Challenges Facing African and Middle Eastern Journalists in Reporting Climate Change

Poverty in Africa and Conflicts over land and oil in the Middle East are creating a lot of socio-economic challenges in both regions. Climate change is a new environmental challenge to be added. Based on scientific reports, Climate Change will have a significant impact on agriculture in Africa which means more hunger and poverty as on water availability in the Middle East, an already, extremely water scarce region! With actual challenges in the regions, environmental journalists are working in bad conditions. They should report on "Environment" to a reader suffering from poverty, hunger, diseases and drought and to a decision maker acting to solve actual urge problems. In fact, journalists are facing a long list of challenges when reporting Climate Change in the developing world. There is always lack of accurate national or even regional information, lack of scientific research, lack of cooperation and coordination between different stakeholders and last but not least: lack of interest among editor in chiefs and readers! Regardless all these challenges, journalists in Africa and the Middle East are supposed to cover climate change in a professional and comprehensive way. First because it is an up-to-date topic, and second because they should take their responsibility and create awareness among public and decision makers in order to take needed action on time to avoid worst scenarios! To help journalists play their role properly, a lot should be done by governments and scientists to provide accurate data and by journalists to simplify this data and link it to reader's daily life without forgetting its socio-economic dimension to convince decision makers that a serious action should start NOW!