The climate crisis continues to have severe implications on African communities and economies, yet climate and environmental reporting remains minimal. Often, climate and environmental coverage is reactive, focusing on commemorations or international events, rather than forming part of the daily news agenda.
In cases where investigative environmental journalists undertake their work, they are exposed to risks, including arrest, censorship, harassment, and physical attacks. IPI is monitoring and documenting these incidents as part of its initiative to strengthen climate and environmental journalism in Africa. In 2024, IPI published an in-depth research into the challenges and threats that environmental and climate journalists face in Africa and globally. Per the findings of the report, these incidents of press freedom violations are also rarely documented or reported in the press. Environmental journalists take huge risks in silence and rarely receive the structural support from newsrooms to carry out their work securely.
Editors play a pivotal role in strengthening climate and environmental journalism in Africa by shaping newsroom priorities, allocating resources, and setting the editorial agenda. Their leadership determines whether climate stories are treated as peripheral or integrated into everyday reporting that connects with audiences’ lived realities. Importantly, editors can create inclusive spaces that elevate the voices of female journalists, encourage investigative work, and safeguard reporters who face attacks.
It is against this background that IPI, in collaboration with The African Editors Forum (TAEF), will host an editors’ roundtable to engage newsroom leaders to reflect on these challenges, share strategies to address attacks, and build stronger editorial support for climate and environmental journalism.
Objectives
This roundtable aims to:
- Engage newsroom editors in a dialogue on the state of climate and environmental journalism in Africa.
- Discuss strategies for supporting and empowering female journalists reporting on climate and the environment.
- Examine the impact of attacks on climate and environmental journalists and explore ways to encourage more reporting on these attacks
- Develop collaborative strategies to address attacks against these journalists
Format and Target Audience
This meeting will be a closed-door, interactive discussion that will allow all participants to contribute meaningfully to the conversation. Newsroom editors and senior journalists from across Africa are welcome to join. Editors from Cameroon, Ghana, Nigeria, Mozambique, South Africa, Kenya, Democratic Republic of Congo, Ethiopia, Somalia, and Rwanda are especially encouraged to attend.