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Packard Foundation Awards $200,000 Grant for Environmental News Coverage in Indonesia

Journalists face danger, need research support in covering deforestation, biodiversity, climate change and other news.

The nascent Society of Indonesian Environmental Journalists will get a boost in helping its members cover critical—and challenging— environmental topics through a $200,000 grant made recently from the David & Lucile Packard Foundation. 

Internews, a nonprofit media development organization based in Washington, D.C., was awarded the grant to work on a two-year project to increase the quantity, quality and impact of environmental coverage in the Indonesian media, and to help provide technical and financial support to Indonesian journalists.

During his visit on Nov. 9, President Barack Obama pledged $136 million to tackle climate change in Indonesia, because of its global environmental challenges.

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Internews has worked in several countries to build the technical and scientific understanding of issues such as climate change, biodiversity, oceans, forests and environmental health among local journalists as part of its Earth Journalism Network (EJN) initiative led by James Fahn, a journalist and author specializing in environmental issues.

Local reporting on the environmental impact of human activity is critical, Fahn said. People in many countries such as Indonesia are acutely affected by environmental degradation, but are often the least informed because its media makers lack resources to understand the scientific research and global political dynamics, and to educate the public. They also face personal risk, said Fahn.

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"Journalists have been killed covering logging," said Fahn, who worked in Southeast Asia for several years covering environmental issues. With Indonesia being an archipelago, its local population is also at risk from rising ocean levels, he added.

With the support of Internews and the Packard Foundation, the Society of Indonesian Environmental Journalists will help Indonesian journalists publish or broadcast some 200 stories on environmental issues over the next two years, including at least 20 in-depth, investigative reports. The number of journalists involved in the SIEJ is expected to grow to 250 trained professionals. It was modeled off of the U.S.-based Society of Environmental Journalists.

Internews describes Indonesia as one of the most bio-diverse countries in the world, and a virtual superpower when it comes to marine biodiversity.  Although Indonesia occupies only 1.3 percent of the Earth's land surface, it is home to large portions of the world's known species, including approximately 12 percent of mammals, 16 percent of reptiles and amphibians, 17 percent of birds and 25 percent of fish.

Fahn credited the Packard Foundation with recognizing that support of the environmental journalists society was key in helping to supporting Indonesian journalists in this field. The journalists' group gives them more clout in requesting companies and government ministries grant interviews and provide information on the record. Individual journalists are often ignored but its less easy to do that with journalists banded together, he said.

For more information about Internews, see www.internews.org


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