Pulitzer Center Update March 15, 2024
Meet the New Cohort of the Rainforest Investigations Network
For the fourth consecutive year, the Rainforest Investigations Network (RIN), an initiative of the Pulitzer Center, has selected Fellows from around the world to spend a year investigating the supply chains, financial flows, corruption, and governance gaps that are driving rainforest destruction.
The new cohort of investigative journalists includes nine Fellows from six countries, with the majority based in the Amazon, Congo Basin, and Southeast Asia.
RIN was created in 2020 to address the need for in-depth reporting on the main systemic threats to rainforest governance and sustainability. Since its inception, the network has hosted 54 investigative projects.
The network provides editorial training and financial support to its journalists. The Pulitzer Center Data and Research team works directly with the Fellows to accomplish the goals of their reporting plans. Training covers techniques such as how to research companies and politicians, as well as how to use geospatial analysis for in-depth reporting.
The stories have uncovered illegal timber schemes facilitated by legal companies in the Congo Basin, the link between agricultural commodities and violence against Indigenous leaders in the Amazon, and the wildlife trafficking from Southeast Asia to pharmaceutical industries in the United States.
In this fourth year, RIN is giving a bigger emphasis on cross-border collaborative projects and bringing more data and skills to investigate the financial actors that are enabling the continued destruction of the main tropical rainforests.
RIN's 2024 media partners publish stories locally and internationally to a wide range of audiences, bringing attention to one of the most urgent issues of our time. The outlets also partner with the Pulitzer Center Education and Engagement team to amplify the reach of the investigations.
“At this crucial time, as civic space shrinks in many parts of the world, journalists are tasked with asking the tough questions. We rely on RIN Fellows to uncover underreported stories that, combined with engagement, will continue to inform and inspire action," says Intan Febriani, the Pulitzer Center's director of international education and outreach.
See below a list of the 2024-2025 RIN's Fellows:
- Alexander Abdelilah (France/Disclose)
- Bruna Bronoski (Brazil/O Joio e o Trigo)
- Bukola Adebayo (Nigeria/Thomson Reuters Foundation/Context Newsroom)
- Catarina Barbosa (Brazil/Sumaúma)
- Elodie Nicole Toto (Kenya/Mongabay)
- Fabian Alexander Federl (Brazil/Westdeutscher Rundfunk)
- Karen Gil (Bolivia/Revista La Brava/Mongabay)
- Linda Ngari (Kenya, Africa Uncensored)
- Margareth Suhartin Aritonang (Indonesia/The Gecko Project)