EPA calls for experts on Climate Change

The Environmental Protection Agency or EPA, has complained of the lack of experts on climate change in Liberia to provide public education on abrupt changes in the weather condition.

Addressing a  media workshop on Climate Change in Buchanan, Grand Bassa County last week, EPA Coordinator for Climate Change, Multilateral and Enabling Activities, Benjamin S. Karmorh, stressed the need to train people to become experts on climate change to inform the country about unfolding events to avoid casualties.

The three days workshop on climate change and environmental reporting was conducted by the Environmental Protection Agency with support from the United Nations Economic Commission, UNEC. It brought together journalists from every sector of the media.

Mr. Karmorh said the essence of the exercise is to train local journalists on how to report on climate change and other environmental issues in the country, noting that many local journalists and media executives in Liberia only focus their reportage on politics, ignoring the environment in which they live.

The EPA executive said the idea of reporting on climate change and environmental issues is to know what affect citizens in their various communities, because only residents of those communities can tell about how they live, and to stop foreign journalists from telling the story of Liberia.

According to him, climate change and environmental issues are relegated by the media in Liberia, which poses a serious threat lives.

Mr. Karmorh said it’s time that Liberian journalists tell their own story. “We notice most of the journalists in Liberia don’t focus their attention on the community but rather on politicians” something he described as bad reporting, adding, “It is necessary for journalists to report political stories but they must also report on climate change and environmental issues because the environment is crucial to the health of people living in it”.

By Lewis S. Teh