QUETTA:Policy Research Institute for Equitable Development (PRIDE) organized a two-day training workshop (Friday to Saturday) for local journalists of Quetta on the theme of “Energy Transition and Climate Justice”.
Journalists from electronic and print media participated in the workshop. The participants were informed about electricity load shedding, effects on gardens and crops due to climate change, protection of marine life, sources of renewable energy and other topics.
On the first day of the workshop, a lecture was given to journalists about the emission of greenhouse gasses and their effects on the environment.
On the occasion, Amel Ghani and Badar Alam, while giving a briefing to the participants, said that along with the emission of gasses from greenhouses, deforestation, fuel burning in vehicles and factories, and the use of coal are also our problems.
These are affecting the environment badly, due to environmental changes; the protective layer of the earth is being damaged, which is causing an increase in temperature, which has reduced the ability of the earth to absorb carbon dioxide.
They said that on 18th century, the era of industrial revolution began on the planet, after which 27 conferences have been held around the world in the name of Parties Conference to solve this problem. This time, the 28th conference is being held in Dubai. In this regard, the Kyoto Protocol and the Paris Agreement were also signed so that it needs to be fully implemented to protect the environment.
Referring to a report, Mr. Badar Alam said that, from 2015 to 2023, the harmful gasses produced in the atmosphere in Pakistan have increased to one million tons.
He said that for environmental protection, it is necessary to reduce the world’s dependence on oil, gas and coal, and we need to pay attention to wind power and solar energy, which can solve economic problems by reducing the costs of fuel, thereby providing Lowest Price and quality electricity.
It is possible to obtain which will benefit the people and reduce the environmental pollution; he said that we need to change our culture and lifestyle along with doing forests and plantations to prevent the harmful gases accumulated in the atmosphere. He said that globally, China, America, India and other developed countries are responsible for climate change.
He said that farmers use glass or plastic sheets to control the temperature in crop preparation, which benefits the crops, but it reduces the sun rays to the ground.
Instead of reflect it back, they stick to the plastic sheet, which increases the temperature, and now the earth temperature has increased to 1.2%.
But due to this, Pakistan, Nepal, Maldives and South Asian countries are more affected and there is a fear of further increase in temperature here in the future. Especially several districts of Balochistan were hit by heat waves.
On the second day of the training workshop, journalists were given awareness about investigative reporting.
Meanwhile, Amel Ghani said that as a journalist, it is our responsibility to verify the information from different angles before publishing the news so that our trust remains intact; the available documents can be useful in this regard.
On this occasion, Badar Alam said that political parties hold press conferences to spread their manifestos, but bringing such information and facts that people hide to the public is called journalism.
Unfortunately, we have been limited to press conferences and demonstrations. We can incorporate the views of working academics and experts in our daily reporting work and they have useful and authentic research based information.
Later, at the end of the training workshop, the journalists also discussed different story ideas.