Harriette Naa Lamiley Bentil is a senior environmental reporter with the Daily Graphic newspaper in Accra and a member of the Ghana Watsan Journalist Network (GWJN). She was sponsored by IRC to attend the World Water Week in Stockholm from August 16-22, 2009.

IRC wanted Harriette to bring her perspectives to the World Water Week in Stockholm in August 2009 and to broaden her sources of information and contacts. We trained her to use small video cameras and she made 13 short interviews with participants at the very successful Stockholm World Water Cube (Watercube.tv studio) the online video that allowed people who could not get to Stockholm to follow the issues over the Internet.
Harriette said: “Being part of this year’s World Water Week has been both exciting and fun for me. Thanks to the IRC, I participated both as a journalist and a participant. It has also given me new leads for features I can develop further”.
The Stockholm World Water Cube is a joint project by SIWI, Akvo and IRC. All video clips can be downloaded and used and they can be accessed at http://watercube.tv.

Here are some of Harriette’s highlights for Africa:

Africa needs compensation for climate change

Climate change took centre stage on the fourth day of the World Water Week in Stockholm, Sweden. Focus on Water and Climate: Presenting the African-European Dialogue on Climate Change was particularly interesting. Speakers including Bethel Nnaemeka Amadi, First Vice president of the Pan African Parliament, were very passionate about the issue.

As far as Amadi was concerned, Africa’s response to climate change needs compensation from the more developed world, which must come in the form of special projects and knowledge sharing to improve the lives of its people and “not funds that would be stashed into Swiss accounts."

By contrast, a session which initially promised to be interesting, turned out to be a bit boring. A panel discussion on getting the politics right (Towards Stronger Collective Action on Water and Climate Change Impacts at COP-15 and Beyond) turned out to be a ‘talk shop’ with most panel members delivering long speeches and leaving no time at all for Q and A.

Parliamentarians for climate change

The European Parliamentarians for Africa (AWEPA) approached the Water Cube TV to get video footage from Stockholm that they can use in their campaign for the important December 2009 Climate Change meeting in Copenhagen. SIWI asked IRC to do the interviews, and IRC asked me to do some.

Four of the five guests I interviewed on http://watercube.tv relate to this:
• Mr. Joseph Souza, a Member of Parliament from the Kingdom of Swaziland;
• Mr. Bethel Nnaemeka Amadi from Nigeria, Fist Vice President Pan African Parliament;
• Ms. Aune Amwaama from Namibia, Ministry of Agriculture, Water and Forestry;
• Mr. Tommy Nambahu from Namibia, Member of Parliament, with a special interest in natural resources and economics.

The final interview was with Pieter van Eijk from Wetlands and Livelihoods. He stressed that Africans must take the initiative to demand the West to take responsibility for climate change adaptation.

Big need for educating Africans on climate change

In all these interviews, we tried to delve into the causes of climate change and how the effects can be mitigated, especially for Africans.

One major point for action emerging from this is the big need for more education on climate change for Africans, since they are hardest hit by floods and droughts that lead to famine. These disasters also push people out of their habitats moving them into already crowded places, which cause conflicts.

Harriette Naa Lamiley Bentil, e-mail

Tags: advocacy, africa, information and communication, water resources management