Mazingira Day celebrations on October 10, 2025, marked a refreshing shift in how Kenyan media engages with environmental issues. I was genuinely pleased with the coverage.
Kenya was shouting green across Friday’s broadcasts and Saturday’s newspaper headlines. This surge in visibility signals a growing recognition of the country’s role in environmental awareness and climate action.
Take for example The Standard. One of the stories headlined, “Big win for the environment as Kenyans turn up to plant fruits,” captured the spirit of the day, while its editorial, “Tree planting bid should go beyond mere symbolism,” challenged readers to think beyond performative gestures. The conversation continued through opinion pieces like “Nairobi can be cleaner if our leaders want” and “Engage children at all levels in climate justice”.
For far too long, the media has played a limited and uneven role in covering climate action, often sidelining environmental stories in favour of more immediate political or economic headlines. But this year’s coverage felt different. It was more intentional, more grounded.
The Media Council of Kenya has been instrumental in this shift, championing climate justice journalism by training reporters, encouraging accountability, and promoting stories that connect climate change to local livelihoods such as agriculture and fisheries. Still, it’s common to see a familiar pattern, where Kenya celebrates Mazingira Day with tree-planting drives, clean-up campaigns, and passionate speeches, but once the day passes, environmental coverage fades, replaced by politics, crime, and celebrity gossip. What if journalists could make every day feel like Mazingira Day?
Despite Kenya’s vulnerability to climate shocks from prolonged droughts to devastating floods, environmental stories rarely make front-page news. Many journalists lack the training, resources, or editorial support to consistently report on climate action. As a result, vital stories about deforestation, pollution, and community resilience often go untold.
To change this, Kenyan media houses must create dedicated environmental desks with trained reporters, localise global climate stories to show how they affect ordinary Kenyans, use multimedia formats from radio to TikTok to reach diverse audiences, and partner with schools, NGOs, and scientists to enrich coverage. Environmental journalism must evolve from doom-and-gloom to solution-oriented storytelling. This can be practically achieved by highlighting success stories like community-led mangrove restoration or solar-powered schools can inspire action and hope.
The Media Council and other stakeholders are already pushing for this transformation, but real change will come when editors, producers, and reporters treat the environment not as a seasonal topic, but as a daily responsibility. If the media can make politics a daily conversation, it can do the same for the planet.
Because in the end, every day is Mazingira Day if we choose to tell the story. Even the United Nations has emphasised that while progress is being made especially in legal accountability and scientific innovation the pace of global climate action is still not aligned with the urgency of the crisis. Stronger leadership, inclusive policies, and sustained media attention are critical to turning the tide.
