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Media practitioners play a critical role in highlighting environmental issues and climate change. The CGIAR Research Program on Climate Change, Agriculture and Food Security (CCAFS) partnered with the Pan Africa Climate Justice Alliance (PACJA)  to support African journalists and communicators to tell stories about the environment including climate change adaptation and mitigation in Africa. This collaboration seeks to improve the capacity of journalists to package and communicate research outputs and evidence in a way that policy-makers, development practitioners and the general public can easily access and understand. The initial step involved a webinar on climate change and environmental reporting in Africa, followed by the African Climate Change and Environmental Reporting Awards (ACCER Awards).

Role of journalists in unravelling climate science

During the webinar held in May 2016, participants among them journalists, bloggers and citizen journalists reporting on climate change and environmental issues in Africa discussed how to communicate complex climate change and environment concepts. The webinar was organised by CCAFS and PACJA through the Climate and Agriculture Network for Africa (CANA).

The panellists, who included multi-award winning journalist Wanjohi Kabukuru, researcher Phillip Kimeli from CCAFS and Brenda Malowa from PACJA, highlighted some of the challenges that journalists face such as lack of subject specialization and information resources. Also, media producers and editors do not give environmental news significance, as they believe that such stories will not draw a large audience. However, this is improving.

“To this day I still recall how we were chided by colleagues in politics, sports, business and courts sections. At the time we were only three reporters who were allocated two pages each week to write environmental stories. For nearly a year we were the laughing stock of the newsroom as we were scolded with childhood rhymes of singing birds and funny animal jokes. We were ridiculed that we should give up the pages to other 'deserving sections'. We justified our existence not because of the support of our editor but because we went deeper in our environmental stories and soon were allocated four pages which went on to become a special 8-page pull-out. In our second year as environmental reporters we scooped awards and that marked the realization that we were reaching our target more effectively than other sections,” said Wanjohi Kabukuru, an award-winning environmental journalist, during the webinar.

Interpreting scientific language in a way that the public can understand was highlighted as a critical challenge during the webinar.

Journalists should not be afraid to ask scientists to explain jargon and scientific concepts. “Environmental and climate change scientists, researchers and experts will always help to ensure the stories are factual. Environmental stories deal with complex ethical and scientific issues, sending back a story for proof reading by an expert for factual correction is both ethical and useful,” emphasized Wanjohi.

African Climate Change and Environmental Reporting Awards

The African Climate Change and Environmental Reporting Awards (ACCER) was initiated in 2013 by PACJA, with the aim of recognizing and rewarding excellence in environmental journalism, and to encourage high quality and high impact reporting of environmental issues in Africa. This year, CCAFS contributed to the awards by facilitating understanding of key climate change issues and concepts by the journalists who participated in the webinar.

Winners of the awards were announced during a gala event held on 18 October during the sixth annual Climate Change and Development in Africa (CCDA–VI) Conference held in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia. This event was hosted by CCAFS and PACJA in collaboration with the United Nations Economic Commission for Africa (UNECA). The competition entries were organized according to the following categories: Print media English and French, electronic media English and French, radio English and French, television and photography.

Andrew Mambondiyani from Zimbabwe was the overall winner of the ACCER awards. Mambondiyani, a journalist who writes on environmental issues, won for his print piece 'Summer, a season of suffering in Mozambique’s Beira' that was chosen out of 13 finalists.

Getting it right

“If journalists as interpreters cannot get it right, the ordinary layman will not”. - Excerpt from the Judge’s report.

During the award ceremony, the panel of judges emphasized the need to engage journalists in the climate change discussions, and commended partnership efforts such as between PACJA and CCAFS which seek to bridge the gap between scientists and journalists. As a next step, the award-winning journalists will participate in a one week intensive training program, to be hosted by CCAFS at the International Livestock Research Institute (ILRI) to discuss ongoing research on climate change adaptation and mitigation. A visit to the CCAFS Climate-Smart Villages (CSVs) in Wote, Kenya will also expose the journalists to ongoing climate-smart agricultural practices on-farm and other institutional innovations.

More:

• The full list of winners in the different categories is available on the CANA website: Announcement of the Third ACCER Awards Finalist.
• Photos from the ceremony