Last week, Nairobi hosted the 20th session of the African Ministerial Conference on the Environment (AMCEN) under the theme, ‘Four decades of environmental action in Africa: Reflecting on the past and imagining the future’.
The gathering at Nairobi’s UN offices between Monday July 14 and Friday 18 included multilateral agencies, civil society, academia and industry in an event that also marked AMCEN’s 40th anniversary.
One notable document that could provide the media with diverse information is the African Union’s Continental Circular Economy Action Plan (2024–2034), designed to support sustainable economic growth and reduce environmental waste in Africa.
A circular economy is designed to eliminate waste and pollution by keeping products and materials in use for as long as possible. Products are designed for durability, reuse, repair, remanufacturing, and recycling, thus minimising resources extraction, and waste generation.
The media should rigorously address the circular economy by informing and educating the people why its application matters for them and the future generations, especially now due to climate change effects.
By seeking experts to explain how a circular economic works in different social, political and economic set-ups, journalists will be playing their role in promoting development.
For example, what policies should governments develop to help communities at the grassroots, where mostly, misuse and wastage of individual and community resources happen?
AMCEN further discussed the implementation of climate action strategies, addressing plastic pollution, and promoting biodiversity conservation.
While each country faces different environmental challenges, unique and specific to its society, there are cross-cutting issues that relate especially to shared resources such as forests, rivers and large water masses.
Over-exploitation by one country or neighbouring community can trigger an ecosystem imbalance in another region, flaming relations between two or more countries.
Journalists need to breakdown the information from the meeting for relevance to the African communities.
Another of the ministerial dialogues was sustainable and climate-resilient budgeting and finance, as a means to address climate change, natural disasters, and environmental degradation.
Finance allocation and management can become emotive especially when there is corruption involved, yet this determines the implementation of public projects to make a difference. Journalists should be keen to report on project implementation.
A story in the Nation titled, ‘A call for African unity in climate action,’ published on July 16, 2025 stated that, a report released on the sidelines of AMCEN showed that wetlands are vanishing globally faster than any other ecosystem.
Climate change has brought with it a spiral of weather change patterns, which have had consequences on the people’s living patterns, food security and livelihoods. AMCEN to a large extent discussed these effects, the need for preparedness, and the resources needed to implement programmes to forestall disasters and other uncertainties. Here, journalists should ask the question: Are the financial and capacity building resources being used for the purpose they are intended, and are the results convincing?
