By Rhett A. Butler
In high school, I had the great fortune to visit a spectacular rainforest in Malaysian Borneo. Some of my fondest memories are from this forest: hiking under the tall trees, swimming in crystal-clear creeks, and appreciating the beauty of its creatures.
Back home in California, I kept in touch with a biologist I met on that trip, so a few months later, I was devastated to learn that this very forest was to be pulped for paper.
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Lowland rainforest in Malaysian Borneo. Photo by Rhett A. Butler / Mongabay
The Origin of Mongabay
The destruction of that far-off forest did more than break my heart; it instilled in me a passion to make a difference. In college, I decided to write a book to raise awareness of what was happening to rainforests and the people and wildlife they sustain.
While my university major was unrelated to conservation or the environment, I spent countless hours researching rainforests in the library and consulting experts. I scrimped and saved earnings from various jobs to pay for trips to Madagascar and Latin America.
After finishing the book, I found a publisher, but they didn’t include a budget for pictures. How could I convey the beauty of rainforests without photos? I didn’t write this book for money; I wrote it for impact. So I decided to post it online so people could read it for free, and named the site Mongabay after a beautiful island off the coast of Madagascar.
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Mongabay founder Rhett A. Butler in Brazil in 1999, the year Mongabay.com first went online.
While employed at a tech startup in Silicon Valley, I continued to work on Mongabay at night and on weekends. Surprisingly, Mongabay grew popular — so popular, in fact, that I decided to quit my job and pursue my passion full-time. This allowed me to focus on expanding the site, starting with a children’s section, which I had translated into nearly 40 languages by native speakers.
I also started a news section to highlight conservation stories that the mainstream press overlooked. Because I wrote hundreds of articles a year, people started to think Mongabay was more than a guy in his pajamas sitting in his apartment. But it was just me, at least for those first few years, fueled by — and aligned with — my passion to unearth impactful stories that had the potential to positively move the needle on saving our beautiful planet.
The Big Shift
The big shift for Mongabay came in 2011, when I decided that an Indonesian-language environmental news site could be especially impactful. The reason? Corruption in the natural resources sector had been an underlying driver of environmental degradation in Indonesia for decades. By increasing transparency, targeted journalism influences change by driving greater accountability and supporting an enabling environment for a wide range of actors, from nongovernmental organizations to local communities and green entrepreneurs.
At the time, there wasn’t much of a business model for an Indonesian-language environmental news site, so I decided to form a nonprofit. Within a month of securing Mongabay’s first grant and assembling a small team of Indonesian journalists, we launched the site. By the time Mongabay Indonesia was three months old, it was the most widely read Indonesian-language environmental news site. But more importantly, it started to have a real impact. The platform quickly found an audience among top officials in Indonesia, and also in the conservation, environmental advocacy, and Indigenous rights communities. I went on to shift the rest of Mongabay to the nonprofit, enabling us to grow the team and build a network of correspondents around the world.
Over time, we added other regional bureaus to report in multiple languages, including in Spanish for Latin America (2016), English and Hindi for India (2018), and English and French for Africa (2023). We also produce Portuguese reporting for Brazil.
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Recent picture of members the Mongabay Indonesia team. Not pictured are Indonesian members of the Global English team
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Most of the Mongabay Latam team in Ecuador recently.
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The Mongabay India team in 2018.
Shifting from an advertising-based to a nonprofit model allowed us to focus on the impact of our journalism. We started offering our articles free for any outlet to use — commercially or non-commercially, via the Creative Commons — which expanded our reach and impact. We also deprioritized standard metrics like website page views, focusing instead on qualitative indicators such as whether politicians or other decision-makers read the content, and tracking specific impacts that develop because of our reporting.
Achievements and Impact
As we’ve built a global reporting network of journalists across 80 countries, we’ve seen strong interest in programs that provide opportunities for local reporters to strengthen their reporting skills and build a portfolio of published work. Accordingly, in 2022, we established a fellowship program for aspiring journalists and established reporters seeking to transition to environmental journalism in low- and middle-income countries. Today, this paid fellowship is available to journalists who report in English, Spanish and French. A pilot program for fellows from Indigenous communities was recently launched, too.
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Regional distribution of Mongabay staff by location as of 6/6/24. About 70% of Mongabay is in the Global South.
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Growth of Mongabay by bureau since 2011. Note: Brazil is housed within the Global bureau, but disaggregated for the purpose of the chart.
To support this approach, Mongabay has developed methods to track impacts related to our reporting, built a decentralized management structure that grants substantial autonomy to its bureaus, and has established financial mechanisms to allow for timely cross-border payments to the many freelance journalists we hire.
Today, our websites attract a monthly readership of around 5 million unique visitors, a reach that is further amplified via social media and distribution by third-party media outlets. Each year, we produce about 5,000 original stories, several hundred videos, and around 100 podcast episodes.
Mongabay and its reporters have received many accolades, including the Biophilia Award for Environmental Communication (2023) and various prizes from the Society of Environmental Journalists (SEJ), Society of Publishers in Asia (SOPA), SEAL, and Inter American Press Association (IAPA), to name a few.
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Biophilia Award ceremony in Madrid in February 2024. Photo courtesy of Fundación BBVA
Mongabay’s international team and network of freelance correspondents have proved themselves a powerful tool in holding people, governments and companies to account. One of my favorite aspects of running Mongabay over the past 25 years has been the tangible outcomes of our stories. There have been many impacts, from helping the Massaha community in Gabon secure recognition of its ancestral forest from the government, to contributing to a decision to convert 101,000 hectares of forest, about a quarter of a million acres, from a logging concession to a protected reserve in Borneo.
Focus on Solutions
Awareness is the precursor to action, and this is where the pivotal role of journalism comes into play. Journalism not only informs but also inspires and mobilizes public action. Well-researched, compelling storytelling engages and motivates the broader public to participate in these solutions. Every challenge presents an opportunity for solutions, and addressing the global environmental crisis demands persistent, collective action grounded in accurate facts.
At Mongabay, we recognize this imperative and are increasingly employing a solutions journalism approach that highlights potential ways to solve difficult environmental issues. Though reporting hard truths is imperative, we strive to move beyond the “doom and gloom” lens by also highlighting effective, innovative strategies that make a real difference.
By presenting these success stories, we aim not just to inform but to empower. Maintaining hope and optimism is vital in the face of daunting environmental challenges. These sentiments fuel the creativity needed for new technologies, strategies and approaches. Solutions journalism plays a critical role in fostering this hope by showcasing how challenges can be and are being overcome. This approach doesn’t just report on problems; it illuminates the path forward.
The Future
As Mongabay looks to the future, its strategy remains rooted in the belief that journalism can drive real-world change. This approach focuses on raising awareness about the importance of nature, generating opportunities for accountability in the face of environmental destruction, and inspiring collective efforts toward solutions. While Mongabay now produces content in multiple languages and has staff in about 30 countries, the urgency of addressing global environmental crises such as biodiversity loss, climate change and pollution is unmistakable. The window for mobilization is narrowing.
In response to this critical juncture, Mongabay’s future strategy involves creating a collaborative journalism network on national, regional and global scales. This network aims to meet the pressing challenges of this pivotal decade. The strategic plan we published last year focuses on five strategic objectives that are essential for Mongabay to fulfill its mission of delivering timely, compelling information to key audiences that shape policy and influence global trends.
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Distribution Mongabay staff & contributors as of mid-2023. Our network in Africa has since expanded significantly.
The vision guiding Mongabay is simple yet profound: credible independent journalism is essential to tackling the planetary emergency. By sharing knowledge through stories, journalism can inform, inspire and sustain effective action worldwide. Mongabay’s mission statement underscores this purpose: improving understanding of the forces undermining the health of Earth’s systems, making science accessible, and amplifying the voices and knowledge of those directly impacted by environmental change.
These two crucial elements encapsulate Mongabay’s guiding principle: delivering news and inspiration from nature’s frontline to help alleviate the planetary emergency. The ultimate goal of Mongabay’s 2030 strategic plan is ambitious: by 2030, we seek to mobilize a global community toward addressing the planetary emergency through credible and effective journalism that informs positive action on a significant and measurable scale.
To realize this goal, Mongabay will pursue several complementary strategic objectives. First, it aims to diversify the topics and regions relevant to its editorial agenda. By prioritizing underreported themes and narratives with the potential for real-world impact, Mongabay seeks to adapt to planetary changes through its editorial coverage and project design.
Mongabay’s ability to report globally on conservation and biodiversity, supported by a network of local journalists, remains a core strength. By organizing its newsroom around the science of Earth’s systems, biomes and species ranges, Mongabay can provide a more comprehensive understanding of worldwide issues. This nature-centric approach has highlighted the need for greater awareness of the intertwined influences of nature and society, particularly concerning climate change, pollution and unsustainable economic practices.
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Rainbow over rainforest and plantations in Jambi on the Indonesian island of Sumatra. Photo credit Rhett A. Butler
This will require prioritizing themes that promote global thinking about environmental challenges, linking local coverage with regional or global issues, and facilitating collaboration between issue-area specialists and reporting teams. Developing regional reporting desks into more independently operated bureaus will expand our reach by integrating contracts and editorial standards across regions and improving cross-team collaboration and learning processes.
Another key objective is to strengthen impact through meaningful audience engagement. Responding to the planetary emergency requires sustained collective action based on accurately conveyed facts, and Mongabay’s contribution to this effort depends on engaging its audience effectively. This involves building trust in the credibility and authenticity of its publications, which are grounded in science journalism. Therefore, Mongabay will enhance its reputation as a trusted source by prioritizing quality engagement on platforms and spaces where audiences are most inclined to interact with the content.
Mongabay also recognizes the challenges posed by a degraded information ecosystem, increasing amounts of disinformation, audience fragmentation, and competition for media attention. To navigate these obstacles, Mongabay will seek out new audiences by including their concerns and voices in its work, particularly Indigenous communities and youth.
Connecting directly with audiences and building trust will be fundamental for increasing quality engagement. Mongabay plans to develop the profiles of its team so that audiences know who is communicating with them. This approach also includes translating content into relevant languages and formats, such as audio content for engaging rural, Indigenous, and underserved communities.
Mongabay’s editorial choices will increasingly involve collaboration to determine the appropriate format and channel for each story. Developing content relevant to Indigenous communities, using platforms based on their potential to contribute to impact, and modernizing technologies and visual styles are part of this strategy.
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Last month Mongabay Latam officially launched its program for Indigenous communicators in the Ecuadorian Amazon, following the path of our Y. Eva Tan Fellowship. The first cohort includes two Shuar reporters and one Kichwa reporter. The initial stage involved meeting in person for the first time and embarking on a field trip to their community.
Finally, developing and supporting a growing and global journalism community is essential to ensuring viable career paths in environmental journalism. By providing job opportunities and capacity-building support like training and fellowships, Mongabay aims to mobilize a global network of communicators to share local stories of planetary change that resonate with diverse audiences. This will require creating training resources, developing evaluation frameworks, activating partnerships, offering competitive compensation, and promoting participation in journalism industry associations and events.
Mongabay’s role as both a publisher and training organization underscores its commitment to the professional development of its network. By improving the condition and quality of our profession, Mongabay aims to ensure that environmental journalism is prepared to meet new challenges and needs.
As Mongabay moves forward, its strategy remains steadfast in the belief that credible independent journalism is vital to addressing the planetary emergency. The window for preserving planetary health is closing, but taking such positive actions potentially makes us all part of a more vibrant and beautiful story.
https://mongabay.cc/6E2aMs
This article was originally published on Mongabay
