In a bid to increase reporting on climate change and related issues, the Southern African Science Services Centre for Climate Change and Adaptive Land Management (SASSCAL) this week held a stakeholders engagement with close to 15 members of the media.
The meeting, both face-to-face in Windhoek and virtual to accommodate members of the media from other SASSCAL member states aimed to create a platform for open dialogue, information sharing, knowledge sharing, and collaboration to enhance media coverage of climate change events.
SASSCAL desires to see an increase in engaging reports on climate change and related news more especially as the organisation plans to host a Green Hydrogen symposium in a month’s time in Namibia.
SASSCAL’s Executive Director Dr. Jane Olwoch gave the media a complete overview of the organisation since its establishment in 2012. She informed them of SASSCAL’s vision, which is to become a Regional Centre to improve the quality of lives in southern Africa and the mission to strengthen the regional capacity in order to generate and use scientific knowledge, products and services for decision-making of climate change and adaptive land management through research management, human capital development and service brokerage.
“We do not want to compete with research institutions and universities but rather strengthen the regional capacity in the three scientific areas of research management, capacity building and service provision,” she added.
The Executive Director stressed that the impacts of SASSCAL can be seen in the member states where the organisation strengthens the regional institutions by empowering principal investigators, researchers and scientific officers to carry out its projects.
SASSCAL has implemented various programmes, including Green Hydrogen projects like H2ATLAS and Daures Green Hydrogen Village. Furthermore, it has executed capacity-building programmes, research projects, and offers products and services such as weather stations, information portals, and the WeMAST project amongst many others.
These projects and programmes are undertaken with the financial support of Germany’s Federal Ministry of Education and Research (BMBF), SASSCAL member states and the African Union’s GMES and Africa Programme.
Dr. Olwoch informed the participants that SASSCAL’s highest level in SASSCAL Organisation Structure constitutes of the Council of Ministers which includes representatives from the six SASSCAL member countries which is Angola, Botswana, Germany, Namibia, South Africa and Zambia followed by the Governing Board comprising representatives from the six countries.
The regional secretariat is hosted by Namibia and SASSCAL operates National Nodes in Angola, Botswana, Namibia, South Africa, and Zambia.
SASSCAL and the media representatives also held a panel discussion that unpacked details of SASSCAL’s products and services, SASSCAL’s specific projects in all its member countries and the media’s responsibility in Climate Change Communication.
One Africa Television Agricultural Journalist, Ms. Ellen Shihepo said the media should do more reporting on the many aspects of climate change. She said reporters should communicate to be understood by the local communities such as farmers, community members, and women, many of whom are involved in subsistence farming.
With the high unemployment rates, Ms. Shihepo also appealed to her fellow media representatives to make climate change news appealing to entice young people to take up farming ventures, make money and produce their food so that they do not have to wait on Government for jobs.
“We have a population of close to 3 million but the land that we have in Namibia can accommodate a population of 20 million, people meaning we have more land than people, so young people can take up opportunities in the agricultural sector instead of waiting on Government to spoonfeed them,” she added.
Some of the media institutions that were present at the event included the Namibian Broadcasting Corporation (NBC), One Africa TV station, New Era Newspaper, The Brief, Namibia Press Agency (NAMPA), The Windhoek Observer, Future Media, Focus FM, and Radio Energy.
SASSCAL was represented by the Executive Director, her management team and some of the SASSCAL employees.
