The media is a powerful tool to help bring about change and awareness of climate change and action.

The remark was in Prime Minister Voreqe Bainimarama’s keynote address read by Attorney-General and Minister for Communications Aiyaz Sayed-Khaiyum at the ABU media summit on climate change opening at the Sheraton Fiji Resort, Denarau, Nadi yesterday.

Mr Bainimarama could not attend because he was unwell.

The Prime Minister’s address said that stories of what’s happening in regards to climate change needed to be continuously told.

His address, read by Mr Sayed-Khaiyum, said: “As my team and I preside over the global negotiations to reduce the carbon emission to zero as soon as possible, you in the media have a critical role to play.”

“I ask that you focus your attention this week on what we can do individually or collectively to assist your own nation, our region, our world to confront this challenge and to tell the stories that need to be told, to generate the action that needs to be carried out.

“You have the power through the keyboard, the camera, the spoken word to make a genuine difference, to highlight the urgency of concerted action at every level to avert catastrophe but also to highlight the wonderful opportunity that lies ahead if we have the courage and imagination to fully embrace the transition.

“There are plenty of stories out there about the negative effects of climate change, the current or impending disaster.

“Or gloom about the effects of change or the doom if we don’t, but I ask you all to look outside the box and as I’m fond of saying ‘fire people’s imagination about the positives of what is possible is we alter our mindsets to working together effectively.”

Now more than ever, he said, that education and awareness of climate change needed to be talked about at all levels.

“The threat that climate change poses to the entire world is undoubtedly the biggest collective challenge that humanity has ever faced,” he said.

“The resulting natural disasters pose a particular threat to vulnerable nations everywhere including us in the Asia Pacific region. The ongoing negotiations to reduce the emission of carbon dioxide that drive these events and things such as cyclones and droughts pose an acute risk to our people and development.”

“It is an unprecedented crisis that we must face together. Every single person on earth helping to reverse the effects of climate change that we have all inflicted by our lifestyles and replacing our present culture of abuse with a culture of preservation.”

Edited by Mohammed Zulfikar

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