bomoi, the Deputy Director, Programmes at the CFSF, Sani Baba said that the indispensability of the media in addressing the environment and climate crisis informed the prioritisation of education and training in Article 6 of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC), which Nigeria has signed and ratified.