By Mashe Umaru Gwamna
International Labour Organisation (ILO) and some Civil Society Organizations (CSO), trained journalists on effective climate reporting.
The two days training on climate change and the just energy transition was organized by the Citizens Free Service Forum (CFSF) with support from the International Labour Organization (ILO)
They encouraged journalists to get out of their comfort zone and visit environmental hotspots if they are serious about writing environment and climate stories that can elicit citizen action and policy interventions.
The event, which had experts in media, trade unions and development, was held on 23 -24 September 2025 at the United Nations Building in the Diplomatic Zone of Abuja, Nigeria’s federal capital.
In his welcome words, Executive Director of CFSF, Comrade Sani Baba said that in conceiving the training, the CFSF came from the conviction that the media is key not only in keeping the public informed as part of its watchdog role, but also in eliciting robust discourse that ultimately translate into policy responses and actions.
Comrade Sani who was represented at the event by Deputy Director, Programmes of the CFSF, Mohammed Bomoi pointed out that the indispensability of the media in addressing the environment and climate crisis and its impacts on workers is exemplified in the prioritization of education and training in Article 6 of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC).
He explained that education and training are useful resources for governments, civil society and of course, the media as they encourage people to take the lead and cooperate in creative climate change actions.
Going further, he stressed that realizing that Nigeria, like most African countries and countries of the Global South, carry the biggest burdens of the climate change impacts, the training was conceived to amplify the issue and especially the less reported impacts of environmental degradation and climate change on workers.
In his presentation on The Science of Climate Change and the Evolution of the Struggle for Just Transition, Comrade Echezona Asuzu, Coordinator, Nigeria Labour Congress (NLC) Climate Change Program, traced the early stages of the climate crisis to the industrial revolution in the late 1700s and mid 1800s when machines started replacing the work of man and man also needed to feed more mouths at the shortest time frame.
That era was marked by extractive processes that altered the balance of nature with exponential increase in greenhouse emissions. The dependence on fossil fuels and its impacts continued to increase, culminating in the clamor for a global halt to processes fueling the ensuing climate crisis.
He explained that the agitations started bearing fruit with 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. It also established a framework for climate action and included mechanisms like the Clean Development Mechanism (CDM) to help meet targets.
The Kyoto protocol gave way for the Paris Agreement, a legally binding international treaty on climate change, adopted in 2015, which aims to limit global warming to well below 2 degrees Celsius, preferably to 1.5 degrees Celsius, above pre-industrial levels. The Paris Agreement also requires countries to set their own climate action plans, called Nationally Determined Contributions (NDCs), which become more ambitious over time in a 5-year cycle.
In his intervention on Contemporary Environmental Degradation and Climate Change Issues in Nigeria, Executive Director of the Renevlyn Development Initiative (RDI), Philip Jakpor said that the most common imageries that come to the mind of journalists whenever climate change is mentioned includes cyclones, hurricanes, forest fires, desertification and melting glaciers.
Jakpor pointed out that the focus of most of the reports in the indigenous media are usually climate impacts outside the country with little attention paid to Nigeria’s climate instigated developments.
According to the RDI director, the unreported or under-reported climate issues in Nigeria include the drying Lake Chad which was 25, 000 square kilometers in the 1960s and now well below 1,500 square kilometers, the Great Green Wall initiative which is supposed to build resilient ecosystems in 11 states of Nigeria but is neither here nor there in terms of implementation, and Ayetoro community in Ondo State which continues to cede land to the menacing Atlantic Ocean, among others.
He lamented that the issues he listed had implications such as loss of livelihoods, loss of lives, displacement, food security concerns and even corruption which can he said could be dug up if the journalists follow their lead on the quantum funds that Nigerian states get from the Ecological Fund and budgetary allocation to address flooding etc.
He tied the climate crisis to the industrialization models foisted on the world by the Global North which relies almost exclusively on fossil fuels extraction.
He also made two other presentations – Basics of Reporting Climate Issues in Nigeria, and The Art of Storytelling, both of which introduced the trainees to steps they must adopt to be able to investigate and write good climate and environment stories.
Taking a cue from his presentation, Elijah Iklaga made a presentation on Interpreting Global Politics for Climate Justice into National Realities which dwelt extensively on implementing policies that address the uneven impacts of climate change by prioritizing adaptation, mitigation, and funding for vulnerable communities and Global South nations.
Other interventions came from David Boys, Deputy General Secretary of Public Services International (PSI), who advised the trainees to publish well-researched reports that can be useful for policy makers to make laws rooted in facts. He also spoke on the importance of strong public institutions in checkmating the activities of corporations that have the financial muscle to compromise the system.
At the close of the event, ILO representative, Stephen Agugua presented the trainees with certificates, expressing confidence that the training would impact on the quality of climate and environment reports from the trainees.
Agugua also restated the commitment of the global body in working with the media to amplify the largely unreported impacts of climate change on frontline communities and the work space which are largely neglected in news reports.
