From record-breaking heat in 2023 to alarming levels of biodiversity loss, our global climate and environmental crises pose a growing threat to human and planetary wellbeing. But even as these crises intensify, the work of documenting them has itself become increasingly risky.

Across the world, threats and attacks against journalists who report on environmental degradation and investigate environmental crimes are on the rise. A recent UNESCO survey reported 300 attacks against environmental journalists in the last five years—a 42 percent jump from the previous 5-year period.​

“We need environmental journalists more than ever, and we need to protect their freedom to cover these critical issues,” said Meaghan Parker, Wilson Center fellow and former Executive Director of the Society for Environmental Journalists, at a Wilson Center event last month on the dangers faced by environmental journalists and what can be done to protect them.

Co-hosted with the Society for Environmental Journalists, the event took place just before World Press Freedom Day, which for the first time ever focused on environmental journalism through the theme of “A Press for the Planet: Journalism in the face of the Environmental Crisis.”

Journalism for people and the planet

By exposing the political and social abuses that are often linked to environmental degradation and climate impacts, environmental journalism can support better democratic governance, human rights, and justice. “In countries with poor governance, natural resource exploitation often goes hand in hand with crime, corruption and violence,” said Parker.

Since its founding in 2006, the Pulitzer Center in Washington, DC has been a leading forum for raising awareness of underreported issues like environmental crimes and the human cost of environmental degradation. By providing financial, editorial, and other support to journalists, The Pulitzer Center has helped shed light on the health impacts of pollution, links between labor rights and climate change, and the illegal deforestation tied to agricultural and mining industries, among many other stories, said Jon Sawyer, President and CEO of the Center.

But environmental journalists face intense backlash and silencing for this work because it undermines powerful actors who are embroiled in and benefit from environmental exploitation and associated human rights violations. “Suppressing information about environmental degradation is a key part of the authoritarian playbook,” said Parker, citing a report by Wilson Center Global Fellow Peter Schwartzstein.

Referencing the 2022 murder of Burno Preira and journalist Dom Phillips in the Brazilian Amazon, Sawyer said that “what happened to Dom and Bruno, what has happened to dozens of environmental journalists around the world are stark reminders that this is dangerous work, dangerous and important.”

Confronting a hostile (work) environment

Threats and attacks against environmental journalists are widespread and span everything from lawsuits to physical intimidation and, in the most extreme cases, murder. In UNESCO’s recent study, which surveyed over 900 journalists across 129 countries, more than 70 percent of journalists reported being attacked, threatened, or pressured when investigating environmental issues—and that number jumps to 80 percent for female journalists. And according to UNESCO’s Observatory of Killed Journalists, 44 journalists have been killed while investigating environmental issues—and only five of these cases resulted in convictions.

The UNESCO study also included online harassment, which is pervasive but has historically received less attention than other kinds of threats against journalists. “Online harassment has not been considered a serious real threat until very recently,” said Jeje Mohomed, Senior Manager of Digital Safety and Free Expression at PEN America. “The idea that [this] harassment is contained on your phone or on your laptop, it isn’t true,” she said, adding that online threats are increasingly linked to physical attacks.

Some of the obstacles and threats faced by environmental journalists reflect the challenges of investigative journalism more broadly, said Clayton Weimers, Executive Director of Reporters Without Borders (RSF) USA. For instance, Weimers noted that journalists are often up against well-funded adversaries “who have good connections to the government and good connections to the courts, and who are able to weaponize those apparatuses to their advantage.” But these kinds of challenges are in many ways amplified when it comes to covering environmental issues, he said.

Stories from the frontlines

Sandhya Ravishankar, an investigative journalist based in Mumbai who reported extensively on illegal sand mining off the coast of India, said she faced a “mining mafia” with significant political clout and inroads with the police. “The mining mafia issued press releases to media organizations across the country…alleging that I was corrupt, that I was blackmailing them,” she said. She was exposed to threats and intimidation for over nine years, with strangers attempting to set her motorbike on fire and burning effigies of her. But her adversaries’ power and connections made accountability extremely difficult. “Despite many, many complaints made to the police,” she said, she was not given protection. In fact, she was slandered in an official government report and called a “criminal mastermind” by a member of Parliament.

Earth Journalism Network (EJN), which supports a global community of environmental and climate journalists, has also seen cases of threats against journalists in their network, said Amrita Gupta, Senior Editor and Content Officer at EJN. “This intimidation is everywhere,” she said. “In Vietnam, there is a journalist…who had to move to a safe house and report under a pen name because of the work that she did to expose government kickbacks to a wood pellet company.” In Guatemala, an EJN-supported journalist reporting on illegal logging “had people come to his house and demand to know who his sources were, and they threatened his family,” she said.

The impact on journalists and their efforts

Threats against environmental journalists can post a significant obstacle to reporting. Ravishankar, for instance, was ostracized—including by some of her fellow environmental journalists—which severely limited her access to information and her ability to work. Moreover, Gupta said that in a new report by Earth Journalism Network, more than a third of the journalists surveyed said that they frequently had to censor themselves as a result of intimidation.

But the attacks also take a heavy toll on the journalists’ mental health. The recent UNESCO survey reports that 75% of environmental journalists who experienced some form of physical, online, or legal attack said it had impacted their mental health. And although the situation is dire—Mohamed noted that journalists have a higher rate of burnout than doctors—the impacts on mental health are not given enough attention in the newsroom, where “toughness” is still seen as a key journalism trait.

Strengthening protection and support for environmental journalists

In the face of these many intersecting challenges, strengthening support for the safety and wellbeing of environmental journalists is essential.

Hostile environment and online harassment training for journalists, such as that offered by PEN America and the Pulitzer Center, are one important step. But institutional-level security protocols and policies are also needed to protect journalists on the frontlines. Mohamed said PEN America is “working with newsrooms and nonprofits to set up best practices and policies in-house” to systematically respond to attacks against journalists. Part of this must include a culture shift in newsrooms, stressed Mohamed, to enhance mental health support for journalists. The Pulitzer Center, for its part, requires that the outlets with which their grantees work have security protocols in place, said Sawyer—a rule that other grant-making organizations could implement.

Joining peer networks like SEJ and the Pulitzer Center’s Rainforest Investigations Network can also help environmental journalists by providing mutual support and increasing their visibility and thus safety, noted Parker, citing a recent International Press Institute (IPI) report on environmental journalist safety.

Better data is another piece of the puzzle. Even with the recent surveys from UNESCO and IPI, there are still few ongoing efforts tracking violence and oppression experienced by environmental journalists worldwide. To tackle this issue, EJN’s new research report, “Covering the Planet: Assessing the State of Climate and Environmental Journalism Globally,” features input from environmental and climate journalists across more than 100 countries. “It’s the most ambitious study, as far as I know, of the state of climate and environmental journalism worldwide,” said Gupta.

Finally, government policy can play a role. In the US, the Press Act – which passed the House and is currently pending in the Senate – aims to protect journalists from government surveillance and offers a rare example of bipartisan consensus on the importance of press freedom, said Parker.

Ultimately, all of these channels are key to protecting the critical work of environmental journalism amid a hostile climate. “If democracy dies in darkness,” said Parker, “so too do people and the planet.”