The Rainforest Journalism Fund (RJF), launched in September 2018, represents a major investment in international environmental and climate reporting. Through the Pulitzer Center, the RJF will support nearly 200 original reporting projects over five years, along with annual regional conferences designed to raise the level of reporting on global tropical rainforest issues like deforestation and climate change–leading to stories that make a difference. The RJF will support and build capacity for local and regional reporters based in the Amazon Basin, Congo Basin, and Southeast Asia, as well as international reporters working in those regions. The RJF is supported by the Norwegian International Climate and Forest Initiative (NICFI). For more information about the RJF, please see our announcement and update.
To apply for a Rainforest Journalism Fund reporting grant, please visit the RJF Grants page.
Applications for regional projects are independently reviewed by Advisory Committees, composed of experienced journalists, and are expected to propose projects related to tropical rainforests in each region.
To learn more about RJF's three focus regions and Advisory Committees and view the regional reporting projects supported by the Rainforest Journalism Fund, please visit the following pages:
For more information about international RJF projects, please visit the International RJF page.
To see the stories and projects supported by the RJF and also by the Rockefeller Foundation, Omidyar Network, MacArthur Foundation, and individual donors, please see the Pulitzer Center’s Rainforests Issue Page.
In Vaupés, in the Colombian Amazon, indigenous people are clinging to their beliefs to protect themselves from mining. A mining licence for coltan has three communities on the edge: leaders are threatened and their right to prior consultation has not been respected.
Deep in the jungles of Vaupés, in the Colombian Amazon, a group of Indigenous people holds to their prayers and beliefs to protect themselves from mining.
In Ecuador, an Achuar leader shows how local communities are confronting extractivism and infrastructure development that is infringing on the forest.
This young Indigenous woman from Ecuador helps the women in her Achuar community give birth. Considered a sacred act, women traditionally gave birth alone in the jungle. This is the seventh in the series, "Rainforest Defenders," which shows leaders fighting to protect the forest.
This is the sixth story in a series about Indigenous youth in the Amazon fighting to protect their communities.
"Mulheres do Xingu" is a short-form documentary that shows the first major gathering of a women's movement, held in May 2019 in the village of Ilha Grande, Mato Grosso, Brazil. The objective was to discuss ways for women to find a place in spaces of power along with men.
Feeling threatened by the Bolsonaro government's policies, Xingu women decided to stop denying themselves the right to occupy spaces of power along with men.
The Solomon Islands archipelago is being stripped bare by foreign logging companies, in some cases acting illegally. A community takes action to preserve its future.
Bolsa Verde provided support for around 76,000 families living in extreme poverty in or near protected areas in the Amazon, but the program was suspended without warning in 2017. And measures taken by the Bolsonaro government are putting pressure on forest protectors.
The Chiman people cannot be understood without the context of the fight for self-determination of indigenous communities and their territories in Bolivia.
The Brazil nut tree plays a critical role in the global climate and weather across South America. Deforestation is putting it all at risk.
Indonesia’s mangroves are an incredibly effective tool against climate change — but they’re being cut down to grow shrimp and palm oil for you.
Catholic missionaries first arrived in the Amazon five centuries ago. Who are they and what are they doing now?
Three Rainforest Defender Series stories of resistance and innovation in the Achuar Territory of the Ecuadorian Amazon.
This project analyzes how the fire in the Amazon rainforest impacted the triple frontier between Brazil, Bolivia, and Peru.
By land and air, a photo essay that shows fire in the heart of the Amazon.
How do the end of programs such as Bolsa Verde, along with the austerity of the Michel Temer and Jair Bolsonaro governments, affect riverside communities and accelerate deforestation in the Amazon?
Demand for tropical timber is stripping Solomon Islands of its trees with grave repercussions for the country's future.
It is the women who maintain indigenous culture and now they are also uniting to protect their lands. Together they resist and demand "Demarcation Now."
With a sign that reads "Chimán, Mojeño, Yuracaré and Movima Indigenous Territory," the eviction of loggers from the Bolivian Chimán Forest has finally begun.
A series of multimedia stories about the impacts, routes and modus operandi of the illegal exploitation of coltan and gold in indigenous territories in the Colombian Amazon region.
A six-month transnational investigation into the economic and political drivers of violence against environmental defenders in seven countries of Latin America.
Tropical forests in Indonesia, Brazil, and Democratic Republic of Congo are under-appreciated superheroes regulating and rescuing the global climate. Here is the story of a few of those trees.
Patricia Gualinga embodies the resistance of the Sarayaku people, who have kept oil companies out of their ancestral territory.
Pulitzer Center invites environmental journalists to apply to the first Congo Basin RJF Convening
The Pulitzer Center is pleased to announce, as part of the Rainforest Journalism Fund, that we are now accepting applications from journalists working in Southeast Asia interested in taking a Hostile Environment/First Aid Training (HEFAT) course. The deadline for applications is February 10, 2020.
After a successful year of supporting rainforest journalism in the Amazon, the Rainforest Journalism Fund is expanding its global reach.
We have to decolonize ourselves: Eliane Brum, a Brazilian member of the Amazon Advisory Committee, addressing the first convening of the Rainforest Journalism Fund (RJF).
Pulitzer Center founder and Executive Director Jon Sawyer reflects on the Rainforest Journalism Fund's first convening, which brought together 80 journalists who have reported from across the Amazon basin.
Spearheaded by a coalition of Latin American journalists, the project helped shape the backdrop for a New Yorker piece on a court victory for an Ecuadorian indigenous group.
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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