Climate news coverage is at an all-time high, and concurrently, the number of environmental journalists persecuted for their coverage is also rising.

It has been two years since Brazilian Indigenous expert Bruno Pereira and British journalist Dom Phillips were murdered while covering illegal activities in the Amazon. On June 5, 2022, the two were returning from their reporting trip when they were ambushed and shot by illegal fishers in the area.

Before his untimely death, Phillips had been reporting on deforestation in Brazil, leading an investigation by The Guardian and the Bureau of Investigative Journalism that uncovered how cows are moved between farms to mask their connection to deforested land in the Amazon. A colleague of his, Andrew Fishman, told The Independent that Phillips felt as though a target had been placed on his back after asking Brazilian president Jair Bolsonaro about deforestation in the countryside in 2019. Bolsonaro, a supporter of mining and commercial development, replied to Phillips, “First, you have to understand that the Amazon belongs to Brazil, not to you.”

In addition to the three fishermen who directly carried out the crime, the police charged two more people with the murders as of June 2023: Ruben Dario da Silva Villar and his henchman, Jânio Freitas de Souza. Villar is the alleged mastermind behind the murder and is reportedly responsible for an illegal transnational fishing network between Brazil, Colombia, and Peru. 

In May 2023, federal police indicted two more people for the murders: the former president and vice president of Brazil's government agency that protects Indigenous people, Fundação Nacional dos Povos Indígenas.

According to the investigation, the police claim that the agency officers received information that could have prevented the deaths. Despite the indictment, their names have not been revealed. 

The verdicts afforded thus far in the cases of Phillips and Pereira remain exceptions, even while still being incomplete; justice is elusive for most casualties of environmental reporting.

In the past decade, Reporters Without Borders has documented nearly 200 journalists facing threats and violence, including murder, linked to their environmental reporting. Asia and Latin America are particularly dangerous, with 24 environmental journalists murdered there due to their work—17 in Asia and seven in Latin America. In India alone, nearly half of the journalists killed in the past 10 years—13 out of 28—were covering environmental issues intertwined with corruption and organized crime.  

Sandhya Ravshankar, a Mumbai-based independent investigative journalist, experienced harrowing political and media isolation for nine years—from 2013 to 2022—for her exposure of illegal sand mining. The practice is the unlawful extraction of sand—a critical component in global manufacturing—either from open inland pits or dredged from river beds or beaches. What began as threats of sexual assault quickly snowballed into a national media campaign designed to silence her, she shared during a May 1 Wilson Center livestream on environmental journalists and democracy. 

In addition to stalking and slandering her, the “sand mafia,” as she calls them, leveraged their political clout to release press statements to major media outlets falsely accusing Ravshankar of attempting to extort money from the sand mining industry. They also defamed her in an official political document. When Meaghan Parker, the event moderator and chair of the Society of Environmental Journalists, asked Ravshankar how she persevered for so long, she replied, “I did not want the mines to win.”

In February, the International Press Institute issued a report on the state of environmental journalism following interviews with nearly 40 environmental and climate journalists in 21 countries across the Americas, Europe, Africa, and Asia. It reveals a disturbing rise in attacks against those covering environmental issues, and pinpoints that covering illegal mining, deforestation, and pollution is especially dangerous. Such journalism often challenges powerful economic interests linked to organized crime or corrupt state officials. 

The risk is most acute for local journalists, who lack the protective shield of large international media organizations, and freelancers. The latter constitute a significant portion of environmental reporters, but often lack adequate resources or institutional backing to navigate these threats safely. 

“Advocacy can take many forms,” Jeje Mohamed, senior manager for digital safety and free expression at PEN America, told Sierra. “We [journalists] have a macho attitude of being thick-skinned, but we must acknowledge the harm … Newsrooms need a culture shift, workshops, and mental health support.”

The risks that journalists face in exposing environmental harm is the reality for others whose work shines light on these same issues. Between 2012 and 2022 in Honduras, state forces, security guards, or hired assassins murdered at least 131 environmental defenders—ordinary people who took a stand to defend human rights, their land, and our environment. Seventy of these murders occurred after the high-profile murder of Honduran activist Berta Cáceres, who was shot dead in 2016, one year after being awarded the prestigious Goldman Environmental Prize. The prize recognized her for her success in rallying her community and stopping the construction of a government-authorized hydroelectric dam that would have spelled the end of the Indigenous Lenca community’s sacred and necessary water source. 

For environmental activists, Honduras may be the deadliest nation in the world, but this is a global crisis and especially perilous for journalists. Global Witness has a comprehensive database that recorded the widespread murders of environmental journalists between 2012 and 2022. The data include one journalist killed in Cambodia, seven in India, three in Indonesia, one in Myanmar, two in Paraguay, five in the Philippines, one in Russia, and one in Thailand.

Aside from the logs Global Witness and Reporters Without Borders keep on a finite period of time, no ongoing tracker of violence against environmental journalists exists.

In addition to physical attacks, the International Press Institute’s study found that arbitrary detentions and SLAPP lawsuits (strategic lawsuits against public participation) are disturbingly common against environmental journalists, particularly those in regions where the rule of law is weak or corrupt practices are rampant.

These methods are often sufficient to encourage self-censorship among journalists and news outlets that cannot afford the costs of lengthy litigation, even if they were likely to win a court case. “If democracy dies in darkness, so does our planet and its people,” said Parker in her opening statement during the Wilson Center’s livestream event.  

During the same event, Clayton Weimers, executive director of Reporters Without Borders, said, “We need to go further with advocacy and increase the quality of the rule of law.” Though he acknowledged the existence of personal protective equipment, digital safety tools, and training programs for at-risk journalists, he stressed the need for “better legal avenues for journalists to access [help].”

The International Press Institute’s report recommends enhancing collaborative networks among journalists, establishing more robust legal aid structures to fend off vexatious litigation, and widespread adoption of safety protocols as ways to mitigate the risks of environmental reporting. 

Amrita Gupta, senior editor and content officer at Earth Journalism Network, thinks journalists must also begin holding their employers accountable to setting up these resources.  “Bring the same journalistic rigor you bring to your investigations to investigating your peers and colleagues,” she told Sierra. 

In addition to increasing resources within media workplaces, the institute’s report also urges states and international bodies to ensure that crimes against journalists are investigated and prosecuted promptly to deter future attacks. In the US, the Press Act currently allows journalists privacy of their protected information in circumstances where terrorism or violence may be a threat. “[The act] is by no means a panacea,” said Weimers, but “it can put barriers between journalists’ sources and law enforcement to prevent courts and police officers from compelling journalists to divulge their sources.”

Through a global lens, UNESCO is dedicating this year’s World Press Freedom Day, May 3, to covering the environmental crisis. Its 31st annual conference on freedom of the press is being held in Santiago, Chile from May 2 to May 4, bringing together government representatives, experts, NGOs, and media professionals to discuss further protecting our environment and the journalists who cover it.