The challenges of the environment beat: A conversation with journalists in Southeast Asia

Immigration officials flagged irregularities with his visa extension. The British journalist and his employer have said that the allegations have no basis –  Flynn says that he had a valid visa and work permit and suspects that his appearance on a documentary that investigated carbon projects in the Cardamom mountains is linked to his addition to the country’s immigration blacklist.

Flynn, who is known for his reporting on industrial-scale deforestation in Cambodia, is one of four journalists to join this episode of The Eco-Business Podcast to discuss the challenges of environmental reporting in Southeast Asia, where press freedom ranges from being strained to outright repressive. Of the region’s 11 countries, just two – Thailand and Timor Leste – rank in the top half of the 2024 Reporters Without Borders (RSF) World Press Freedom Index. Cambodia places 151st in the ranking of 180 countries.

But while the pool of independent media outlets in Cambodia and Southeast Asia is small, there is considerable potential for independently-told stories to find an audience, said Flynn. “Anyone reporting honestly on what’s happening [on the ground] will find that their stories gain traction,” said Flynn, who is now reporting on Cambodia from Thailand.

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Given the global crisis of faith in the media, journalists have a responsibility to prove their worth to their public and their readers – and it’s very difficult to do that if you are sat at a desk.

Gerald Flynn, writer, Mongabay

Indonesia, one of the region’s freer countries for the media, slipped in last year’s RSF rankings amid reports of threats to journalists during the transition of power between outgoing president Joko Widodo and his successor Prabowo Subianto. It now ranks 111th.

“Under the Prabowo government, it’s difficult to access government data. There’s a lack of transparency around government projects and a lack of clarity in official responses,” said Jakarta-based reporter Adelia Dinda Sani, another guest on the podcast. 

Sani’s most recent story for Eco-Business examined a controversial sea wall designed to protect the coast of Java from flooding. “ I wanted to dig deeper into the investment part [of the sea wall project]. However, it was incredibly hard to get the data,” she said, adding that government officials provided her with conflicting information about a project that could take 20 to 40 years to complete.

Malaysia ranks 107th in RSF’s index but the country fell 34 places in the list last year, a trend that the country’s prime minister, Anwar Ibrahim, shrugged off at an event to mark National Journalists Day last May. “I don’t mind; it does not matter if you are downgraded [in the press freedom rankings], because we are tough against racists and religious bigots,” he said.

Malaysian journalists must navigate the “three Rs” – royalty, race and religion – when covering environmental stories, said Nadiah Rosli, a freelance journalist and mentor to investigative reporters who was previously Malaysia project director for Internews, a non-profit news group that has been affected by funding budget cuts to the United States Agency for International Development (USAID). 

Journalists in Malaysia increasingly want to produce investigative stories on environmental issues but are restricted by time and funding constraints – and the discretion of editors who tend to prioritise political stories that draw a wider audience, Rosli said. 

The Philippines is one of the world’s most dangerous country for journalists. Covering the mining industry and the environmental impact of transition minerals extraction is risky territory. Hannah Fernandez is Eco-Business’ chief correspondent for the Philippines, whose award-winning reporting has taken her to Batangas to explore how to close a coal plant early with transition credits and Palawan to uncover the environmental impact of nickel mines. 

“Big business is very much tied to politics. They’ve got each other’s back to make sure nothing bad comes to light,” Fernandez said. 

The Manila-based correspondent believes that for independent media to survive and tell important environmental stories that the mainstream media does not, journalists need to get to grips with the business side of publishing. “Journalists have to learn how to be entrepreneurs. We have to be able to sell our stories,” she said.

Tune in as we discuss:

• The challenges environmental journalists are facing in Indonesia, the Philippines, Cambodia and Malaysia
• Stories from the field and lessons learned
• What are the type of environment stories people want to read, and what stories do editors commission? 
• How to sustain independent journalism in Southeast Asia

On the podcast, moderated by Eco-Business associate editor Robin Hicks: 

• Adelia Dinda Sani, freelance contributing writer and multimedia journalist, Deutsche Welle
• Hannah Alcoseba Fernandez, Philippines chief correspondent, Eco-Business
• Gerald Flynn, Southeast Asia staff writer, Mongabay
• Nadiah Rosli, freelance environmental journalist and capacity development programme manager, Ocean Discovery League 

[They are referred to by their first names in the podcast transcript.]

Edited transcript:

What are some of the emerging challenges of environmental reporting in Southeast Asia? 

Adelia: Under the government of Prabowo, the biggest challenges are the difficulty in accessing government data, a lack of transparency over government projects and a lack of clarity in official responses.

I was just covering the giant seawall project in Java, which has been ongoing for about a decade. Since Prabowo’s election, he decided to expand the seawall along the northern coast of Java.  It will run for more than 900 kilometres and will cost billions of dollars.

I wanted to dig deeper into the investment side of the story but it was incredibly hard to get the data. Also, when I talked to government officials, different people would give me conflicting information. It was very hard to get clarity on the project.

When it comes to Prabowo’s climate commitments and pledges, it is very hard to get complete transparency from the government. It is also hard to find experts who are willing to comment on these commitments.

Another issue is the difficulty in getting permission to access certain sites or locations – there’s a lot of bureaucracy involved.

Hannah: I echo the point Adelia made about the lack of access to data. There is no email culture here [in the Philippines]. I have to call the landlines of government offices. We have to go through a lot of bureaucracy to get any access to information.

When it comes to the dangers of reporting in the Philippines, big businesses are very much tied to politics. They have each other’s back to make sure that anything that might put them in a bad light doesn’t get out.

For example, Eco-Business recently did a special report on transitions credits, which discussed the early retirement of a coal plant for the first time. Before going to the site, we arranged with a non-profit to introduce us to locals who could tell us about how the coal plant impacted their lives, and how its early retirement would bode for them.

But when we got there, we were ghosted. Our contact called them [the locals] but none of them showed up. It seemed like they had been scared off.

We went to the mayor’s office to ask for information about the coal plant or to talk to someone about the plans for divestment, but we were told that we needed to write a formal letter and that all answers would have to be approved by the mayor. 

Gerald: For me, the biggest challenge is being permanently banned from Cambodia. After more than five years of reporting from Cambodia, it seems that my luck has run out.

I was told at the airport on returning from a holiday that I had illegally acquired my visa and that the document had been incorrectly submitted or had been faked. Immigration officials at the airport didn’t seem to have a clear answer on what the problem was. All they could tell me was that I had been placed on the immigration blacklist as of 25 November last year.

Coincidentally, that was three days after France 24 aired a documentary in which I featured as a source to show some of the challenges that Cambodia’s carbon projects have faced in the Cardamom mountains. It seems coincidental that I was placed on this blacklist just days after a documentary that the Ministry of Environment didn’t like aired.

I will continue to report on Cambodia but not from Cambodia – which has its own set of challenges. Beyond that, I’m hoping to extend my focus to the lower Mekong basin region – Laos, Thailand, Vietnam, and possibly Myanmar as well.

Nadiah: Having spoken to several editors and journalists in Malaysia, a lack of funds is cited as the most significant impediment for the media here. Media outlets are highly dependent on financial resources, without which journalists are overburdened with heavier workloads.

We don’t have many specialists covering environmental stories so journalists need to invest their own time and commit to following up on environmental stories. They are often juggling day-to-day reporting while wanting to pursue environmental stories as well.

In Malaysia, we also have what is known as censorship of the three ‘R’s – royalty, race and religion. So journalists need to think creatively about circumventing this when writing environmental stories. They also have to navigate the intersection of environmental reporting with commercial and political connections. And of course, to pursue these stories they have to consider the risk that comes with it.

Another challenge is the fact that the [definitive voice on] environmental issues in Malaysia is still the government. But a lot of journalists are increasingly broadening the scope of who they quote as experts on environmental issues beyond government agencies and ministers, just to ensure that they stay objective in their reporting. So we are seeing a lot more stories interviewing community leaders, scientists, NGOs, and other stakeholders. I think this is a positive trend, but still the primary definer is the government.

Besides that, environmental stories are still very much based on reactionary reporting in Malaysia – there are more responses to incidences of natural disasters like floods, rather than journalists proactively pursuing stories on environmental issues. I think a lot more journalists hope to do investigative stories about environmental issues, but this takes time, funding and resources.

Lastly, the sort of stories that get exposure is left to the discretion of media outlets. What is regarded as a priority will get the most resources – this would mainly be political stories. So environmental issues tend to get less coverage.

Tell us about the most memorable story you’ve worked on in your career and what you learned from it. 

Nadiah: When I was starting out as a journalist, I was quite naive about the media ecosystem in Malaysia. I got a press release about a particular issue at the time on palm oil. Digging deeper and going beyond what the press release is saying was a challenge for me – just to get people from the industry to open up and be candid.

But also having the support from the media outlet to pursue the story was an issue. They said: “Oh, you don’t want to be rocking the boat of certain people.” Because palm oil is such a massive industry in Malaysia and they wanted to keep people happy.

I think that jeopardises the quality of the reporting, when you don’t get enough people to speak on the topic objectively, and you want to show both sides of the story.

Gerald: There is a lot of stories we’ve done that have been tricky or landed us in some hairy situations. One that stands out was when we were investigating an illegal logging operation that was working out of a prison. Timber smugglers were selling the timber to a guy who was working in the prison, who used prison labour to process the timber.

But all of this timber was being cut down from a site where a hydropower dam was being built. They had to clear a lot of particularly dense jungle in the Cardamon Mountains in southwest Cambodia, and we struggled to prove that this timber was illegally sourced because the Chinese developer of the dam had been granted this land and was able to clear a certain amount of forest.

But we suspected from looking at satellite imagery and Global Forest Watch data that this wasn’t all being legitimately felled – some of the timber that was being traded at the prison was still coming from the hydropower dam, but outside of the reservoir area. This meant a lot of on-the-ground visits.

This investigation took most of the year. It involved a lot of stakeouts, sitting in the car with a pizza overnight and some energy drinks, watching to see if a timber truck would come out of the road – that would mean it had come from the hydropower dam. That was the only available route it could have come from.

Even getting access to the dam is not the easiest thing to do as a journalist – particularly when it is Chinese developers who don’t want foreign journalists sniffing around and illegal loggers who definitely don’t want journalists looking into it. We ran into a lot of issues with regards to access to sites, putting sources at risk and trying to determine how to approach sources in a way that would not put them in any more danger.

Unfortunately, in a lot of areas where timber traffickers operate, local authorities or members of the community are either involved or are paid to provide information to the timber traffickers. And so it can be very risky if you ask the wrong person questions, particularly as a foreigner. 

Word can spread very quicky that you are a journalist snooping about the [logging] business.

This all culminated in us attempting to get some photos of the timber that was being stashed at the prison, only for a photographer to get chased by one of the men operating the logging network. He tried to run the photographer off the road in his 4X4 vehicle while the photographer was on a motorbike.

So, there are some very physical risks as well as risks to sources and challenges in terms of access to data and transparency.

My spoken Khmer is pretty good, but I typically still work with a Cambodian journalist, in part because I trust their fluency in Khmer far more than my own and in part for safety while traveling into rural isolated areas, and reporting on sensitive issues.

A few times I have done solo trips into the jungle a few times to get photographs and ask questions of local communities discreetly. But for anything more formal, particularly when it comes to getting local people to trust you… that’s something that I think Cambodian journalists will always have an advantage in.

Hannah: There was one story that we did three years ago on nickel mining in an Indigenous people’s community in Palawan [added link to story]. Our contact told us that media going into the area was frowned upon by the nickel mining firm, and that they had a private army. The last time he was here with a journalist, our contact felt that their car was being followed. With that in mind, we proceeded with caution.

I also want to highlight another story, which was written at the height of the Covid-19 pandemic in 2020. I was following up on a story about coal miners that had contracted Covid. The province had implemented lockdown measures but the coal mine operated as usual, going against lockdown rules.

Before going to the island, I got in touch with an NGO contact who knew the coal miners, but none of them wanted to talk because they feared losing their jobs. They wouldn’t even speak anonymously.

They told us that they couldn’t even provide photos, because once they go to work at the coal mine their cell phones are confiscated.

They are completely provided for – their housing, their barracks. We were told that they are used as political capital, they are encouraged to register as voters. The mayor protects them. So, that’s why they wouldn’t talk.

It’s a pity because we were excited to do the story. We thought it would have revealed a lot about Covid, and we had the funding for it through a grant. But it would have been futile if we went there but couldn’t speak to the miners.

Another story that you’ve worked on that struck a chord with me was around child waste-pickers working on a landfill. Tell us how you went about that story?

Hannah: The child waste-pickers story was meant to show the social cost of waste, not just the environmental angle.

We went through a non-profit that protects these children. They are the ones who put them to school, take care of them and arranged for interviews with the children. We followed the protocols. It wasn’t as if we were interviewing them one-on-one. There was always somebody there guiding them.

But one difficulty was that a lot of the children didn’t really want to tell us exactly what they were feeling – maybe because they had a guardian there. So I think they were really choosing their words when expressing their experiences, because the money that they get [from collecting waste] feeds their family. 

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Press freedom in Indonesia is not looking good right now. Ever since Prabowo got elected, there has been concerns about media censorship.

Adelia Dinda Sani, multimedia correspondent, Deutsche Welle

Adelia: I have faced similar challenges to Gerry and Hannah in terms of getting access to remote locations.

Last year, I was working full time as a television journalist for a national media company in Jakarta. I wanted to do an in-depth report on nickel mining in Sulawesi. At that time, downstream nickel activity was booming in Indonesia. I pitched the idea to my supervisors and went straight to the island.

However, although I am Indonesian, the country is a huge archipelago and it was difficult to get access to remote islands – I also didn’t speak the local language.

I was trying to partner with a research organisation that was working on nickel mining in Sulawesi. At first it was going quite well, however, I found out that it was really hard to get access to the nickel company that was willing to be covered.

As I was working in television, we needed a lot of visuals and video. But that was really frowned upon, not only by the mining companies, but also by the research organisation.

At that time it was deemed to be quite dangerous and we would need a lot of funding to do this type of reporting. So we had to cancel the project. We couldn’t get access to the company who was willing to be interviewed and my supervisors decided that it would be far too dangerous.

I think that the situation is not improving for local media. Under the Prabowo administration, there are a lot of interesting topics such as [the administration’s] climate commitments and programmes. But I would say that a lot of the media that does investigative reporting is mostly international media.

That is partly because press freedom in Indonesia is not looking good right now. Ever since Prabowo got elected, there has been concerns about media censorship and we think it is not going to get better.

I feel that a lot of national media are being very cautious, especially when it comes to controversial environmental topics.

Another challenge is the lack of funding [to cover the important topics]. A lot of Prabowo’s climate programmes are located far from the capital city of Jakarta where most of the media company headquarters are, in Eastern provinces like Papua and Maluku.

Media freedom in Indonesia was on a downward trend towards the end of the Jokowi administration. Now It’s looking even tougher under Prabowo. Tell us about environmental stories that work and don’t work. What are you seeing that is finding an audience in the environment and climate space?

Adelia: I think it’s generally hard for climate stories to gain traction. But with Prabowo’s new climate programmes and commitments, more and more people are becoming aware of climate issues.

When we cover climate or environmental policies that impact people on a large scale, these usually gain traction – especially if it involves big money. Indonesians love numbers and anything that involves big money and foreign investment is usually a good way to engage people.

The second type of climate story that finds an audience puts Indigenous communities at the forefront, because many recent policies have harmed and impacted Indigenous peoples, especially in eastern Indonesia.

A lot of media are more determined to report on Indigenous communities, which is a good thing because previously the media merely focused on talking about the technical details and the science of the story. But now climate stories are more human-driven.

Nadiah: Based on what I’ve seen locally in Malaysia, the stories that are gaining traction are about how climate change impacts people in their day-to-day lives.

Health is another angle [that gets traction] and also stories concerning communities; the livelihoods of farmers, for instance, with sea-level rise and how it affects the salinity of paddy fields.

But also stories regarding infrastructure projects and the mismanagement of funds and corruption when it’s related to environmental topics. The proposal to develop a second airport at the Tioman Marine Park got a lot of interest because it was an investigative piece that showed the project’s connection with the royal family in that state. It started with Malaysiakini producing the first story, and then other local news outlets started reporting on it as well. Eventually they scrapped the [airport] project.

Personally, when I write stories I focus more on the intersection of science with nature and culture. And it’s interesting because I think one of the stories that I produced a few years ago for New Naratif on a traditional fish snack from the east coast was one of my most well read stories.

It shows that people appreciate connecting the environment to their cultural heritage and things that they can relate to in terms of food, and how that links to overfishing and how we will not be able to enjoy these delicacies if we keep extracting our marine resources.

You mentioned connecting environmental issues to heritage and culture. Are those the sort of stories that get traction with editors?

There is definitely interest in that among editors – it’s because we don’t see enough of these stories where it’s not all doom and gloom but that allows people to understand environmental issues through a cultural lens, which works in engaging more readers.

In terms of pitching, I feel that it really depends on the news outlet. Different news outlets have different focuses, but I think it’s the intersectionality that usually works, and also human stories about communities and how climate change will impact them.

I think editors would appreciate you taking a global topic and then trying to make it more localised for readers so that they can see where the linkages are through your story and how that relates to their day-to-day.

Gerald: In Cambodia, there is not a lot of independent journalism. So anyone reporting honestly on what’s happening will find their stories gaining traction.

I agree that the cultural elements are also really important because in Cambodia, you have this long-standing societal attachment to forests. Forests are places where people have been able to survive against the odds in the past.

Typically, it’s only been pretty awful people exploiting the forests in Cambodia, historically speaking. So when people see stories that touch on that, I think they know what to expect.

One of the successes of Mongabay is that we are able to produce stories solely on an issue in a country, for its own merits. I wouldn’t have to write a story about Cambodia with a China lens or ask how does this affect our American audience? We can just write about Cambodia for Cambodia’s sake. I think that’s really valuable. It’s something that not a lot of global or international outlets really do.

In terms of topics that are trending, we are seeing a revival of the REDD+ [Reducing emissions from deforestation and forest degradation in developing countries] projects. This global scheme has gone through an absolute battering in terms of publicity and investments – there has been scandal after scandal after scandal. And yet across Cambodia, Thailand and nows Laos as well, we are seeing governments in the region embracing this strategy as a way to generate finance to preserve forests.

I think that is something that all journalists, whether they are strictly environmental journalists, business journalists, or general news reporters, should be starting to wrap their heads around: the technicalities of carbon projects, which are steeped in exclusionary jargon – almost deliberately. It’s worth understanding how these projects function and to be able to tell people whether or not these projects are delivering on the conservation promises that they make.

A lot of the international buyers of carbon credits seem more concerned about the green credentials that they are paying for than they do for the efficacy, the ethics, or the conservation value of the REDD+ projects where these credits are generated.

 

How can we ensure that independent media survive and thrive in Southeast Asia to report on the stories that need to be told?

Hannah: I never really dreamt of learning about the business side of journalism, but it looks like that will be the future of journalism, if we really want to remain independent. Journalists have to learn how to be entrepreneurs, we have to be able to sell our stories.

I realised that I have to learn the business side of journalism. I had to have a pool of potential funders who might be interested in the story and be proactive about meeting them at events and journalism workshops, having in mind that this person could potentially be interested in my work, then emailing them my pitch of the story. Sometimes they are interested in it and are able to fund the story.

Nadiah: I think the challenge of getting long term funding to do impactful work is really important for most media outlets. But operating as a freelancer, I think it’s just knowing that I don’t need to be good at everything as a journalist – that’s something I’ve learned over the years. I can always collaborate with other experts who could uplift my story in terms of data or their subject expertise.

I do feel that building a network of coalitions among civil society and speaking more with representatives of underrepresented populations is important.

I think citizen journalism is another direction that we can explore. From my experience of managing a citizen journalism project with Internews, Suara Masyarakat, we had more than 500 stories produced by citizen journalists involved in that programme. It says a lot about community grassroots stories and how people are often underrepresented in mainstream media and how they are committed to voicing out their concerns on environmental and social issues.

I think just building that community, but also having different ways of getting long-term funding for your stories are the main challenges. It’s still an ongoing struggle – but I’m hopeful.

Adelia: From my perspective, it’s very important to continue to upgrade our skills as a journalist. Not a lot of Indonesians are very keen on reading long-form articles, so digital media is one of the key solutions to get people engaged with news. 

I think journalists need to be flexible and versatile. I usually write long-form articles, news and video scripts, but recently I discovered that it’s important for me to be able to train myself in other skills, such as filmmaking and vertical videos for social media to appeal to a wider audience.

Gerald: I don’t know whether we should be reassured or terrified by the fact that we all seem to have the same problems across the region.

Long-term funding is a massive issue, and I think in Cambodia we are seeing a lack of independent outlets. There are a few, but are they financially sustainable? Don’t know. I hope so. But I would be very surprised if they are.

I think we need to see a wider variety of donors, particularly those who make big public proclamations on press freedom day and talk about the value of journalism. They need to put their money where their mouths are and start ensuring that journalists have the money to do the jobs that they should be doing.

I also think that given the global crisis of faith in the media, journalists have a responsibility to prove their worth to their public and to their readers, and it’s very difficult to do that if you are sat at a desk.

Journalists need to get out there in the community and show that they are taking issues that affect the community seriously, and that they are trying to raise attention about them.

Because if you have the public on your side, showing that your work is valuable, that goes a long way – especially in a largely authoritarian region.

This transcript has been edited for clarity and brevity.