Deputy Chief Executive Officer at the HATOF Foundation, Mary-Jane Enchill, has criticised the limited involvement and long-term capacity of the media in climate action communication, saying the sector faces a “lack of capacity retention.

Speaking during the JoyNews National Dialogue on Coordinating Climate Actions on Thursday, July 3, reflecting on Ghana’s National Adaptation Plan (NAP), Mary-Jane acknowledged efforts made to involve stakeholders.

“I see the gap from the awareness raising perspective of the NAP, and I think the NAP has done expensive work in terms of mobilising a lot of people for its planning, and I mean planning and development, of course, where the user also inclusive,” she said.

However, she raised concerns about the inadequate empowerment of media professionals tasked with sharing information on climate issues. “One gap that I see is the fact that we do not empower our journalist, those who give out the information,” she said.

“A lot of the time I used to work in one of the media houses. You see the issue with media, men and women in terms of communicating.”

She criticised the token inclusion of media in high-level processes.

“When we develop the whole thing, and then just one media person is brought for the whole of this country to sit in and say that, okay, the media is present. This person is the only one who takes out the information. What happens in the rest?” she questioned.

Enchill called for deliberate efforts to engage and train journalists across the country. “I think that we should be very conscious in the attempts to get this plan out there for people to appreciate and also adapt the practices in our homes. Of course, it is very important that the media is brought on board, to be trained extensively,” she stated.

Drawing from her experience in climate and green economy training, she pointed out a major problem with knowledge retention.

“But one thing that I see with the media, the challenge is the lack of capacity retention. When one media person is trained... ask yourself, all these people that were trained, are they still in their respective media houses? The answer is no,” she said.

She urged media organisations to play a more proactive role by institutionalising climate reporting.

“Even as much as we are calling for integration of the media into this process to get information out there, the media houses are also called upon to make a very conscious effort. To establish a desk for people, just like we have the sports desk, entertainment desk and business desk. What have you, we can have for climate change or environment desk in totality,” she said.

She also criticised the narrow focus of environmental reporting. “When we talk about environment in the media space, we are always talking about sanitation here and there, no. That's not just enough. The issue of climate change transcends all these things,” she added.

Mary-Jane highlighted the dual responsibility of both policymakers and the media to ensure climate action messaging is sustained.

“For me, I think the gap here is the fact that the media is not well represented in the policy development or formulation space, and then the media houses themselves are also not doing well to be able to get this.”