Internews’ Earth Journalism Network (EJN) is offering reporting grants to support the production of in-depth, previously untold climate change stories in the Pacific Islands.

Pacific Island countries are among the most vulnerable to climate change and are already facing climatic stresses on the region’s food security, disaster response capacity, and water availability. In some cases, the conditions undermine the continued viability of human habitation in parts of the region. Communities located in regions with climate changes that undermine their livelihoods rarely have the opportunity to have their stories told in the media.

Through the provision of grants to individual journalists, EJN seeks to capture these stories and open up the information flow around climate change issues in the Pacific to a global audience.

We are looking for story proposals focused on issues related to climate change resilience, adaptation, and natural resource management in the Pacific Islands, including gender implications and perspectives on these issues.
All story ideas are welcome, but proposals that focus on new stories or angles that have not been widely covered are preferred. Issues that have already been widely covered or don’t provide unique angles on the topic are less likely to be selected.

The deadline for applications is February 17, 2017 at 17:00 EST. Please note that stories must be completed and published in the selected media outlet by July 7, 2017.

For more detailed information and to apply with a story idea, please visit the opportunity page on the EJN website.

Funding for these stories is being provided by the Pacific-American Climate Fund and USAID as part of EJN’s “Pacific GeoJournalism Project: Strengthening Environmental Journalism to Build Community Resilience to Climate Change.” The project works to improve the quantity and quality of information on climate change impacts and resilience strategies available to communities, by enabling local media to produce fact-based, solutions-oriented coverage of climate change adaptation issues.