Enhancing Environmental Reporting

JAMES FAHN/INTERNEWS Elephants are used for patrols at Gunung Leuser National Park in Indonesia, site of a conference for environmental journalists sponsored by Internews’ Earth Journalism Network.

Environmental issues have gone global, often in ways we don’t even recognize. Scientists estimate that on bad days, up to a quarter of California’s air pollution originates in China, as smog and dust from Chinese factories, cars and dust storms waft across the Pacific. Rapid economic growth in Asia and other parts of the developing world is having a profound impact on the local and global environment, but citizens in many countries are ill-informed about these critical issues.

To educate and engage citizens, journalists, and policymakers, three years ago Internews established the Earth Journalism Network (EJN), a project that aims to improve the quality and quantity of reporting on the environment.

“In developing countries, local environmental journalists can play a vital role in helping the public to influence how their governments balance economic growth with sustainability,” said James Fahn, a veteran environmental reporter who is Executive Director of EJN (see interview). “But typically, those who cover this beat are overworked junior reporters without any scientific background in these complex issues.”

JAMES FAHN/INTERNEWS At an EJN workshop, Cambodian journalists meet with villagers in Chambok to discuss their eco-tourism project outside Kirirom.

Since relocating its headquarters from the US to Thailand last year, EJN has been particularly active in Asia and has organized an Asian regional network of environmental journalists.

EJN is currently working with environmental journalists from Indonesia, China, Vietnam, Cambodia, Thailand, and Laos. The project has also trained radio reporters in Mexico and supported the consolidation of a Mexican environmental journalists network.

So far EJN has trained more than 300 journalists to cover conservation and sustainable development more effectively. In Singapore in April, EJN led a training workshop for journalists from all over Asia that explored links between destruction of the ozone layer and climate change.

“I learned new perspectives and a lot on the methodological level,” said workshop participant Zhou Lei, a reporter for China’s Xinhua news agency.

A recent workshop in Cambodia and three in Vietnam focused on biodiversity conservation, including forestry issues and wetlands conservation. The latter were held with the Vietnam Forum of Environmental Journalists.

RISKA DWI FIRMIYANTI/INTERNEWS

The EJN workshop in northern Vietnam included a visit to Tam Dao National Park, where journalist-trainees learned of an “eco-tourism” project planned by the provincial government that was to include a golf course and a casino right in the park. After the journalists wrote articles about the potential environmental impact of this project, the Vietnamese national government began reviewing the project closely and reduced its size.

At a May EJN workshop in Beijing, Internews China hosted journalists from several provinces for training in environmental law, in essence providing them with guidelines on how to pursue investigative stories.

EJN is also planning a climate change program aimed at helping the public and policymakers to understand and reduce the potential impacts of global warming. Likely components include enabling journalists from developing countries to attend critical treaty negotiations and training journalists to understand the carbon trade business.

EJN is funded by the Marisla Foundation, John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation, Wallace Alexander Gerbode Foundation, V. Kann Rasmussen Foundation, Robert & Michelle Friend Foundation, Ford Foundation, Howard G. Buffett Foundation, UN Environment Programme, Alumni Fund of the Philanthropy Workshop West at the Tides Foundation and an anonymous donor from the Rockefeller family.