‘Acutely at risk’: the dangers facing environmental journalists

When we think about the dangers facing journalists, we usually think about war reporting or investigations into organised crime, but the reality is that journalists covering environmental issues are threatened for simply doing their jobs all over the world.

Those covering the most pertinent stories about our planet are regularly subject to harassment, surveillance, intimidation, and state-imposed censorship. This limits the coverage of vital environmental issues and in turn, cripples our ability to protect the Earth’s most fragile ecosystems.

In the period 2022 to 2024, Latin America and the Caribbean and Asia and the Pacific continued to record the largest number of journalist killings (38% and 32% respectively), according to UNESCO. Around the world, in that same period, 320 journalists were put behind bars for their work – the second highest number ever recorded by the Committee to Protect Journalists’ census – indicating an alarming global crackdown on press freedom.

With the rise of environmental degradation, climate change and rapid biodiversity loss, the role of environmental journalism is more critical than ever. However, the increasing threats environmental journalists – particularly indigenous, local, and independent journalists – face desperately needs to be addressed.

The safety of environmental journalists who report on issues like illegal logging, fishing, mining, wildlife trafficking, and corruption within infrastructure development, is acutely at risk

This reality is reflected in Covering the Planet, the first truly global research study ever conducted on environmental journalism. The study – a collaboration between Internews’ Earth Journalism Network and Deakin University – found that 39% of journalists reported being sometimes or frequently threatened because of their work and the same percentage of journalists self-censored when covering climate and environment-related issues.

Those surveyed also mentioned that to increase their capacity to report, they need more assistance. The top five areas of assistance identified included

• more funding for in-depth journalism (79%)
• in-person training and workshops (75%)
• fellowships to attend conferences (72%)
• more access to relevant data (67%), and
• better access to subject experts (60%)

The Earth Journalism Network has decades of experience in supporting journalists across the globe to develop security protocols and training to ensure they can conduct safe reporting.

As the risk to journalists continues to increase, efforts are underway to provide environmental journalists with tools to address the digital and physical threats they encounter, as well as providing resources to improve their well-being.

For instance, in the Amazon regions of Brazil, Colombia, Ecuador, and Peru, Internews’ Together for Conservation project, led by Wildlife Conservation Society with the support of USAID (this funding may have been halted – see here), has carried out several capacity building activities to ensure that journalists reporting on environmental crimes can do it safely.

Another practice carried out by Internews’ Together for Conservation is to request risk assessments to journalists applying to the project’s story grant calls.  These risk assessments are part of the grantee selection process and if the story is selected, the journalist is paired with a mentor that helps in developing an action plan to reduce the risks identified.

Given the highly volatile scenario in the Amazon, addressing threats often require grantees changing their story focus, angles and sites and detailing a physical and digital security protocol for their reporting. To complement the one-to-one mentorship, the project’s team carried out training webinars on how to develop security protocols with the participation of journalists that have reported environmental crimes in the Amazon.

By creating these peer learning spaces, journalists could discuss and exchange ways to prevent and/or reduce foreseeable threats. These spaces also contributed to collaboration amongst environmental journalists working in the Amazon.

On the occasion of World Press Freedom Day 2024, which recognised that the need for independent environmental journalism has never been more urgent, the Earth Journalism Network and Pulitzer Center hosted a panel titled ‘Uncovering Environmental Crimes in Tropical Ecosystems: Investigative Journalism and Press Freedom in Southeast Asia, Africa, and Latin America’.

The panel highlighted the lessons from Internews’ work with environmental reporters and how these needed to be replicated and multiplied to overcome threats to press freedom. Climate change and environmental harms are the defining issues of our times, requiring profound, unprecedented, and urgent global action (United Nations, 2023).

In the face of these issues, a disheartening finding in Covering the Planet is that audiences in many countries believe that the science on climate change is still being debated and that its anthropogenic causes are not clearly established.

This is problematic when widespread public understanding of the causes and impacts of climate change is urgently needed to support global climate action.

Although supporting journalists doesn’t seem like the most direct way to address these planetary challenges, environmental reporting does play a critical role in this urgent global call. Increasing both the quantity and quality of environmental reporting can influence people to better understand what is at stake

Internews committed to supporting journalists to freely and safely report on the climate crisis and environmental crimes and how they both impact the livelihoods of vulnerable populations.

As threats and violence against environmental journalists continue to increase, we need to develop effective plans to protect environmental journalists, so that they can continue to counter mis/disinformation, act as watchdogs, and safeguard the public interest. And none of this will be possible without access to sufficient funding, technical assistance, and training, to continue their vital work.

• When this article was written, Davidsson was Program Manager for Regional Community Response to Conservation Crimes at Internews in The Americas (LAC Programs)
• This article was first published here