Around the world, the environment is increasingly under threat from industrial pollution, business development of the wilderness and climate change. Pulitzer Center stories tagged with “Environment” feature reporting that covers climate change, deforestation, biodiversity, pollution, and other factors that impact the health of the world around us. Use the Pulitzer Center Lesson Builder to find and create lesson plans on the environment.
Lack of attention to climate issues should challenge journalists to do more to define the threat of climate change in ways the public can see. Wider public understanding will build a basis for action.
Mining companies plan to solve a transport bottleneck with a new road that opens up tiger habitat and risks illegal logging.
Tasha Guidry is tired of watching her neighbors decide not to vote, and worried they won’t go to the polls. After Hurricane Rita 15 years ago, voter turnout was down to 13% after many residents were displaced.
Under the policy, workers usually receive a point or points for missing a day. If they gain enough points, they’re fired.
After floods and multiple hurricanes, homes in Sellers, South Carolina, are plagued with mold. This mold is causing health problems for Sellers residents.
Since childhood, Lilia Isolina Java Tapayuri has been drawn to the Amazon river fauna. This draw has marked her profoundly, both spirituality and professionally.
There are no states that mandate cooling in farmworker housing. And there’s no relief from the summer night sky in North Carolina. “We struggle to fall asleep at night because of, well, that damn heat,” said one worker.
For José Gregorio, an indigenous man from the Colombian Amazon region, training young people to fight for the conservation of the rainforests in his community is part of a global struggle to mitigate the climate catastrophe currently unfolding.
The shock from the historically wet and destructive hurricanes of a few years ago may be fading for inland residents, but many people in coastal counties continue to live with the after-effects.
Living in a mobile home, being a non-citizen, and working in agriculture are risk factors for heat illness in rural parts of the state, according to a 2018 paper written by Lauren Thie, the N.C. Department of Health and Human Services’ heat prevention coordinator.
For Lilia Isolina Java Tapayuri, protecting the Amazon pink river dolphin is sacred. This is the tenth and final "Rainforest Defenders" story, which follows leaders fighting for nature preservation.
U.S., Russian, Canadian, and Chinese forces are taking an active role in the polar region, but the real threat is the rapidly changing climate.
Residents of southwest Louisiana are all too familiar with life-altering storms. Now, they must navigate hurricane recovery during a pandemic.
Woodlands comprise almost 90% of Tanzania's forests. In Miombo, tobacco farming impacts these landscapes and nearby communities.
This project will investigate whether local communities understand the importance of peatlands and what they are doing to protect these resources.
Forget climate change. The real story is climate speed. From rain bombs to higher seas, the accelerating forces of climate change are changing South Carolina now.
COVID-19 has seized on the historical vulnerability of Quilombola populations on the lower Tocantins River in the Brazilian state of Pará.
A look at Amazonian fires and deforestation during the dry season and the possible consequences for the health of the Amazonian population over the COVID-19 pandemic.
This project will focus on Nkamou in Congo-Brazzaville's Pool Department as a case study of deforestation in this part of the country.
The fires that destroyed 1.53 million hectares of Indonesia’s forests and land in 2019 were triggered by the expansion of forest product and oil palm plantations and industrial activity.
Propublica and the New York Times magazine use a groundbreaking data model to explore the daunting implications of climate change for global migration.
In Cameroon, industrial corporations which specialized in either rubber or sugar cane exploitation have destroyed hundreds of hectares of forests, leading to the expulsion of Indigenous populations.
A reporting project exploring the systematic abuses of agriculture workers in the food industry in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic.
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.
In the aftermath of Hurricane Dorian, Haitian migrants in the Bahamas were deprived of legal pathways to migrate. Government officials have confiscated their land and refused to provide aid.
Nate Hegyi reports on American Prairie Reserve, a nonprofit building a privately funded wildlife preserve the size of Connecticut in the Great Plains of Montana.
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.
China’s Yellow River continues to struggle for its survival after decades of unchecked development. Today, that fight has escalated to its headwaters on the Tibetan Plateau. Here, at 4,500 meters, patches of degraded land have connected to form vast deserts.
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.
How do North America's trees fuel Europe's clean energy plans? Journalist Justin Catanoso discusses "Slow burn"—a project on the wood pellet industry in North Carolina and its impact on the environment and climate change.
What does it take to produce an international series in multiple locations? Journalist Melanie Saltzman takes us behind-the-scenes of her reporting for PBS NewsHour Weekend’s “Future of Food” series.
What factors are driving people to migrate from Guatemala at historic levels? Jonathan Blitzer reports.
In June 2019, a mysterious illness spread like wildfire claiming 16 lives within two weeks in a community of 186 Batek, Malaysia’s last hunter-gatherers. In the end, only 20 were left unaffected.
Journalists Megan O'Toole and Jillian Kestler-D'Amours traveled the length of Canada's Trans Mountain Pipeline to understand its consequences.
Aerial photographer Alex MacLean addresses the impact of sea-level rise, and current strategies to mitigate it, by capturing images of shoreline vulnerability, catastrophic damage, and strategies for resilience along the coast from Maine to Texas.
Photographer Sim Chi Yin speaks on the thinking and impulse behind making the latest chapter of her ongoing project "Shifting Sands," a visual investigation of the global depletion of construction sand.
Grantees Matt Hongoltz-Hetling and Michael G. Seamans won Best Environmental Story for their article documenting hydropower’s impact on Inuit communities.
This year, the Institute for Nonprofit News was one of three news organizations to win the award, which is presented by the Great Lakes Protection Fund.
Grantee Emily Fishbein discusses the challenges and strategies behind reporting on Myanmar remotely during the pandemic.
In this on-demand webinar, Pulitzer Center grantees discuss their reporting on rising sea levels and the hazards of floodwaters along the Southeastern coast
The Pulitzer Center invited educators to view a webinar that connected participants to the Center's education staff to explore methods for using reporting exercises to increase students’ engagement, critical thinking skills, media literacy skills, and empathy.
The Pulitzer Center-supported Vox project profiles three tree species vital to the global ecosystem
What do musicians and journalists have in common? They are both storytellers, said grantee Ian Urbina, who invited artists to make music inspired by his field recordings and reporting.
Grantees David Abel and Andy Laub were honored for their film documenting the fight to save the critically endangered North Atlantic right whale.
In this webinar, educators and students explored the profound impact of climate change on the Great Lakes region.
Sean Gallagher received “Highly Commended” acknowledgement for his short film Cambodia Burning.
"Sucked Dry" investigates the effects of foreign land grabs in the Nile River Basin on 11 African countries.
The Pulitzer Center is seeking applications from current students and recent graduates of the Campus Consortium program to report on U.S. climate change issues.
In this lesson, students will hear from a journalist who uses writing skills to describe under-reported place, and practice the same skills in original writing.
In this lesson, students will analyze how photojournalists tell under-reported stories using photography and apply tips for doing so themselves from Pulitzer Center-supported journalists.
Students explore news articles and instructional videos to evaluate how they can find and analyze under-reported stories in the news, and in their own communities
As students across the world learn remotely, Pulitzer Center is committed to supporting educators with engaging resources that are online and easily printable.
Students explore reporting on Indigenous youth activism in the Amazon, analyze the causes of plastic pollution, and consider how they can make a difference in reducing waste in their own communities.
Students learn about how gold from illegal mines in Colombia winds up in American electronics, and the violence, labor conditions, and environmental consequences that result from this trade.
Students evaluate how climate change is impacting the land, people and wildlife on Cape Cod through close reading of the article "At the Edge of a Warming World" from The Boston Globe.
At the start of the school year, students might want to discuss global issues that arose over the summer. This lesson is intended to spark discussion on current events and ways to keep up with them.
Analyzing and understanding the trends for Genetically Modified Crops: How will food security change in Ghana with the innovation of a stronger cowpea?
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