Commemorating the Windhoek Declaration, we examine how journalism can champion a fair energy transition in the face of climate challenges.
Image: IOL FILE
On Sunday, the 3rd of May we marked the 35th anniversary of Windhoek Declaration on World Press Freedom as we reaffirmed and recall its founding principles on the role of journalism in protecting democratic values, fostering informed societies, and advocating for the independence and safety of media professionals.
Year in and out, the United Nations Education, Scientific and Cultural Organisation (UNESCO) declares a theme befitting, with 2024 spotlight being “A Press for the Planet: Journalism in the Face of the Environmental Crisis” and focused on journalism’s role in climate accountability, environmental justice, and reporting on the global ecological crisis.
The risk of getting the story wrong and the power of telling it differently.
The recently reconstituted Presidential Climate Commission has signalled a clear shift from just being a mere advisory body- it wants to lean on catalysing implementation, monitoring, and reporting progress, and lead national discourse and championing consensus and inclusivity in our quest for a net-zero economy and a future we all aspire.
One of the cardinal pillars of the work of PCC in the coming years will be the mobilisation of a national climate awareness partnership, not merely as a communication platform, but a building block about co-creating a narrative that is understood and represents regular South Africans’ interphase with the climate action agenda.
Because right now, climate change still feels distant and alien to many South Africans filled with jargon and increasingly confusing as everyone hustles to paint every public policy, investment decision, and social development intervention as a puzzle piece to collective climate action.
The Commission has emphasised the need for transparency, credible data and information systems, and accountability. Media is the bridge between institutions and the public. If that bridge is weak, fragmented by misinformation, noise, or lack of credibility, then even the strongest policies will struggle to land.
The problem is that much of the current climate coverage still sits at the margins. It is technical and distant. It is dominated by experts talking to each other. That approach will not carry this transition.
Misinformation, Mal-information, and denialism of the climate crisis are not future risks but existential and is already shaping public discourse. The just transition with its complexity and long-term implications, is even more vulnerable to distortion. As history has shown us, repeatedly, when narratives are left unmanaged, they rarely land where we need them to.
The opposite is also true. If the media leans in by shaping public understanding, strengthening accountability, and amplifying the voices of those most affected. If it connects climate action to real economic opportunities and puts at the centre the voices of workers, communities, and young people, then it can shift how the transition is understood.
For instance, a worker in a coal-dependent community, the language of “decarbonisation” does not sound like progress. It sounds like uncertainty, due to misinformation, lack of understanding of costs of inaction, global economic dynamics, and opportunities of a low carbon economy.
The role of media in the just transition cannot be accidental. It has to be intentional. It requires stronger partnerships between institutions, journalists, communities, and content creators. It requires investment in storytelling that is local, accessible, and grounded in lived realities.
It also requires a shift in mindset from broadcasting information to facilitating dialogue. Media practitioners need to ask harder questions. Whose voices are being heard? Whose are missing? What assumptions are shaping the narrative? Because this is not just about reporting on change. It is about shaping how that change is understood.
The PCC has made it clear that the next phase of climate action will require shared national effort. But shared effort is impossible without shared understanding, which is built through storytelling. So, the question is not whether the media has a role in the just transition. The question is whether it is ready to take up its rightful responsibility. Because if the media does not do this, others will step in to fill that space.
As we mark this 35th Anniversary of the Windhoek Declaration, we remind ourselves of an immemorial African adage: “as long as lions do not tell their stories, tales of the hunt, will always favour the hunter.
The just energy transition and the pathway to carbon neutral future will not only be implemented through public policy pronouncement and corporate pledges or civil society protests but also shaped and decided on in the stories we tell about it.
If the media is not empowered and brazen to tell that story, the transition risks being rejected as it unfolds. Silence, in this case, is not neutral as it creates space for misinformation, and a fertile ground for denialism, superficial climate action and the seeds of resistance to take root and flourish, in face of planet earth’s own deterioration.
Nthabiseng S. Masinge is the senior communications specialist at the Presidential Climate Commission.
Nthabiseng S. Masinge is the senior communications specialist at the Presidential Climate Commission.
Image: Supplied.
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