A journalism drive supporting local reporting on climate justice, including reparations, climate finance, just transition, and energy access and supporting local journalism advances in education and empowerment as a people-centred, rights-based, just, and inclusive approach to information and debate
Context
Climate damage and its related injustices imposed by colonial and neocolonial systems of resource extraction and loan debt mean that many African nations are experiencing social and ecological breakdown, with little access to public information that is available on the ground and written by local researchers and journalists with an African lens and set of priorities. In this context, exploitative systems of enforced dependency therefore continue, violating people’s spatial rights and social justice. Free, grassroots, and accessible media could change this by providing information to educate and politicise. Homegrown media can also help address a political and cultural power imbalance as educational and journalistic materials are often imported to Africa from Europe.
Practice
In response to this context, in 2022 the Pan-African Climate Justice Alliance began a media drive to improve and support journalism as an infrastructure to educate and empower African states and regional communities in social and climate justice. The project was established because there was insufficient support and visibility for African journalists already working in the region, or for educating and inspiring children to become journalists in the future.
The Alliance’s journalism drive encourages writers to focus on stories that explore climate-based financial models such as Just Transition steps that move communities towards renewable energy and ensure fair access to all. Journalists also report on community stories of entrepreneurship in print and online journalism and on the radio.
Beyond highlighting individual stories, the drive is important for making journalism visible as a profession and a tool for social and spatial change. It helps communicate to young Africans that they too could become journalists or support local journalism as readers. Criticising censorship that often restricts journalists when media outlets are beholden to politicians or corporations is vital in upholding freedom of speech. The drive aims to protect and advise journalists when encountering issues of censorship or intimidation, as is often the case in regions such as the Niger Delta where multinationals collaborate with governments in an oil industry that takes a devastating toll on local people and the ecosystem, and when governments allied to oil industrialists restrict the freedom of speech and press, and even murder activists including The Ogoni Nine.
The media drive offers an example of the importance of critical and independent journalism in reporting on matters of climate (in)justice and spreading information as a means of politicisation and empowerment. In an age in which climate denialism is a recurrent problem, accurate and locally-situated reporting is even more important. Principles of mutual aid, meanwhile, alongside knowledge sharing, inter-regional solidarity, and historically-informed socioeconomic critique, are evident in the media drive and offer other forms of social and spatial practice, from the creation of informational platforms, educational curricula, activist organisations, media collectives such as Karrabing or Ñambi Rimai, to physical spaces for journalists and activists to meet safely.