The Launching of Southeast Asia Journalist – Scientist Rainforest Hub

Seminar Series#1: Multilenses of Reforestation and Deforestation in Indonesia

Pulitzer Center will launch a new exciting initiative to promote and strengthen the collaboration between scientists and journalists in the Southeast Asia region, the Southeast Asia Journalist – Scientist Rainforest Hub (The SEA Hub) in RUSET 2022. The Hub will promote a collaborative approach to foster a cross-sectoral and cross-border cooperation in knowledge and resource exchange. It fosters dialogues and collaboration between scientists and journalists to address pressing rainforest issues. The collaboration event with RUSET 2022 will mark the kick-off seminar series and opportunities for those working on forest issues.

Southeast Asia with its wealth of biodiversity and forests has been instrumental in protecting the global climate change. The region has highest rate of deforestation of any major tropical region, losing 1.2 per cent of forest annually, followed by Latin America (0.8 per cent) and Africa (0.7 per cent) (Brown, 2013). Researchers recorded that Southeast Asia had lost 610,000 square kilometres of forest from 2001-2019, an area larger than Thailand. The region is risking the exacerbation of climate change by ignoring the forest as a carbon sink and the world’s lungs. Yet we find massive deforestation is still happening across the forest and villages. We have seen economical gain won over the environmental protection over the village livelihood. Pulitzer Center facilitates reporting grants for the most passionate journalists around the world to report the most urgent deforestation issues. We would like to share these urgent stories with academics to carry new hope and form a further collaboration between journalists and academics in Southeast Asia. We believe in the power of education and journalism to help tackle deforestation issues.

In this event, we will discuss the reports and research about community-based reforestation and communications for social justice through investigative reporting. The discussion will invite prominent and highly passionate journalists in deforestation that are happening in Indonesia’s forests and villages through obtaining the latest factual on-ground forest situation. Flooding in Tewai Baru (Central Borneo) and fires in Semeru and the Forest community’s struggle to keep the forest intact and pure including the battles among themselves and big investors. In this dialogue, we will also invite prominent international researchers and experts from the University of Reading to enrich discussion and respond to urgencies.

Pulitzer Center will also introduce the Impact Seed Funding (ISF) to facilitate collaborative projects led by academics to tackle short-term challenges in the forest. The Impact Seed Funding (ISF) is a short-term grant to facilitate the collaborative project led by researchers based in Southeast Asia to tackle the urgent issues around rainforest, inspired from the underreported stories by the Pulitzer Centre fellows. The hub with a common vision will then seek to create a collective capacity with greater results and bigger outcomes at the local, regional, national as well as SEA level.

Don’t miss it! Please register your seat here: