The Rainforest Reporting Grant provides short-term, project-based funding support to journalists who want to report on tropical rainforests in three key regions: the Amazon, Central Africa, and Southeast Asia. We seek ambitious reporting proposals looking into critical issues including illegal deforestation, Indigenous rights, the extraction industry, biodiversity, and more. Staff and freelance journalists are eligible. Applications accepted in five languages.
GRANT OVERVIEW
Tropical rainforests play a crucial role in mitigating climate threats and sustaining livelihoods. However, decades of destructive deforestation and extraction of forest resources are having alarming impacts. Reporting on these issues raises public awareness and demands accountability from those with the power to make improvements.
The Rainforest Reporting Grant is an evolution of the Rainforest Journalism Fund (RJF), which has supported more than 600 journalists who produced 1,700 reports in the past five years. These reports capture the various challenges, harmful industries, policy failures, scientific explorations, and inspiring practices of Indigenous communities that are taking place in forests across the three regions.
Here are examples of these inspiring reports:
- Season II: Rainforest Defenders
- Forests to Ashes: How Wildfires Are Threatening Venezuela's Megadiverse Protected Areas and Endangering Its Biodiversity
- Javari, Land of Conflicts and Organized Crime
- The Grand Experiment
- The Map of Death
- “Indigenous Women Form an Alliance Against Fire in the Amazon”
- Protecting Our Natural Environment: A Day in the Life of Eco-Guards in Kahuzi-Biega National Park
- When Charcoal and Firewood Consume Forests in the Great Lakes Region (Burundi, Rwanda, and Uganda)
- “Meet the People Safeguarding the Sacred Forests and Lagoons of West Africa”
- When the Forests Fall Silent
- Hungry People at Merauke Food Estate
- Rethinking Thailand's 40% Forest Coverage Target: A Road to Sustainable Forest Restoration?
- Impacts of the Myanmar Military Coup on Natural Resource Economies in Kachin State
WHAT WE'RE LOOKING FOR
We seek proposals that expand the scope of our rainforest reporting in the Amazon, Central Africa, and Southeast Asia. We welcome ideas that explore underreported and systemic issues affecting the regions’ tropical rainforests, such as impacts of extractive industries on local people and environment, poor forest governance, carbon market initiatives, or inspiring conservation initiatives. We encourage reporting driven by innovation, data and technology, and collaboration.
Below are topic ideas to explore:
- Large-scale agro-industry
- Indigenous rights and policies
- Cross-border timber and wildlife trade and supply chain
- Forest and biodiversity health
- Chemical pollution
- Forest fires
- Palm oil production and regulation
- Green energy
- Artisanal mining and agriculture
- Carbon storage and market schemes
WHAT WE DON'T FUND
To save our grantees and staff time, we thought it would be helpful to outline editorial products and project expenses we don’t fund:
- Books (we can support a story that might become part of a book, as long as the story is published independently in a media outlet)
- Feature-length films (we do support short documentaries with ambitious distribution plans)
- Staff salaries (with the exception of some of our yearlong fellowships)
- Equipment purchases (equipment rentals are considered on a case-by-case basis)
- An outlet’s general expenses (for example, rent, utilities, insurance)
- Seed money for start-ups
- Routine breaking news and coverage
- Advocacy campaigns
- Data projects aimed solely at academic research. Data should be developed to enhance/support journalism.