World Environment Day: The Role of Media in Activism

By Waqas Ali @waqasaliqk

Plantation experts and environmental volunteers in Karachi have expressed concern that the media's role in raising awareness and addressing environmental issues in Pakistan is disappointing.

Highlighting the core role of media, they were of the view that environmental issues such as pollution, chopping trees, and raising global temperatures will increase the severity of the humanitarian crisis on an annual basis in Pakistan if the media fails to form the national discourse of addressing the issues.

Expert's opinion 

Plantation experts and volunteers spoke openly on the role of mainstream media to highlight social activities related to environmental awareness.

Shahroz Siraj, head of the Green Hand Welfare Organization, said that after the heat wave of May 2010, he started a plantation drive in Karachi and used Facebook to gather like-minded people and spread awareness about the plantation drive. He said that on the basis of 8 years of observation, I can state with full responsibility that providing awareness about climate change or climate change is not included in the media's preferences at all.

In support of his argument, he added that for the media, environment-based news or a campaign becomes the center of attention only when the world day is being celebrated, if once or twice a year a 45-second news package and a few seconds If the news is broadcasted, will we say that the role of the media is significant for the awareness of environmental problems?

The head of the Society for Environment and Mangroves Protection Welfare Association (SEMP) Dr. Kanwal Niazi also attributed the failure of public awareness about the environment to the media. He also raised a question regarding the feature of media which is related to 'public awareness'. She says that when a dance video goes viral on social media, a girl becomes a part of a morning show, and major news channels broadcast entertainment news in prime time, then a question arises that environmental issues are not important to the media?

She further said that the media wakes up to the time of humanitarian crisis caused by climate change, after all, why does the media use the loss of human lives as a measure of the importance of news?

The country's media is subject to a major tragedy

Dr. Jameel Kazmi, the former chairman of the University of Karachi's Department of Geography, blamed the government and the media for the failure to form an opinion about the sensibility of the environment. He said that the attention of the country's media is subject to a major tragedy, for example, the focus of media attention was on the humanitarian crisis caused by the recent disaster due to rains, but now after a few months, there is complete silence as if a tragic event had never occurred. He further said that 80 percent of the media is not interested in discussing environmental issues, while the planners and the government, including the media, become unusually active for a limited period, while the National Disaster Management Authority (NDMA) also failed to contribute for the development of public discourse through the media.

The causes of the incidents are not discussed

Expert Dr. Zafar Iqbal Shams, who retired from the Department of Environment at the University of Karachi as an assistant professor, also questioned the overall role of the media. He said that one of the responsibilities of the media is to provide information, while we see that before the monsoon, why can't the media discuss the situations that occur as a result of the monsoon? Why is it that there is no widespread discussion in the media about the causes of floods or climate change? Even after the tragedies, the media's reporting on floods, rains, landslides, etc. is also one-sided, i.e., the causes of the incidents are not discussed.