Accra, June 12, GNA-Professor Christopher Gordon, a former Director of the Institute for Environment and Sanitation Studies at the University of Ghana, says human management of natural resources is pushing the environment to a tipping point where it might be difficult to recover.
He explained the rate of exploitation of natural resources was leading to pollution of water bodies and depletion of forest reserves, which man depended on for livelihood.
Professor Gordon said this at the maiden edition of the Biannual Media Forum on Natural Resource, Environment, Natural Resource, Climate Change and Science (BIM-NECS).
It was on the theme, “Strengthening Media Focus on Natural Resources, Environment, Climate Change and Science: Challenges Prospects and way forward”.
He said: “There are planetary boundaries and they include water, climate change and biodiversity. We are approaching the limit of what the earth can sustain.”
Pushing the boundaries to that limit, Prof. Gordon said, would be equivalent to mortgaging the future of the generation.
“The contaminants being pushed out there are too high… Today, we have black carbon in the heart of a baby in the womb. It means the mother inhaled it and it has traveled all the way,” he said.
He urged the media to break the environmental issues down to the level of locals and also tell the stories of how floods, an impact of climate change, affected the livelihood of the ordinary person.
Professor Christopher Gorden urged journalists to report the facts and restrain themselves from infusing their perceptions and embellishing stories on climate change.
“ Now there’s new media, a lot of people who are on social media are untrained, for them the messenger is more important than the message, we do not have to be like them,” he said.
Professor Kwamena Kwansah-Aidoo, the Vice-Chancellor of the University of Media, Arts and Communication, in a statement delivered on his behalf, said the School would train and develop courses to equip journalists with the skills to report on natural resource governance.
Ms Audrey Quarcoo, the Director of Corporate Affairs at the Environmental Protection Agency, said there was the need for a collective effort of individuals and other stakeholders to consistently address environmental issues as well as initiate sound measures to protect and enhance the environment.
GNA