Environment and Forestry Cabinet Secretary (CS) Keriako Tobiko has launched the Africa Climate Story Media Initiative (ACSMI), which brings together journalists from across Africa.
The initiative aims to strengthen media debate and public discourse on Africa’s climate story, ahead of this years United Nations (UN) Climate Summit Conference of Parties (COP) 27.
The CS stated that the media has a key role to play towards increasing resilience of African communities on climate change.
Speaking during the launch held Tuesday at a Nairobi Hotel, Tobiko stated that the world is no longer facing a climate change, but a climate crisis which needs to be dealt with urgently.
“We have messed up our planet by clearing our forests, polluted the air with greenhouse gases emission, poisoned our rivers and dumped toxic waste into the atmosphere,” he said.
Tobiko noted that no country is immune to the effect of climate crisis and its impacts, adding that the only difference is they are not equally circumstanced.
“Africa, Kenya and developing countries do not have investments to build the necessary resilience and adaptive capacity for our infrastructure, economies, people and communities,” the CS said.
At the same time, Africa Group of Negotiations (AGN) Chair Ephraim Shitima noted that Africa’s priorities in the upcoming COP27 summit are mitigation, adaptation and loss coverage, finance, technology and capacity building among others.
Shitima indicated that the global community needs to scale up efforts that will effectively deal with climate change.
“Developed countries are also being urged to double connective provision of climate finance for adaptation by 2025,” he said.
Ministry of Agriculture, Head of the Climate Department Veronica Ndetu identified Climate smart agriculture as the actual new normal in the post Covid-19 era, the best key for food security.
“Climate smart agriculture is adapting to climate change, building resilience, while cutting emissions,” stated Ndetu.
She further pointed out that water harvesting and irrigation are climate smart technologies that African farmers need to adopt across the continent.
The initiative is organized by AfricaonAir in partnership with Pan African Media Alliance for Climate Change (PAMACC)