Pulitzer Center Rainforest Reporting Grant

The Rainforest Reporting Grant provides short-term, project-based funding support to journalists who want to report on tropical rainforests in three key regions: the Amazon, Central Africa, and Southeast Asia. They seek ambitious reporting proposals looking into critical issues including illegal deforestation, Indigenous rights, the extraction industry, biodiversity, and more.

Tropical rainforests play a crucial role in mitigating climate threats and sustaining livelihoods. However, decades of destructive deforestation and extraction of forest resources are having alarming impacts. Reporting on these issues raises public awareness and demands accountability from those with the power to make improvements.

The Rainforest Reporting Grant is an evolution of the Rainforest Journalism Fund (RJF), which has supported more than 600 journalists who produced 1,700 reports in the past five years. These reports capture the various challenges, harmful industries, policy failures, scientific explorations, and inspiring practices of Indigenous communities that are taking place in forests across the three regions.

Areas of Interest of Rainforest Reporting Grant

They seek proposals that expand the scope of their rainforest reporting in the Amazon, Central Africa, and Southeast Asia. They welcome ideas that explore underreported and systemic issues affecting the regions’ tropical rainforests, such as impacts of extractive industries on local people and environment, poor forest governance, carbon market initiatives, or inspiring conservation initiatives. They encourage reporting driven by innovation, data and technology, and collaboration.

Below are topic ideas to explore:

• Large-scale agro-industry
• Indigenous rights and policies
• Cross-border timber and wildlife trade and supply chain
• Forest and biodiversity health
• Chemical pollution
• Forest fires
• Palm oil production and regulation
• Green energy
• Artisanal mining and agriculture
• Carbon storage and market schemes