…As maritime reporters mark day in Port Harcourt
By: Felix Ikpotor
As the world celebrates World Ocean Day, an official of the United Nations has harped on the need to protect and preserve oceans globally.
Mrs Rita Solari Inko-Tariah, United Nations Focal Person on Ocean Literacy in Nigeria made the call while speaking at an event put together by the Energy Maritime Reporters (EMR) to mark World Ocean Day in Port Harcourt.
Inko-Tariah emphasized on the need to respect and preserve the ocean for the future generations.
She described the theme of this year’s celebration, “Revitalisation and Collective Action for the Ocean” as appropriate, stressing that there was the need to revive the declining state of the ocean health.
The UN official said that everyone needed to be ocean literate so as to restore and conserve it while urging the society to change their behaviours towards the ocean as well as value and respect it to be able to preserve it.
“Ocean as the largest and widest part of the earth is very important.
“If the environment is unhealthy because of the activities of man, it disturbs the ocean and when the ocean is unhealthy it degrades the society”
“We can testify that we have degraded our environment, our mangroves and our oceans.
“When the ocean is unhealthy it affects the climate and it makes the climate unhealthy, ” she said.
Inko-Tariah noted that studies had shown that by 2050, there would be more plastic materials in the country and this would bring about unhealthy environment.
Speaking at the event, Dr Emi Membere-Otaji, Chairman/CEO of Elschon Nigeria Limited urged the media to increase the campaign against harmful practices that degrades the ocean and the environment.
“There are many bad cultural practices such as discharging waste into the water. In fact, we use refuse to fight erosion, to stop the steady encroachment of the water into the community.
“The media thus has a huge job of re-orienting our people into knowing that those practices harm the ocean. Its time to change bad cultural orientation and we rely on the media to lead in this task,” he said.
Otaji who was the special guest at the event, emphasized that pollution threatens the the ocean causing oceanic imbalance which inturn affects the climate.
“There is a balance in the ocean such as carbon dioxide, oxygen, etc. When imbalance occurs through pollution and other forces, it creates climate imbalance and climate change. Gas flare is one of such agents of oceanic imbalance,” he said.
While expressing his readiness to partner with the organisation, Otaji charged the media to call attention to the wealth in the ocean and also the challenges and threats to it.
On his part, Sir Ernest Chinwo who is the General Manager of Rivers State Newspaper Corporation urged journalist in Port Harcourt to takeover reportage of the maritime sector.
“Port Harcourt journalists need to take over the coverage of maritime, oil/gas, and environment”
“We must say no to playing second fiddle in this area of journalism. We have not taken advantage of the environment, oil, gas sector to align our practice to this critical sector that is very huge,” he said.
Chinwo who chaired the occasion urged the organisation to create a viable organization, open a website on maritime sector to feed the world.
Chairman of EMR, Mr Martins Giadom in his address said the event was put together to rally maritime reporters and journalists in Port Harcourt to interact with industry players and to set a new focus for maritime reporting in the Niger Delta.
Giadom called for support from stakeholders in the sector for effective coverage of activities in maritime.
“Today is World Oceans Day. The global theme is: ‘Revitalization & Collective Action for the Ocean’. For us in EMR, our sub-theme is: ‘Wealth in the Ocean: A New Agenda”. We are thus using this day to rally maritime reporters and other journalists in Port Harcourt to interact with industry players so as to set an agenda for maritime sector reporting in the Niger Delta. This is another task being pursued by EMR. We have made huge impact so far since the birth of EMR. We have mounted seminars, made visits to relevant organisations and have brought maritime issues in this part of the country to the fore,” he said.
He called for support from stakeholders in the area of training to equip members with the relevant skills to effectively report the sector.
The event had in attendance representative of the Rivers State Ministry of Energy and Natural Resources, Nigeria Union of Journalist, civil society organisations amongst others.
