This year marks the second full year of Mongabay’s Y. Eva Tan Conservation Reporting Fellowships. Participants, selected from a pool of hundreds of applicants around the world, spend six months in a deep dive into environmental journalism. The program includes an array of trainings in climate science, video and information design, the interpretation of scientific studies, story structure, writing techniques and more; there’s a lot to learn — and teach — as fellows bring their own sets of experiences and knowledge to share with the group.

The most rigorous component of the fellowship is often hands-on reporting. Each fellow works closely with editors to plan and report a wide range of stories that involve complex interviews, layers of research and follow-up questions and a lengthy editing and fact-checking process. The insights gained are often surprising — to us at Mongabay, to readers and to the fellows themselves.

As fellow Swati Thapa writes, the need for environmental journalism grows bigger every day, with ever more stories of extreme weather and climate change around the globe. “The effects are being felt everywhere, including in the most developed and urban parts of the world,” Swati writes. “Environmental journalism hence highlights the relationship between humans and nature and keeps the dialogue alive, of how we are nature as well.”

Here, we invite Swati and two of her fellow Mongabay colleagues to share some of their biggest lessons learned on the job — in Brazil, India and Nigeria.

BRAZIL

Michael Esquer on the connection between science and Indigenous rights

As a young journalist who started his career in 2021 and has been covering environmental issues for a relatively short time, being part of the global Mongabay team for six months in the Y. Eva Tan Conservation Reporting Fellowship has broadened my perspectives.

Reporting to a global audience in English for the first time was both a challenge and a unique learning experience. The exchange of ideas in weekly meetings, where everything from basic issues to more complex topics in conservation and environmental journalism was discussed, created a significant space for me and my colleagues — one I hadn’t had until then — and I believe that will continue for other journalists joining the fellowship.

During the program, I explored various environmental themes, and I covered Indigenous issues, such as the discovery of new archaeological sites in the Amazon and their connection to the Indigenous struggle for land demarcation in Brazil. In this particular story, I related aspects of a scientific study estimating that more than 10,000 archaeological sites may still be hidden beneath the Amazon Rainforest to the current situation regarding Indigenous land demarcation in Brazil. Examining how this discovery influences the debate about the extent of pre-Columbian Indigenous occupation of the Amazon helped me understand the role archaeology can play in the fight for recognition of Indigenous territories today. I believe this connection between science and issues like Indigenous rights is a perspective many journalists should explore in their stories as well.

In another story, I interviewed Jose Parava, a Chiquitano leader from an Indigenous territory on the border with Bolivia, who expressed his concerns about the “time frame” proposition, known as marco temporal in Portuguese, which could hinder the demarcation of new Indigenous territories in the country. This story emerged from the idea of exploring the reactions of Indigenous communities in Brazil to the approval of the marco temporal, and it highlighted the role of journalism in amplifying underrepresented voices.

Issues concerning Indigenous peoples in Brazil have gained more media attention compared with a few years ago. However, in my perception, there are still gaps in journalistic coverage where Indigenous peoples from many regions of the country continue to be neglected, either due to the large number of these populations or the lack of space dedicated to this type of coverage.

As an Indigenous person who has been waiting for more than a decade for the completion of the lengthy demarcation process of his territory, Parava illustrated a reality that is not unique but is faced by many other Indigenous peoples in Brazil. Understanding his people’s struggle was important for me as a journalist and certainly added crucial layers to the overall understanding of how Indigenous peoples in Brazil struggle for their rights.

In addition to these stories, I also covered conservation topics, showing how tapirs in the Brazilian Cerrado are inspiring studies on human health, underscoring the importance of animals for both the planet and people. I also tackled climate issues, reporting on a study that revealed social and gender disparities in heat wave-related deaths in Brazil, emphasizing the need for more inclusive public policies.

Many of these stories were translated into Portuguese and republished on Mongabay Brazil, allowing me to reach many readers in my own country. In the case of Parava’s interview, the translation enabled the Chiquitano people’s struggle to be read in Portuguese by both the Chiquitano and other Indigenous groups in Brazil, and it was even shared by the Catholic Indigenous Missionary Council (CIMI). This raises a point about the importance of Indigenous peoples having access to stories about their own communities in languages they can read. Ideally, this would be in their own Native language, but the official language of the country where their territories are located is also of great importance.

The stories and experiences I encountered during the fellowship underscored the increasing importance of connecting local narratives with global audiences. This connection can significantly enhance environmental and social awareness by informing and inspiring a broader public. It highlights the need to elevate local voices on the global stage — an opportunity that is often inaccessible. I believe that by doing so, journalism can fulfill one of its core missions: to bridge people, stories and experiences.

INDIA

Swati Thapa on climate, weather and development in rural Uttarakhand

One of the crucial differences that I have learned while becoming an environmental journalist is the distinction between climate and weather. While weather means the state of the atmosphere at a given time and place, climate is the long-term average of the weather of a place, and climate change refers to the long-term shift in temperature and weather. Through the Y. Eva Tan Conservation Reporting Fellowship, I learned dual sides of climate change. While I learned how essential this distinction is, through my reporting for the stories under this fellowship I also learned the cause and effect these weather shifts have on the most vulnerable, despite lacking long-term data to label particular weather events as climate change.

The majority of my work during the fellowship was centered around issues specific to Uttarakhand, a state in the Hindu-Kush Valley in India. The majority of the population lives in villages highly dependent on nature. While interviewing people from small villages of different occupations, castes and genders, the deep-seated fear of altering weather was quite evident. The change in rainfall patterns, the loss of traditional aquifers and springs and increasing heat changing the phenology of trees is something they have observed and lived through.

This raises a crucial question: While labeling anything as “climate change” often requires decades of data, what happens to the immediate catastrophe that the most marginalized witness? When do we start taking into consideration the longer hours women have to stand in their fields throughout the day, shooing the monkeys away? Who comes to villages more often due to dwindling forests? Or what about young girls missing school because their caste-designated aquifer is kilometers away?

These questions are asked by journalists, and so opportunities like the ones Mongabay provides to young journalists not only shape their careers but also shape how we interact with such topics and present them to the world. One such paradigm shift I witnessed was the varied interpretations of certain terms among different sets of people. While reporting in the villages of Almora, I felt that “development” in their minds and the “development” offered to them were two different things.

In Almora, I realized that although the residents might not use the jargon of environmentalism and experts in the field, their experience of climate change and dwindling resources was ample. The people required a form of sustainable development focused on improving local infrastructure and access to basic amenities, which starkly contrasted with the commercial development projects being implemented. While working on my story on the strain on water resources due to an influx of tourists, one of the women I was interviewing during the general elections belonged to the Dalit community, formerly known as “untouchables,” who face severe socioeconomic and political oppression due to their position in the Hindu caste system. She mentioned how nobody pays attention to their needs.

“We didn’t cast a vote for any party, and why should we, because our demands go unheard? The politicians come to talk to our men, appease them, but these men who never lift a finger to fetch water don’t know about our struggles,” said Kamala Devi of Bughad village in Almora.

And so, when a journalist comes knocking on their door talking about issues that are daily struggles for them, the local transcends its usual meaning — and that is what journalism is all about: bringing every voice to the front. This is the soul of environmental journalism.

NIGERIA

Tarinipre Francis on farmers, data and ‘weather whiplash’ in Nigeria

One of the first things you learn as a conservation fellow in Mongabay is that not every environmental concern can be attributed to climate change; that some environmental crises occur independently of climate change. As we started to discuss story ideas, especially as they concerned environmental crises, I would see this lesson applied firsthand. Part of the defining process before a pitch was finally approved was presenting evidence to the fellowship editor to show whether or not an incident might be attributed to climate change.

This was a very nuanced perspective — and tricky as well. For instance, although the Global South is significantly more affected by the impacts of climate change, they have far less data on the change of weather patterns over the years, through which one can infer whether climate change has occurred, as a change in weather patterns generally must have been recorded for at least 30 years to be considered “climate change.”

It wasn’t long after we started the fellowship that I was confronted with the issue of absent data myself. In my first report as a conservation fellow for Mongabay, I wrote about how farmers in Nigeria were dealing with weather whiplash, a concept that refers to quick successions of extreme weather elements (like heavy rainfalls after a period of drought and vice versa), which altered planting cycles. I first learned about it during a climate change webinar hosted by SciLine, an independent nonprofit that connects journalists and scientists.

As I researched further to see if this phenomenon, weather whiplash, had been documented in Nigeria, I discovered that it had not. After conducting several rounds of interviews with farmers and agricultural extension service officers and studying scientific reports, it became evident that weather whiplash was happening in Nigeria too. It was a common phenomenon even with Nigerian farmers. It had just not been named and written about, thus my investigation for Mongabay turned out to be the pioneering publication on weather whiplash in Nigeria and its impact on agriculture. It went on to be reviewed by Agribusiness Africa, an agrifood media channel that analyzes content about the agrifood value chain across the African continent. The story also elicited inquiry about further research on the impact of farmers’ mental health.

I would come to appreciate this nuance about what environmental crises qualified as an impact of climate change even more as I navigated the climate sector in Nigeria as a conservation reporter because, although more people had begun to acknowledge climate change in Nigeria and experienced more of its impact, a lot of our environmental crises are also as a result of a lack of preparedness and implementation of effective policies, inefficient governance and absence of necessary infrastructure.

This puts climate reporters in a tough spot with the public, who, in the course of reporting about climate change and its impact in Nigeria, can be accused of colluding with the ruling class or climate-centered nongovernmental organizations to blame matters of institutional failure on climate change and putting them at risk of harassment. This comes at a time when environmental journalists globally are increasingly attacked for the work they do.

The lesson for me became that, as a conservation reporter in Nigeria, the onus was on me to weave the multiple aspects of our environmental crises together to create a more complete and cohesive report that would help move our society ahead.

Banner image: A farmer in Bauchi State, Nigeria, woke to find his farm flooded with water in October 2022. Nigerians are experiencing “weather whiplash” with successive periods of extreme weather such as drought and flooding. Image by Sadiq Mustapha via Wikimedia Commons (CC BY-SA 4.0).

Citation:

Daniel, F., Gbuchie, M., Emeruwa, V., Ike, W., Udam, N., & Torubiri, A. (2023). Nigeria’s flood disaster unpreparedness: Impacts on health and society. Cross River Journal of Medicine, 2(2), 12. doi:10.5455/crjmed.162000.