The Pulitzer Center advances the monitoring of gold mining in the Amazon rainforest
Good, old-fashioned, shoe-leather reporting can take you far. You can meet people on the ground, be exposed to situations you couldn’t foresee, and uncover context-based ideas that expand the scope of your story. However, at the Rainforest Investigations Network (RIN), we work with a principle: Your field trip will always benefit from your desk work.
The math is quite simple. The more research and data gathering you’ve done on a specific topic, the more equipped you will be to ask the right questions and innovatively tell the story. And if you are a journalist interested in covering gold mining in the Amazon rainforest, we have good news.
The Pulitzer Center has been working in alliance with a multidisciplinary group of organizations to expand the Amazon Mining Watch (AMW)'s machine learning model. By reviewing thousands of Sentinel 2 satellite images, this tool can now identify open-pit mines with a 99.2 percent accuracy rate. This allows journalists, scientists, and activists to use the data and monitor the advancement and harm of mining operations.
The AMW is a database created under our Transparency and Governance initiative. For us, these are not just buzzwords, but fundamental pillars of a just society. Open data and access to information make it easier to hold governments, corporations, and institutions accountable. Accessible data is essential to monitor regulations, follow money across borders, shed light on opaque and harmful supply chains, and discover the mechanisms that enable corruption.
Our commitment to these principles shapes our journalism and engagement programs. This week, we want to highlight two outstanding reporting projects from the Amazon supported by RIN.
Karla Mendes revealed that, even though commercial cattle ranching is banned on Indigenous territories in Brazil, large plots in the Arariboia Indigenous Territory have been used for ranching amid a record-high number of killings of the region’s Indigenous Guajajara inhabitants. Her investigation was published by Mongabay.
In Peru, Aramís Castro and his team at Ojo Publico analyzed more than two and a half million data points on timber commercialization to develop an algorithm that measures the risk of illegal timber trade. "The Dipteryx Project"—named after one of the Amazon's most endangered tree species, the shihuahuaco—found that more than half of the timber traded is at high risk of being illegal. The methodology behind the reporting is also available.
These projects, along with others that were nominated for the Gabo Awards—Latin America’s most prestigious journalism award—represent the groundbreaking, in-depth, and urgent journalism we believe in. They all put their shoes on the ground, but not before doing extensive research to calculate the first step.
Best,
Impact
U.S. Air Force missileers will soon have workplace exposures and hazards added to their records and more underground bunker inspections. The significant reform comes after a Pulitzer Center-supported project revealed that missileers, service members stationed 60 feet underground to watch and potentially fire nuclear missiles, are exposed to widespread carcinogens and other toxic dangers.
The reform was announced in early June at a town hall hosted by Air Force Global Strike Command.
Read the full update from Military.com here.
Photo of the Week
“For the last ten years I've been working with the drag queen community in Cumberland, Maryland, a small city in central Appalachia. To have been entrusted by this community to hear and share their stories of courage and resilience as queer folk in rural America has been one of the greatest honors of my career.”
—Michael O. Snyder
This message first appeared in the June 21, 2024, edition of the Pulitzer Center's weekly newsletter. Subscribe today.
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