Green Echoes #24
Key investigative stories, data sources, funding, reporting and training opportunities and our projects from across Asia.
Welcome to Green Echoes, a newsletter from the Environmental Reporting Collective that highlights key investigative stories, data sources, funding, reporting and training opportunities and our projects from across Asia.
The best reporting from across Asia
Malaysia tragically lost its last Sumatran rhino in 2019, an event that brought increased attention to the need to protect other endangered large animals. Pashmina Binwani writes for Macaranga on saving species such as the Bornean banteng, which are isolated and threatened, using data, field reports, and images.
An example of impact: Investigative reporting has exposed the Korean company Korindo for illegal deforestation and human rights violations in West Papua. Now, they’ve been expelled from the Forest Stewardship Council, reports Hans Nicholas Jong for Mongabay.
Did you or your colleagues release an investigation or report? Please share on our Slack group, or by responding to this email, so that we can include in future issues of Green Echoes.
Data, Resources and Training
For those of you looking to expand your science reporting skills, The Open Notebook has created a free Science Journalism Master Class, which will be delivered by email (rolling).
A new useful resource from the Global Investigative Journalism Network: a guide on investigating illegal wildlife trafficking (which mentions our first investigation, The Pangolin Reports). It’s quite in-depth, and is broken up into chapters like “Reporting on Legal Systems” and “Using Social Media to Investigate.”
Tactical Tech is hosting a five-day online event entitled Investigation is Collaboration, focusing on open source and data-driven investigations, from August 2-6. It’s free, but you need to apply to join, and the deadline is July 30.
Opportunities
Delayed a year due to Covid-19, the COP26 Climate Change Conference will be taking place later this year in Scotland. If you’re interested in covering it, the Climate Change Media Partnership is accepting applications for Reporting Fellowships (deadline July 30).
Another related opportunity for those of you in Small Island Developing States (SIDS); SAMSA is offering training and support to enable journalists to effectively cover COP26 (deadline July 31).
The Pasifika Journalism Fellowship will support seven journalists who identify or pair with Pacific Islanders to cover stories related to land and sea issues with a $6000 grant, story development support, and networking opportunities. Apply here (deadline 30 July).
Also worth applying for: the Pulitzer Center has an open call for Gender Equality Grants, and they welcome applications that connect gender to climate/environmental issues (rolling deadline).
For your calendar: The Global Investigative Journalism Conference will be fully virtual this year, and take place from Nov 1-5. It costs $100, but fellowships are available for journalists from developing and transitioning countries (deadline August 17).
That’s all for this week – do let us know, by responding to this email, if we missed anything. If you’re a journalist, editor, or supporter of investigative journalism, we have a slack group where you can share ideas and opportunities.
Finally, we’re about to launch a cross-border investigation we’ve been working on for several months, involving journalists and newsrooms in over a dozen countries. Stay tuned for that, and if you’d like to find out more or co-publish the stories (and videos), feel free to contact us at contact@investigative.earth. All our content is free to be translated, adapted, and republished under a Creative Commons license (CC-BY-NC).
Stay safe and healthy,
Nithin Coca
The Environmental Reporting Collective is a group of reporters and editors across Asia and elsewhere, working together to rethink how environmental journalism is done. We support collaborative journalism projects that start new conversations on how our societies impact our planet. Such stories are complex and expensive. That’s why they require new approaches to research, reporting, editing and distribution.
To learn more about our work, check out our website, Investigative.Earth, and follow us on Twitter and Facebook. You can also let us know what you would like to see in this newsletter by responding to this email.