A Non-Governmental Organisation (NGO) in the Niger Delta under the auspices of Kebetkache Women Development And Resource Centre has called for media collaboration on climate change.
The organisation made the call in during a media strategy meeting with journalists in Port Harcourt.
The meeting, which centred on “Community Media Collaboration for Climate Justice”, was held in collaboration with Oxfam Nigeria.
Media practitioners drawn from Rivers and Akwa Ibom states were urged to focus on how to enhance media reportage on climate change issues in the Niger Delta region.
They were also charged to come up with campaign on how to mitigate the effect of climate change in host communities, especially as it negatively affects women in the Niger Delta region.
Speaking during the meeting, the Kebetkache Executive Director, Emem Okon, appealed for synergy among government agencies with a view to providing workable framework that would address climate change challenges in rural areas.
Okon noted that the absence of coordination by government agencies had led to environmental challenges in the Niger Delta, adding that many residents of oil bearing communities are victims of the effects of climate change caused by oil exploration activities by multinationals.
She said, “If we really look at climate change manifestations in the Niger Delta, it is mainly people in rural communities, particularly the women that are impacted.
“We are looking at situations where oil extraction activities have resulted in the emission of green house gas that has caused global warming and has also resulted in climate change.
“So, we are having this situation in the Niger Delta, particularly in Rivers State, where community members are faced with the challenge of flooding every year, particularly since 2012 when we had that major flooding.
“Climate change is affecting food security, and causing crisis. The issue of farmers and herders crisis, people assume, is only experienced in the northern part of Nigeria, but it is also experienced in the Niger Delta region.
“But these challenges at the community level are not really out there because the community women that are directly impacted would not readily have that access to the media.”
She recalled that two years ago, one of the Ogoni women community groups that Kebetkache Women Development Centre worked with, under the auspices of Gbobia Fefeloo, planted 2,000 trees across the four local government areas in Ogoniland.
She, however, expressed dismay that the group’s effort was not reported by the media, hence the reason Oxfam and Kebetkache have decided to improve media relations so that community women would feel free to discuss with the media on climate change.
She emphasised that in collaborating with the media, the public would appreciate more the challenges that rural communities are experiencing.
The Executive Director appealed to delegates to the forthcoming 2022 United Nations Climate Change Conference in Egypt to project issues of climate change and the people of the Niger Delta region during the conference.
Highlights of the event was the inauguration of a group known as ‘Niger Delta Journalists For Environmental Justice,’ chaired by Chief Constance Mefor, with Pius Dukor as Secretary.
Mefor, in her acceptance speech, expressed the group’s commitment towards a better, safer, cleaner and a richer Niger Delta region.