At the 2025 Media Development Conference organised by the Centre for Journalism Innovation and Development (CJID), leading climate and agriculture experts warned that Nigeria risks deepening its food insecurity unless the media takes a more proactive role in reporting climate-related threats and solutions.
Speaking during the session on “Climate Reporting, Food Systems, and Rural Livelihoods,” Akintunde Babatunde, the Executive Director of CJID, said Nigerian farmers are already suffering from the consequences of erratic weather patterns, but the gap between scientific climate information and rural communities continues to endanger food production.
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“When rainfall patterns shift unexpectedly, farmers lose entire harvests. What the media does with climate information now determines whether farmers survive the next season,” Babatunde said.
Experts Link Climate Change to National Food Vulnerability
Also speaking at the conference, Nicholas Adeniyi, CJID’s Project Manager for Climate Change, highlighted that the northern states are increasingly losing fertile land to desertification, while southern regions battle more frequent flooding.
“The disruption of planting calendars is now one of the biggest threats to our food systems,” Adeniyi noted. “Farmers are confused because the weather no longer behaves as expected.”
Representatives from SustyVibes, a key climate-advocacy organisation partnering with CJID on media–climate initiatives, emphasised that transforming how journalists report environmental changes can directly improve community resilience
Need for Stronger Media–Science Collaboration
Environmental policy expert Amara Nwankpa of the Shehu Musa Yar’Adua Foundation, who was also on the panel, urged newsrooms to engage more deeply with meteorological experts, agricultural researchers, and climate-data centres.
“We can not keep giving farmers generic warnings,” Nwankpa said. “They need timely, localised, simplified weather and adaptation information — that is where journalists can save livelihoods.”
Climate Finance Accountability Under Scrutiny
Participants from the Natural Resource Governance Institute (NRGI) and other civil-society groups at the CJID event urged journalists to investigate how climate adaptation funds are deployed.
They argued that although government budgets for climate action have increased, communities rarely feel the impact on irrigation, drought-resistant seeds, or early-warning systems.
CJID Announces New Support for Climate–Agriculture Reporting
As part of efforts to improve journalistic capacity, CJID announced new fellowship programs and story grants for young reporters covering climate change, agriculture, food systems, and rural development.
Babatunde said the initiative will provide training in data journalism, climate science interpretation, and accountability reporting.
Call for Cross-Sector Collaboration
The session concluded with a call for stronger collaboration among journalists, agricultural extension services, meteorological agencies, research institutions, and civil-society organisations.
Experts agreed that without coordinated communication, Nigeria will struggle to adapt to climate shocks that continue to threaten crop production, rural livelihoods, and national food security.
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