Need for quality reporting on environmental issues in Tanzania

JOURNALISTS Environmental Association of Tanzania (JET) has underscored the need for Tanzanian journalists to put quality reporting on environmental issues especially focusing on forests, wildlife, fisheries and minerals. According to JET officials, journalists need to equip themselves with knowledge on how best they can report environmental issues, the call has come when many journalists lack skills and knowledge on reporting environmental issues. According to JET, there are so many environmental issues which could have been addressed by journalists so that communities can change their perception, be it forest, wildlife, fisheries and others, but because of inadequately information on environment, journalists have failed to reach out to many people to change their mindset on environment. Apart from journalists equipping themselves with environmental knowledge, they actually need to understand policies to ensure that the public follow them though it takes time for public to change their mindset on environmental issues, the media should not tire in addressing these issues as things change with time. Of late, there has been a great impact, especially in Morogoro region, as at first people in the area were reluctant to change on how they were cutting down trees and how to utilize water from the streams. With time, they have realized how vital it is to have on environmental friendly area. ”There is a tremendous change in the area as people have engaged themselves in agro-forestry and know the importance of planting more trees. People also utilize their streams for irrigation.
Briefing journalists recently on forestry, Senior Legal Officer and Researcher for Lawyers Environmental Action Team (LEAT) Mr. Emmanuel Massawe said there is need to ensure sustainable supply of forest products and services while maintaining sufficient forest area under effective management. Through sustainable forest based industrial development and trade, there is increased employment and foreign exchange earnings, hence the need for journalists to raise public awareness on the importance of forests to both the people and the government. According to him, there are a number of issues that are affecting forestry in the country like inadequate awareness of tree growing, sustainable forest management and lack of financial incentives. Tree harvesting exceeds tree plantations by threefold. This is so pathetic, lamented Massawe.