On March 20, Mongabay founder Rhett Butler, reporter Taran Volckhausen and Scripps Fellow Chris Lett led a panel discussion titled, “Global Environmental Journalism: Under Siege or Dawning Anew?”
In a time when environmental journalism resorts more and more to desk reporting, nonprofit news organization Mongabay is leading the way back to in-depth, investigative reporting from the field. The conservation and environmental science news site covers issues in the tropics related to deforestation, biodiversity, oceans, environmental defenders and more. Mongabay has a global audience of more than 30 million readers and publishes daily in nine languages via four international bureaus.
In December, Lett traveled to Ethiopia to report a Mongabay story about how women and faith are driving the effort to restore biodiversity. A main source of firewood for Ethiopia's largest city of Addis Ababa is thirsty, non-native eucalyptus, which has caused the water table to drop, resulting in a human-caused environmental disaster. “Thousands of women are carrying firewood on their backs, up to 200 lbs. every day so people can use it to cook,” Lett said.
Watch a video of the entire panel discussion here.