Welcome to Green Echoes, a newsletter from the Environmental Reporting Collective that highlights key investigative stories, data sources, funding, reporting and training opportunities and our projects from across Asia.

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The best reporting from across Asia

Over the last few weeks, we saw several investigations focused on deforestation in Southeast Asia, all taking a different approach, and coming to different conclusions.

The most thorough was this investigation from the Philippine Center for Investigative Journalism, which looks at the various drivers of forest loss across the archipelago, highlighting hot-spots, causes, legal loopholes, and much, much more.

Meanwhile, Hans Nicholas Jong reports for Mongabay on how, in Indonesia, a certified “sustainable” logger, Alas Kusuma is, in fact, clearing orangutan habitat in Borneo.

Meanwhile, Yao Hua Law digs into the data for Macaranga to figure out what the main driver of lower forest loss in Malaysia is, focusing on the most-cited culprit – palm oil.

Not forests, but worth reading too – the latest from Oxpeckers and journalist Hsiuwen Liu explores how lack of legal power to crack down on criminal syndicates means that wildlife trafficking is “business as usual” in Hong Kong.

Data, Resources and Training

Several interesting events in the coming weeks, including:

• Two webinars on palm oil and deforestation in Asia from WWF on June 1 and June 4 focused on living landscapes and the role of financial institutions in addressing deforestation.

• #WildEye and Earth Journalism Network are hosting a journalists talk on investigating wildlife crime in Asia, featuring reports from across the region (June 3).

• The Philippines-based Association of Young Environmental Journalists and the Philippine Network of Environmental Journalists are hosting a webinar on Youth Power in Tackling Urgent Environmental Issues (June 5).

• For colleagues in small island states – Thomson Reuters Foundation is hosting an online training program on climate change reporting (deadline to apply June 6, program from 9 July – 6 August)

• The International Environmental Communication Association is holding a fully-virtual conference on Re-MEDIAting the Wild from June 21-24.

Here’s a new resource from the Global Investigative Journalism Network that highlights new data tools and tips for investigating climate change.

Opportunities

A new initiative, the Fund for Environmental Journalism is accepting applications to support journalist reporting stories at the intersection of religion and the environment, from around the world (deadline 15 June).

Earth Journalism Network has opened applications for round 2 of their Mekong Data Journalism fellowships, which offer $3,000 individual grants to cover story production (deadline 27 June).

The Bertha Foundation is accepting applications for fellowships from investigative journalists to spend a year producing a body of work that responds to one pressing social justice challenge. This year’s focus is on freshwater and oceans (deadline 3 July).

That’s all for this week – do let us know, by responding to this email, if we missed anything.

Stay safe and healthy,

Nithin Coca