Environmental Philanthropy: Stories to Inspire
Increasing coverage of biodiversity in the media
Given its extraordinary significance, global biodiversity collapse doesn’t get the headlines it deserves. Thanks to land conversion, over-exploitation, resource extraction and climate change, we are losing species at a rate that is up to ten thousand times higher than would be the case without human interference. This poses an unprecedented threat to our own survival, so you might expect daily front-page stories on the crisis – but of course that’s not the case.
We think journalists could be playing a far greater role, both in raising awareness of the crisis and helping people to debate and implement its solutions. However, they face difficulties in securing the funds and technical support to write such stories. To help address this gap, we provided a grant to the Earth Journalism Network (a project of Internews) to establish an initiative to improve both the quantity and quality of biodiversity and conservation media coverage globally.
Over four years, the Biodiversity Media Initiative supported more than 150 journalists in 33 countries. This in turn led to the publication or broadcast of at least 419 original media reports, reaching a combined audience of millions. One such report featured in Colombia’s top news magazines and led to the cancellation of a planned road through the Amazon rainforest; another exposé led to Georgian authorities closing down a polluting site that had killed hundreds of birds.
James Fahn, Mike Shanahan and their colleagues at Internews really shared our desire to support journalists working on stories relating to conservation and the natural world; it was hugely gratifying to work with and support them. Pressures on wildlife are often intertwined with threats to human rights, competition for resources and a host of other complex factors. Increasingly, journalists working on these issues are facing serious threats to their own security, so the training and support the Earth Journalism Network offers to them and to newsrooms is also key.
Resourcing journalists to be able to uncover and share these stories safely at the local and international level is essential – and fascinating! We’re confident that the work will continue to bear fruit and help raise the profile of the biodiversity crisis, one of the defining issues of our time.