The Rainforest Journalism Fund aims to support and build capacity of local, regional, and international journalists reporting on issues related to tropical rainforests. International reporting reaches audiences outside the main rainforest regions and helps create global awareness of tropical rainforest issues. International reporting on rainforest issues can show how local rainforest issues are linked to global trends, and how global events can impact local (especially Indigenous or traditional) communities and landscapes in tropical rainforests. The Rainforest Journalism Fund’s regional advisory committees provide insights on international reporting proposals, but international projects are reviewed by the Pulitzer Center.
This Colombian man has dedicated years to training youth on how to protect the environment. His is the ninth installment in the Rainforest Defenders series.
Five hundred years after Spanish conquistadors arrived, gold is still a driving economic force in South America's Guiana Shield. But the industry depends on another element, one with deadly side effects for miners and rainforests: mercury.
For Lilia, protecting the pink dolphin is a sacred act. This is the 10th and final story from the Rainforest Defenders series.
Two commodities that are frequently taken over illegally are gold and mercury, and in the Guiana Shield region, one does not go without the other. Mercury has grave impacts on human health and the environment, but efforts so far to curtail its use in the gold industry have only pushed supply chains underground.
At a time when the demand for coconut products is exploding in the developed world, the 8 million farmers growing the fruit are far from benefiting — they face a widening gap between the value of their products in the West and what they earn.
The world's jungles absorb a large proportion of our CO2 emissions, helping to slow the pace of human-induced global warming. But they may be reaching a saturation point.
On the banks of the Tapajós River, one of the largest tributaries of the Amazon, a development policy was implemented years ago to turn the region into an important world corridor for Brazilian soybeans. There lies American car mogul Henry Ford’s failed factory city.
The Congo Basin is home to the world’s second-largest rainforest and a unique array of biodiversity. But the ecosystem's remote location cannot protect it from the threat of poaching.
The Democratic Republic of Congo is home to a large part of the Congo Basin rainforest, a habitat for countless species and a crucial absorber of atmospheric carbon dioxide. But illegal and uncontrolled logging represent major threats to this critical ecosystem.
Filmmaker Tom Laffay, whose short film “Siona: Amazon’s Defender’s Under Threat” recently premiered on The New Yorker, gives a behind-the-scenes look at his long-term film project with the Siona people of Putumayo.
A project called the "grain train," with its planned trajectory through the Brazilian Amazon, divides Indigenous groups and those who support rural development.
An ambitious infrastructure project in the Brazil is increasingly opposed the closer it gets to the heart of the Amazon—an area that has been defended by Indigenous communities for years.
This project will focus on Nkamou in Congo-Brazzaville's Pool Department as a case study of deforestation in this part of the country.
Adiela, a Siona Indigenous leader, follows the spiritual guidance of her elders and clears landmines from her ancestral territory in the Colombian Amazon, in hope that her people may some day return.
With journalists in Indonesia and Brazil, the stories in this project highlight how tropical forests in Costa Rica, Indonesia, and Amazonia might ameliorate—or, to the contrary, aggravate—climate change. The project also explores the current impacts of climate change on people and wildlife.
Sister Jean believes that God made us free. With that freedom, we made many terrible choices, like burning down the Amazon. Now, it is not God's job to save us -- that's up to people like Sister Jean.
After five episodes in Brazil and three in Ecuador, Rainforest Defenders Series turns its attention to the Colombian Amazon.
A scheme in the Democratic Republic of Congo is giving local communities the right to own and manage rainforest – both providing employment opportunities and halting deforestation.
In the depths of the second-largest rainforest on the planet, an Indigenous community is waging a fight against industrial giants that are destroying their ancestral forest.
As the world's largest consumer of soy, China's hunger drives Brazil's sales. How the Amazon fits into China's food security policy and Belt and Road Initiative—and what that means for the world.
Investigating the impacts of the global coconut boom on Southeast Asian rainforests and livelihoods.
Demand for tropical timber is stripping Solomon Islands of its trees with grave repercussions for the country's future.
In Bolivia, where the Andes meets the Amazon, coca leaf is now everywhere. This plant is lucrative and so it became a monoculture in the region, causing trees to gradually vanish.
Scientists explore cutting-edge technologies as indigenous communities and government agencies work to protect isolated tribes – and the forest ecosystems they depend on – in the Peruvian Amazon.
What happens when the world’s most populous country has an appetite for beef and soy produced in Brazil? How China helps fuel the deforestation of the Amazon.
Jesse Hyde traveled to the Brazilian Amazon in June 2019 to report on the impact of cattle ranching on the rainforest and a series of violent conflicts over the forest's future.
The project focuses on three climate superheroes under threat of deforestation.
At a virtual Earth Day event for students, grantee Eliza Barclay speaks on a panel with youth activists, experts, and students about solutions-oriented climate change reporting.
The Pulitzer Center is pleased to announce the launch of the Rainforest Journalism Fund, a five-year, $5.5 million initiative focused on raising public awareness of the pressing environmental issues facing the world’s tropical forests.
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