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<\/a><\/p>\nJulie Frederikse<\/p>\n
9 December 2011<\/p>\n
\nDurban \u2014 For the past two weeks, allAfrica has been covering the COP17 conference, and trying to make the issues around climate change come alive to our readers. When a group of young African journalists got together with veteran correspondents from the continent this week, along with a group of journalists in training, the challenges of making these issues understandable, and actionable, emerged through a passionate exchange.<\/em><\/p>\nHere are some highlights from this event co-sponsored by the Media Capacity Development section of the UNDP Africa Adaptation Programme, represented by its media specialist, Gifti Nadi, and AllAfrica Global Media, in a panel moderated by allAfrica’s Melissa Britz.<\/em><\/p>\nallAfrica’s Julie Frederikse shares some highlights from the lively discussion, sparked by the experiences of the young African journalists in travelling overland on the Climate Change Youth Caravan from Kenya, through Tanzania, Malawi, Zambia and Botswana to Durban.<\/em><\/p>\nVeteran African Journalists<\/strong><\/p>\nChokri Ben Nessir, editor in chief, La Presse de Tunisie<\/strong>
\u201cWe have had a revolution in our country, we have elections, so climate change doesn\u2019t seem so important, so that is a challenge for journalists to overcome. For the young journalists, I have this advice: the experience you have had in travelling through Africa, everything you saw, smelled, touched and discovered \u2013 all this should be in your reports. The reader of your articles should be able to smell the things you smelled, to see the things you saw. This is the secret of how to bring this experience into your reports. I think the most important thing about climate change for journalists is to awaken your five senses. If you are beside a tree, you will see this tree differently \u2013 maybe with respect. You have to think that this tree has a history, and maybe it will not have a future. It is things like this that should be treated in explaining climate change. We can help sensitize people, and by making things simple and accessible to readers, we can help all these adaptation projects be more understandable to all the people in Africa.\u201d<\/p>\nErick Kabendira, Tanzanian freelance journalist covering East Africa<\/strong>
\u201cLet\u2019s take my country, Tanzania, for example \u2013 80% of our population is involved in agriculture, and for the last two years farmers are facing so many challenges, including unpredictable rains and droughts. All these challenges need to be addressed. From the point of view of this conference, the main document doesn\u2019t mention anything about agriculture \u2013 that\u2019s what Africans at this conference have been trying to push for. So how relevant is COP17 to Africa? That\u2019s the question I been asking myself since I got here. I\u2019ve visited farmers across the continent, I\u2019ve slept in their homes and eaten their food, and I know that they would like to see meetings like this delivering to commitments so we can address the challenges they are facing.\u201d<\/p>\nFrancis Tuffour, senior reporter, Ghanaian Times<\/strong>
\u201cBasically there is this perception that climate change is making Africa suffer the most, and it is said that poverty is the reason. So there should be funding created so that we in Africa would benefit from it, so we can use it to put measures in place so that governments would help mitigate the challenges. Africa is calling for the sector ministers especially to be able to help us to use this fund to build capacities for our people, to educate them, and put measures in place so in the event of a crisis, we can help avert challenges that may happen.\u201d<\/p>\nEmerging African journalists, who travelled on the Climate Justice African Youth Caravan from Nairobi to COP17, Durban<\/strong><\/p>\nSimegnish Yekoye Mengesha, Ethiopian Environmental Journalists Association, Citizen newspaper<\/strong>
\u201cThis whole caravan experience has taught me how to adapt to different cultures and countries, and professionally, I\u2019ve learned a very important lesson: as we went down we have seen the impacts of climate change in person. We\u2019ve seen forests destroyed, we met farmers not able to grow crops any more because of rain not coming. Before, I told myself I am an environmental journalist \u2013 I quote scientists, talk to politicians, write my story \u2013 but only once I went down to grassroots level and saw the life of the people did I really understand climate change.\u201d<\/p>\nAudrey Wabwire, Kenyan freelance radio and print journalist<\/strong>
\u201cHow do you tell youth about climate change? It\u2019s extremely boring, it\u2019s jargon \u2013 so we decided to use an award-winning musician from Kenya who travelled with us. He would sing and entertain the crowd, then after he would ask the youth, Do you care about climate change? Do you care about your forests? So as we travelled I noticed how music can be used to engage communities. And all throughout this experience, I listened to the plight of women. There\u2019d be very few women at each concert. And the ones who came were afraid to talk, they would not know what climate change was, yet they\u2019d be going to the clinic, carrying their children, looking for food. I realized it\u2019s very important for the government to start thinking about women in terms of adaptation to climate change. So I\u2019ve been talking with women leaders at COP 17, and when I go back home I\u2019m going to talk to leaders in my country and follow up on this.\u201d<\/p>\nYoussouphe Bodian, Senegalese freelance journalist<\/strong>
\u201cIt\u2019s been a wonderful experience. I come from West Africa and it was quite interesting to see the landscape in the east of Africa. I live in a place that\u2019s totally different \u2013 the mountains of east and west Africa are very different, in terms of landscape. And on our trip on the caravan we were actually living the effects of climate change. It\u2019s going to help us to report better when we get back to our home countries.\u201d<\/p>\nBernice Atabong, Cameroun Radio and Television<\/strong>
\u201cClimate change is now very real to me. I have seen that it has a serious impact on agriculture in Africa. In Malawi, they are trying to shift away from eating maize because maize planting not does do well these days. The same is happening in Cameroun \u2013 we used to eat yams, we now eat cassava. We had to change the kinds of things we eat. Even the Maasai people were telling us that the cattle don\u2019t have enough grass to eat so their main activity of cattle rearing can\u2019t carry on and some of the youth have left the rural areas to come to town to sell stuff to tourists \u2013 that\u2019s the story we heard. We collected about 200,000 signatures for petitions on climate change while we travelled thru the 6 countries, and also, while travelling we had the opportunity of realizing just how beautiful the African continent is. We were telling ourselves, if nothing is done to fight climate change, in future these places will be gone and people will be telling their grandchildren, Africa used to be a beautiful continent.\u201d<\/p>\nAugustina Armstrong-Obonna, reporter, Radio Nigeria<\/strong>
\u201cIn my country, the Ogoni people\u2019s land has changed \u2013 they can\u2019t farm, they can\u2019t fish. On our trip through Africa on the caravan we got to see the effects of climate change with our own eyes. Before, we thought this is a small issue, but now we see it\u2019s big \u2013 it affects business, health, agriculture, so many aspects of people\u2019s lives. As young journalists, we now feel that from our experience, we will do more. This has been an experience of a lifetime, we\u2019ll never forget it.\u201d<\/p>\nAllAfrica – All the Time<\/p>\n
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