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May 7, 2025
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SEJ News: #SEJ2025 LIVE — On-the-Ground Coverage of Day Two Sessions From Reporters in Our Student Newsroom
A team of student journalists reported on key environmental issues at the annual Society of Environmental Journalists’ conference, which took place April 23-26, 2025 in Tempe, Arizona.
- Read Part 1, with more than two dozen reports from Day 1 of the conference.
- Read Part 2, with nearly a dozen reports from Day 2 of the conference.
- Read Part 3, with more than a dozen reports from SEJ tours.
The #SEJ2025 LIVE initiative comprised 16 student journalist fellows working under the guidance of eight newsroom editors from The Arizona Republic, with SEJournal editor Adam Glenn serving as a facilitator.
Student reporters were Amelia Monroe, Bella Mazzilli, Eleri Mosier, George Headley, Naomi DuBovis, Serenity Reynolds, Sophia Ramirez and Tufan Neupane from Arizona State University; Arilynn Hyatt, Jay Corella, McKenna Manzo, Natasha Cortinovis, Sedona Paige Hartley and Summer Williams from the University of Arizona; Katarzyna Michalik from Prescott College; and Nikki Shaw from Alaska Pacific University.
Newsroom editors were Greg Burton, Shaun McKinnon, Kathy Tulumello, Wyatt Buchanan, Sean Holstege, Mark Henle, Pat Poblete and Steve Kilar of The Arizona Republic, and Kendal Blust of the University of Arizona.
The program was supported by the Nina Mason Pulliam Charitable Trust, Arizona State University’s Cronkite School of Journalism and Mass Communication, the Arizona Media Association’s Local News Foundation and the University of Arizona's School of Journalism.
Many thanks to SEJ’s Cindy MacDonald, for her extra-human copy and production editing work on this special report; and to Lisa Palmer, editorial director for events, and Aparna Mukherjee, executive director, for their role in formulating and supporting the #SEJ2025 student newsroom.
The stories are available open-source for other outlets and organizations to share and republish, with credit and links.
SEJ Session: Clean Energy Projects Won’t Benefit Communities Unless Residents Are Involved, Experts Say
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| Panelists speak on clean energy projects in the West at the Society of Environmental Journalists conference in Tempe on April 26. From left to right: Christian Torres, Jessica Keetso, Kate Gordon and Blanca Begert. Photo: George Headley. |
Published April 26, 2025
By George Headley
Negotiations between communities and clean energy developers can end up benefiting neither of the groups with what they promise to incorporate in their plans.
Panelists at the Society of Environmental Journalists conference in Tempe said on April 26 that alternatives to negotiations and identifying what should be done to improve these communities’ understanding of clean energy projects can increase the potential for benefits.
Here are some key takeaways from the panel:
Think beyond labor and emission rates
Kate Gordon, CEO of California Forward, said narrowing the discussion to only focus on labor growth and emission rates can distract from the factors that could affect communities the most.
- Gordon said looking at the tax base when discussing an agreement between a community and a corporation is vital.
- Jessica Keetso, the former community organizer for Tó Nizhóní Ání — a Navajo Nation environmental nonprofit — said another aspect of negotiations that communities should address is the potential for offtake agreements. Offtake agreements allow the area to purchase a portion of the products that developers will accumulate, allowing for more widespread access within the communities to valuable resources.
- Offtake agreements for either energy or water access are strong factors for the Navajo Nation. About 30% of residents in the Navajo Nation have no access to running water, according to the Navajo Water Project.
Not everything is 'clean'
Gordon said some of these clean energy projects will promote themselves as clean, although that can be “artificially constrained to the United States” while offshoring the hazardous aspects of these projects.
- “We don't want to fall in that trap where we're saying it's clean just because the companies are minimizing publicly the impact that they're actually going to be doing,” Christian Torres, the director of climate equity and resilience at Comite Civico Del Valle, said.
- Torres said this is an issue facing the Lithium Valley, as geothermal and lithium developers attempt to describe their mining as a “clean, closed loop system.” He said they don’t often show the waste stream that is a result of production.
- “They're telling you it's clean, but it's not like nothing’s ever going to be 100% clean,” Torres said. “It's cleaner … than putting coal plants to generate energy, but it's not clean completely.”
Holding companies accountable
Gordon said companies need to negotiate through community benefit agreements that are enforceable and transparent.
- The main reason for this is communities should know exactly what they will be receiving from an agreement to allow for project development on their land.
- Torres said when solar energy became an opportunity within Lithium Valley, the job opportunities went away in 10 to 12 months, when they were projected to last for at least 50 years based on mineral resources.
- “We don't want them to be promising things, and they're not delivering,” Torres said.
- Gordon agreed with Torres. She said there have been several instances, like the rapid growth of solar energy development in California, where development leaves much of the community behind.
Changing the system
Gordon said there is a need to change the system for companies to gather resources. One change she would like is for companies to become public benefits corporations — changing their structure, mission and “corporate DNA” to cooperate with communities and look for benefits — if they wish to go into a region and extract a valuable resource.
- Keetso said not having tribal liaisons can promote a more unified community, rather than a divide in supporters and opponents of a development.
- She said hiring tribal liaisons can be disruptive because they can push talking points like job revenue and blanket statements without providing information on the background of the project or its real effect on residents.
- Gordon said companies follow a community advisory group model, where community members can provide advice and input toward projects. She’d rather have companies let community members be involved in the process, approving decisions made rather than solely advising.
- She said the U.S. needs to strive for more creativity in its negotiations and agreements with Indigenous nations, similar to how, in some instances, Canada promises 50% of equity to First Nations in its country.
- “All these systems were created for a stable climate, which we don't have anymore,” Gordon said.
George Headley is politics editor at The State Press at Arizona State University and a fellow of the SEJ student newsroom led by The Arizona Republic.
SEJ Session: Why the Next Global Climate Conference, COP30, Is Raising Eyebrows
Published April 26, 2025
By Arilynn Hyatt
The next COP30, Conference of Parties, hosted by the United Nations, is set to take place in Belém, Brazil.
However, panelists at the 2025 Society of Environmental Journalists conference in Tempe wonder if it's appropriate to host a big international climate conference that draws delegates from 198 countries in a smaller rainforest city.
Only twice has South America hosted a COP conference, once in Buenos Aires and once in Lima, Peru. The 2025 conference will drive attention to the Amazon rainforest and the role it has in climate mitigation.
But not without some eyes being raised by some attendees in Tempe who question the choice of Belém. Building roads on protected lands, expensive lodging and climate injustice are the issues and ironies that arise from bringing the COP30 conference there.
“What the visitors will find in Belém is not the original Belém that we have,” said Karla Mendes, a Brazilian investigative and feature reporter for Mongabay, an environmental news outlet.
The irony of building a new road to a climate conference through the rainforest
Large events typically happen in cities like São Paulo and Rio do Janeiro. Those cities have hotels and roads to support large numbers of people. In Belém, that’s not the case, Mendes said.
To support the conference coming to the city in November, the Brazilian government started to build a road that cuts into the protected lands of the Amazon rainforest. While the government denies any links to the road being built for the conference, Mendes points out the contradiction of the newest construction project and the efforts to minimize deforestation and encourage biodiversity in the area.
“I understand it’s not a big city, but the reality is different,” she said. “I don’t know if I’ll be able to go to COP."
Expensive lodging and delayed construction in Belém
Since Belém, a city of about 1.3 million people, the prices of hotels or Airbnb's have skyrocketed due to the limited number of rooms available, Mendes said. To help fix this, city officials thought about having attendees stay on cruise ships.
Another criticism the country is facing surrounding the international climate conference is the delaying of construction projects, increasing the costs. “It puts the question on if it’s really worth it being done,” she said.
It’s too late to change the structure of the conference, but Mendes thinks scaling down the conference would have been better.
The COP30 climate summit is not meant to be a large party
COPs are slowly moving in the wrong direction: Instead of addressing solutions to climate issues, host countries have started to view it as a party, said Michael Dorsey, director and chair of the Walton Sustainability Solutions Service at Arizona State University.
“It’s a way of ignoring a systemic problem that we see at large events,” Dorsey said. This is an example of climate injustice. He says a way to address these issues is to integrate the interests of the public. “People are interested in this stuff,” he said. “Lots of people are delivering solutions.”
Arilynn Hyatt is a junior studying journalism at the University of Arizona and a fellow of the SEJ student newsroom led by The Arizona Republic.
SEJ Session: Climate Change and Reproductive Health Are Linked, Journalists Say
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| Jessica Kutz (left), Virginia Gewin (second to left), Jenae Barnes (second from right) and Zoya Teirstein (right) speak during an April 26 panel on how the changing climate affects reproductive health. Photo: Jay Corella. |
Published April 26, 2025
By Sophia Ramirez
The Society of Environmental Journalists on April 26 brought together reporters covering pregnancy risks related to climate change during its annual conference.
Virginia Gewin, a freelance science journalist, worked with Environmental Protection Agency researchers and doulas to find evidence that mothers in extreme heat environments were giving birth to more preterm babies.
“There was a whole spate of scientific articles within the last five-plus years that were from different regions, all over the country, all over the world, and they were all showing the exact same thing,” Gewin said.
Babies born prematurely are vulnerable to a host of health complications.
Here are more takeaways from the conversation.
Natural disasters impact the careful timing of reproductive care
Reproductive care is dependent on hormones and can be timed down to the hour, which can be easily disrupted by natural disasters.
Hurricane and other natural disasters have also closed abortion clinics, preventing women from accessing them before their state’s gestational cutoff for having an abortion, said Jessica Kutz, climate and gender reporter for The 19th, a nonprofit reporting on gender, politics and public policy.
Kurtz offered an example connected to Hurricane Ian, which hit Florida in September 2022.
“This couple who had suffered several miscarriages, and finally they turned to IVF,” said Kutz. “The day before they were supposed to go in for their final appointment, the hurricane closed their clinic.”
Climate change likely to put more women at risk during pregnancy
Climate change models predict that infectious diseases will spread more rapidly as the Earth warms.
Because pregnant women are especially vulnerable to disease, warming is likely to put more people at greater risk.
This had been acknowledged in federal reports, but the link between pregnancy risks and climate change requires further coverage, said Zoya Teirstein, who moderated the panel and is a staff writer for Grist, a nonprofit dedicated to climate change journalism.
“The immune system stands down in order to allow the fetus to grow without getting rejected by the body,” Teirstein said.
People in poverty may be less concerned with reproductive health care
Jenae Barnes, a health journalist for Capital B, which produces news for Black communities nationwide, said she observed that people facing economic hardship in her Gary, Indiana, were less concerned with reproductive health and the environment.
“When people are worried about how they're going to pay their extremely high utility bills because it's getting hotter and colder, they're not so much worried about how much air pollution that they're breathing in,” Barnes said.
Disappearing public health data means more voices needed
Many public health databases have been maintained by the federal government, including by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and the Environmental Protection Agency.
But all panelists said they had encountered a database being removed from public access since the start of the Trump administration.
Barnes said that although the data may be unavailable, the people experiencing the underlying challenges remain.
“While the data might be being erased, the people are still here,” said Barnes.
Sophia Ramirez is a senior at Arizona State University and a fellow of the SEJ student newsroom led by The Arizona Republic.
SEJ Session: What Is ‘Climate Anxiety’? Emotional Effects on Humans Are Real, Expert Says
Published April 26, 2025
By Eleri Mosier
Climate change has created havoc in nature, but it can have another effect: causing anxiety in humans.
That was the topic discussed by a panel of experts at the Society for Environmental Journalists conference in Tempe on April 26.
Climate anxiety can affect life goals, motivations, and morals, according to Rebecca Weston, psychotherapist and co-executive director of Climate Psychology Alliance of North America.
Weston described a situation with a white woman and her Bangladeshi partner deciding if they wanted to have a baby. The woman believed it was immoral to bring a child into a world in its current state, while her husband did not want to surrender what he loved about living ― despite having grown up experiencing countless climate disasters.
“It really challenged my own assumptions again about how people take in and respond to these crises and how they make meaning out of it,” Weston said.
Rachel Ramirez, a freelance journalist who covers climate, was born and raised in Saipan, the capital of the U.S. territory, the Northern Mariana Islands. Super Typhoon Yutu hit her island in 2018, and the trauma caused by it influences her journalism today.
“As journalists, we were kind of trained to separate our emotions and, you know, not let these get in the way of our reporting,” Ramirez said. ”And so I think as times have changed, given our political climate and things that are going on right now, I … think it's kind of hard not to. I mean, it doesn't hurt to just let your emotions in and let yourself cry.”
Climate anxiety is an emotional response, but it has other implications.
Climate anxiety “creates a distance between real things that are happening to real people, perhaps even people who are anxious about some potential future outcome when there actually might be things that are very directly in their lives today,” said Justin Worland, a senior correspondent at Time.
Reporting on the effects of climate change has its challenges, too, Weston said.
“What I want reporters to do is look for the emotions that are not narratively accepted,” Weston said. “And so I think especially in this context, yes, I am profoundly for resilience, although look at who gets labeled resilient, right? Resilience is a wonderful thing as long as you stay oppressed.”
Eleri Mosier is a senior at Arizona State University and a fellow of the SEJ student newsroom led by The Arizona Republic.
SEJ Session: Four Things To Know About Extreme Heat
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| Joan Meiners speaks during a "How (and How Not) To Cover Extreme Heat: Scientifically, Ethically and Visually" panel on April 26. Photo projected on the wall is by Caitlin O'Hara. Photo: Mark Henle/The Arizona Republic. |
By Sedona Hartley
Published April 27, 2025
A panel at the Society of Environmental Journalists conference in Tempe on April 26 explored the nuances and complexity of reporting on extreme heat.
The discussion, titled "How (and How Not) To Cover Extreme Heat: Scientifically, Ethically and Visually," featured journalists who cover heat and the director of Phoenix's heat response team.
“Heat is extremely complex and it's extremely deadly,” said Joan Meiners, a climate reporter with The Arizona Republic. “It is not universally considered a disaster and is not currently recognized by FEMA. Many people are working to get it to be considered as such, though, so those who need it would be eligible for federal disaster relief funding, but we're not there yet.”
Here are four takeaways from the conversation.
There's no standard way of measuring extreme heat
A problem that arises when researching and writing about extreme heat is the quality of data available and the accuracy with which it was measured.
“Heat can actually be measured in a bunch of different ways," Meiners said. "So are we talking about air temperature in the shade, air temperature in the sun, surface temperature on the ground, or are we talking about the temperature of the bench that you're sitting on at the bus stop? These are all different and need to be talked about differently. This is only going to get more relevant.”
How heat-related deaths are tracked is inconsistent
Not only is there no standardized method for where and how researchers record temperatures, but the way heat-related deaths are tracked also lacks consistency.
Monica Samayoa, a reporter with Oregon Public Broadcasting, illustrated the problem with a question she posed to researchers.
“Say somebody went to work and experienced heat illness, then went home and died a day or two later — does that count as a heat death?” Samayoa asked. “And they said they don’t track that.”
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention introduced protocols in 2017 to encourage medical examiners to record heat as a factor on death certificates when applicable, but it has not been widely adopted, Meiners said.
"So the data is a mess,” she said.
Heat demands various responses: Cooling centers, respite centers, hydration stations
Phoenix is one of the few cities where the government formally recognizes the complications of extreme heat, which the city's Office of Heat Response and Mitigation helps address.
Dave Hondula, Phoenix's heat response team director, said extreme heat disproportionately affects the homeless population and is especially dangerous to people who use drugs or other substances.
“We are trying to understand where we can keep certain services, where we can push for more, and where we can transformatively change,” Hondula said.
His office works to help alleviate the dangerous consequences of the extreme heat by organizing both short-term and long-term heat relief for those who need it in Phoenix.
“One of the important changes we have made is in definitions," Hondula said. "We call an indoor location that's available with air conditioning for short-term relief a cooling center. We also added a definition for a respite center, as a place available for prolonged rest indoors, recognizing that some facilities, faith-based in particular, were opening their doors and allowing people to come in and sleep for the afternoon or evening. We also have hydration stations available to those in need.”
Journalists face danger from heat too, reporter says
Caitlin O’Hara, a Phoenix-area freelance photojournalist, said journalists are at risk when they're out reporting in extreme heat, the same as the people they are covering.
“I would advise that when you are working in the field, you limit your exposure to 45 minutes of heat at a time, then take the time to cool down," O'Hara said. "The other thing to consider is to protect your equipment; many electronic devices die very quickly in the heat."
Sedona Hartley is a senior at the University of Arizona and a fellow of the SEJ student newsroom led by The Arizona Republic.
SEJ Session: Plastics Aren’t Just Environmental Issues, Experts Say, But Also Risks to Children
Published April 26, 2025
By Naomi DuBovis
Plastics are known to be environmentally unfriendly, but they are not just dangerous for the planet, experts said April 26 at the Society of Environmental Journalists conference. They are also a public health issue.
Panelists at the conference in Tempe explored the harms of the chemical additives on children’s brains and discussed ways to reduce them. Here are some of the key takeaways:
Harms of micro- and nanoplastics and their additives
Small plastics are not only prevalent, but researchers are warning of a relationship between the toxic chemicals in them and neurodevelopmental problems.
Carmen Marsit, executive associate dean for faculty affairs and research strategy at Rollins School of Public Health at Emory University, studies the impacts of exposure during pregnancy on fetal development on the molecular level.
Marsit said researchers have found particles in fetal membranes, breast milk, fetal brain, stool samples and other parts of the body. Other studies, he said, also show these particles crossing the blood-brain barrier.
Tanya Taiwo, a midwife and member of the Project TENDR (Targeting Environmental Neuro-Development Risks) leadership team, said brain development through from the prenatal stages all throughout adolescence involves forging new connections and pruning, a process by which unnecessary structures and connections within the brain are eliminated. She said these additives disrupt not just these processes but hormonal interactions in the body.
Marsit attributed the prevalence of these substances to the regulatory framework in the U.S., which he says allows companies to “(put) products into the marketplace before we even know if they’re safe, instead of demonstrating safety first before we put it into the market.”
Policy solutions
In addition to reviewing the literature on these chemicals, Project TENDR issues policy recommendations to bridge the gap between scientific evidence and action. Among these recommendations, Taiwo said, are limiting production and unnecessary uses of these materials and banning micro- and nanoplastics in personal care products.
Taiwo said these are important in addressing the problem, since individual people aren’t able to protect themselves from exposure.
But there are substantive efforts toward positive change. Gretchen Salter, policy director of environmental health alliance Safer States, said state governments are leading the charge.
Safer State's website has a page keeping track of bills and passed laws in all 50 states, including Arizona. Salter said these pieces of legislation approach solving the problem in several ways:
- Eliminating the worst chemicals: banning additives proven to cause harm
- Ensuring transparency by requiring companies to disclose the ingredients of their products and the risks associated with them
- Investing in safer solutions by helping manufacturers find safer ingredients
- Ensuring accountability by holding actors who cause the problems financially responsible for fixing them
Salter said businesses themselves are taking action, even large companies like Sephora and Apple.
“The reason that they’re doing this is because the marketplace is demanding it,” she said. “Consumers want less plastic. They want fewer high-hazard chemicals. We have seen poll after poll. … The solutions we’re talking about are not controversial with the public.”
Naomi DuBovis is a journalism student at Arizona State University and a fellow of the SEJ student newsroom led by The Arizona Republic.
SEJ Session: Trump Policies Could Threaten Public Land Conservation, Advocates Warn
Published April 26, 2025
By Tufan Neupane
Conservation advocates raised concerns during the Society of Environmental Journalists' 2025 conference in Tempe on April 26 that Trump administration policies could undermine public land protections.
President Donald Trump’s recent executive orders to deregulate public lands, expand oil and gas leases, and target “underutilized” public lands threaten public land conservation efforts, panelists said. They added that firing thousands of federal employees dedicated to conservation makes matters worse.
“In the first 96 days of this administration, a lot of our network organizations feel large attacks on public lands,” said Chris Hill, CEO of the Conservation Lands Foundation, a representative of a nonprofit national network of community-led organizations working on natural land management.
“It started with the freezing of federal funds and moved into the firing of a lot of the folks that they worked to protect the lands,” she said.
How is Trump deregulating public lands?
Trump recently signed executive orders that would radically deregulate the management of public lands, including national monuments, parks, national forests and land held by the U.S. Bureau of Land Management, said Michelle Nijhuis, an environmental author.
Such policy changes increase logging and oil and gas leasing on some federally owned lands, she added.
Also, Trump announced an initiative to inventory “underutilized public lands” and sell or lease them to states, cities, and other entities for development, Nijhuis said.
She said about 5,700 employees (6% of the workforce) of the Department of Agriculture were fired or bought out, along with nearly 3,000 employees (4% of the workforce) at the Department of the Interior.
Nijhuis said such mass reductions in the federal workforce make it harder for the agencies to work with other government organizations, including tribal governments, to be good stewards of that land. The federal government is legally obligated to partner with tribal governments.
Why deregulation and layoffs concern environmentalists and Native Americans
Hill is concerned that public lands, recognized as heritage sites, are being sold using the excuses of a housing crisis and energy demand. She said there are better places to solve those problems than public lands.
Keegan King, founder and chief executive officer of the Native Land Institute, a New Mexico-based nonprofit that advocates for Native American rights, worried that his community lacks the resources to fight to protect public lands.
“In New Mexico, so many tribes don't really have a whole lot of resources to fight,” he said, “but we're ready to go on a lot of these fights.” He said they are developing strategies to bring more Indigenous people into the conservation movement.
Jimmy Tobias, a reporter with Public Domain, an environmental news outlet, said the current administration is trying to undo the legal and administrative architecture born from the 20th-century environmental movement.
“Even if they got the regulations, the laws are still on the books, and I think it's not going to be very easy for them to just, like, get rid of the laws,” he said.
Advocates said Trump's executive orders that don't comply with existing federal laws are likely to set up legal battles in court.
Still, Charlotte Overby, vice president of conservation field programs at the Conservation Lands Foundation, is hopeful even with Republican lawmakers.
“Conservation is like a conservative value, and many of our very best and strongest modern laws were passed with conservative support,” she said. “There are some Western members of Congress who are Republican who will be pushed very hard to resist the sell-off and the disposal of these lands.”
Tufan Neupane is a graduate student of journalism at Arizona State University and a fellow of the SEJ student newsroom led by The Arizona Republic.
SEJ Session: Efforts To Boost Climate Resilience Need To Include Government Accountability, Experts Say
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| Academics and leaders in the climate change fight presented at the 2025 Society of Environmental Journalists conference in Tempe on April 26. Click for more images from the panel, at AZCentral.com. |
Published April 26, 2025
By Amelia Monroe
Climate experts say community-wide changes are the valid next step in climate resilience, but policymakers don’t seem to have an appetite for making adjustments on a larger scale.
“I think that mitigation is very well-defined, you know how to measure greenhouse gases, you know that if you build a project you’re going to have a direct impact of x, y, z,” said Nabig Chaudhry, director of climate adaptation strategy for Probable Futures at the Society of Environmental Journalists annual conference. “That is much more inspirational for policymakers who want to see real benefits that come through immediately.”
Executive director for the Knowledge Exchange for Resilience at Arizona State University, Patricia Solis, said political officials may be more hesitant to put money and resources toward vulnerable areas because they are already receiving help in the forms of mitigation tactics, preparedness strategies and others.
In almost all forms of current climate resilience, the strategies seem to push the responsibility of mitigation and adaptation onto the individual.
Examples of individual climate resilience come primarily in the form of preparedness. Chaudhry said that most people are taught to be ready at all times for the next natural disaster, such as forest fires, hurricanes, extreme heat and earthquakes.
Solis emphasized that climate action should be more tactical. People should be asking system-level questions like, “If I buy this house, will the city protect me?” and “What does this mean for my insurance and will my insurance company protect me?”
These types of questions will help an individual hold their city and state government accountable, Solis said.
Alongside Chaudhry and Solis and Eliza Barclay, New York Times Opinion climate editor, Kelsey Fitzgerald, communications coordinator for the Native Resilience project at the Desert Research Institute, raised the point that the way journalists and people speak about climate change needs to be changed.
Oftentimes, granular information and data, such as forest fire risk in a specific region, is what leads people to take a hands-off approach.
An out-of-sight, out-of-mind mentality is something that can be addressed in the storytelling done by journalists, Fitzgerald said.
“Journalism is so crucial because a lot of stories that exist today don’t actually help us foresee what it means to live a good life in an unstable climate,” Chaudry said.
It’s important for journalists to dial back from “panic doomsday stories,” Fitzgerald emphasized. These stories have led many people to become paralyzed and numb, which has contributed to the “I don’t know what to do” mentality.
Amelia Monroe is a junior at Arizona State University and a fellow of the SEJ student newsroom led by The Arizona Republic.
SEJ Session: How Environmental Journalists Can Stay Safe While Reporting in the Amazon
Published April 26, 2025
By Bella Mazzilli
The Amazon is one of the most dangerous regions in South America, especially for journalists reporting on topics such as illegal activities like land grabbing, mining and drug trafficking.
Representatives from the Brazilian Association of Investigative Journalism (Abraji) spoke April 26 about on-site reporting and safety measures through the Environmental Defenders Project at the 2025 Society of Environmental Journalists conference in Tempe.
Here are five takeaways from the panel:
Train and monitor: The Environmental Defenders Project, established in 2023, funds and trains reporters while providing real-time field monitoring for Brazilian journalists reporting from the Amazon. Eight journalistic projects have used the protocol and plan so far.
Work with others: The project is a partnership between Abraji, Transparency International — Brazil, Instituto Centro de Vida, Instituto Ethos and Operação Amazônia Nativa and is funded by the French Development Agency.
Find mentors: Experienced journalists who have covered the Amazonian region mentor the journalists entering the region, providing specific support.
Know the risks: The Environmental Defenders Project defines the main environmental problems in the Amazon as fire, violence against Indigenous communities, illegal mining, land grabbing, wildlife and timber trafficking and the climate crisis.
Make a plan: The Project establishes a specific safety plan including basic contacts, first aid, field team contacts, and an itinerary of what is to be covered.
Bella Mazzilli is a reporter at State News Magazine at Arizona State University and a fellow of the SEJ student newsroom led by The Arizona Republic.
SEJ Session: Can a Transition to Clean Energy Treat Everyone Equally? Experts Discuss Challenges
Published April 26, 2025
By Katarzyna Michalik
Shifting from fossil fuel to clean energy in a way that is fair and inclusive to all, no matter what part of the world one resides in, requires navigating complex realities, according to a group of leading journalists and communication experts from the United States, India and Brazil.
In a discussion at the Society of Environmental Journalists conference in Tempe on April 26 led by moderator Rhysea Agrawal, managing editor for The Xylom, the panel explored the challenges in achieving equity, transparency and a true democracy in energy development. It’s a concept known as “just transition.”
The four panelists — Helene Langlamet, a doctoral graduate in communication from the University of Pennsylvania; Karla Mendes, an investigative and feature reporter at Mongabay; Steve Sapienza, senior editor of U.S. news partnerships at the Pulitzer Center; and Sushmita, a freelance journalist from India — came from different career backgrounds and parts of the world.
Here are the key takeaways from the discussion:
"Just transition" means different things in different contexts: At the core, the panelists agreed that just transition should center front-line workers, Indigenous communities and historically marginalized groups when discussing the energy shift.
Real-world examples show that energy projects often ignore community voices: Public input is typically solicited but rarely shapes decisions, leading to continued environmental harm and distrust.
Journalists have a key role: Panelists emphasized the need for journalism that brings local stories to the forefront, challenges traditional narratives and documents who benefits and who is left behind in the energy transition.
Katarzyna Michalik is a doctoral student at Prescott College and a fellow of the SEJ student newsroom led by The Arizona Republic.
SEJ Session: How Weather Reporting Is Evolving Because of Climate Change
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| Amber Sullins (left) speaks during a "Rethinking the Humble Weather Report" panel on April 26. Photo: Mark Henle/The Arizona Republic. |
Published April 26, 2025
By McKenna Manzo
Environmental journalists spoke at the Society of Environmental Journalists conference in Tempe on April 26 to discuss how weather reporting is evolving in response to climate change.
The panelists included Sadie Babits, senior supervising climate editor at NPR; Jessica Meszaros, a reporter for west-central Florida’s NPR station; Amber Sullins, chief meteorologist for ABC15 in Phoenix; and Paige Vega, climate editor for Vox.
Here are three takeaways from their conversation.
Public weather data should not be taken for granted, reporters say
Publicly available weather information should not be taken for granted, Vega said.
A substantial amount of weather and forecast data comes from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. But changes made by the Trump administration will change that data's quality, she said.
“One thing that has happened that is new just in this last month — the weather data we are getting from the agency is likely going to be less reliable, just as they're releasing fewer weather balloons and there is less agency staff to actually do the work,” Vega said. “I don’t think a lot of people or readers or viewers or listeners realize the stakes of this moment and the work that NOAA does.”
Sullins said that after the election, she knew climate data could be a target.
At ABC15, she is trying to stay ahead of the curve by working with her team to track down and record every statistic that she and other reporters at her station might want to use that may not be available in the future, she said.
“In our case, we were literally pulling the data and screenshotting it so that we could at least have a picture of what it looked like,” she said.
Reporters try to help audiences understand climate change by connecting it to their lives
Sullins said that at the local level, after a natural disaster, the responsibility of a news organization is to help people address basic human needs.
Beyond that, she said, journalists must be strategic about incorporating the concept of climate change into disaster and other coverage by drawing connections for their audiences.
“I think the more the climate changes here in Phoenix, the more the news that we need to cover is fitting in under climate change,” she said. “You take the heat and the homeless population, and we had more than 500 people die in Maricopa County alone last summer. So these news stories of homeless people dying on the streets are now climate stories, we have to make those connections and connect the dots.”
She also gave the example of saguaro cactuses. Recent extremely hot summers have caused some to die. Arizonans love saguaros, and connecting their deaths to extreme heat helps audiences understand climate change's effects, she said.
Journalists want to engage audiences by highlighting climate solutions
The panelists said producing stories about things people are doing to combat and adjust to climate change can help audiences stay engaged with environmental news.
“We hear a lot of apocalyptic news, not just in the climate space, and I am really eager for stories that point us toward solutions,” Babits said.
Sullins said meaningful work is being done to address climate change across the country.
“Here in Arizona, even if everyone doesn’t want to call it climate change,” Sullins said. “Everyone knows it's getting hotter, and everyone is working toward solutions to mitigate that heat.”
McKenna Manzo is a senior at the University of Arizona and a fellow of the SEJ student newsroom led by The Arizona Republic.
* From the weekly news magazine SEJournal Online, Vol. 10, No. 18. Content from each new issue of SEJournal Online is available to the public via the SEJournal Online main page. Subscribe to the e-newsletter here. And see past issues of the SEJournal archived here.
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