Environmental Defenders recently concluded the application phase for its landmark grants initiative supporting environmental journalism in Uganda and the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC). This innovative program, which officially closed submissions on June 10, 2025, garnered substantial interest, attracting 55 high-quality applications from journalists dedicated to uncovering and reporting critical environmental and human rights issues within their communities.

The strong response to this call highlights the need and growing enthusiasm among local journalists to tackle pressing environmental challenges and injustices in the Albertine and Congo Basin regions. With environmental threats such as deforestation, biodiversity loss, illegal mining, and oil extraction activities on the rise, the role of journalists in amplifying community concerns and driving accountability has never been more vital.

This initiative underscores Environmental Defenders’ unwavering commitment to leveraging journalism as a tool to promote environmental transparency, defend human rights, and amplify marginalized voices. Recognizing the unique power of storytelling and investigative journalism, the organization will now move into the critical phase of reviewing applications. The goal is to select 20 outstanding journalists—10 from Uganda and 10 from the DRC—who will each receive a grant of $500 to pursue in-depth investigative reporting.

The chosen journalists will focus on crucial topics such as the impacts of oil and gas projects, illegal resource extraction, land grabbing, forest and biodiversity degradation, and threats facing indigenous and rural communities. Through their investigative work, these journalists will shine a light on issues often overlooked, thus informing the public discourse, guiding policy-making, and fostering community resilience and advocacy.

Environmental Defenders has built a strong reputation as a key advocate for environmental justice in the Albertine region and the broader Congo Basin. The organization’s ongoing efforts include protecting endangered ecosystems, supporting indigenous and rural communities, and backing environmental human rights defenders facing mounting threats from industrial developments and extractive activities. Amid escalating industrial pressures and shrinking civic spaces, Environmental Defenders remains steadfast in its mission to foster sustainable environmental policies and uphold fundamental human rights.

In addition to financial support, the grantees will receive editorial mentorship, logistical assistance, and guidance on security, both physical and digital. This holistic approach ensures journalists can safely and effectively carry out their critical investigative work.

All awarded stories are slated for publication or broadcast by October 16, 2025, maximizing their reach and impact. This deadline ensures timely contributions to urgent environmental dialogues and policy advocacy.

Environmental justice and journalism

Forests are disappearing, land rights violations are rampant, and environmental human rights defenders are being silenced. Other issues in the region where Environmental Defenders works include illegal logging, land grabs, water contamination, biodiversity loss, and abuses linked to oil, mining, and agro-industrial projects.

Journalism can play a pivotal role in exposing these challenges, but it is facing its own headwinds, as shrinking advertising and subscription revenues have forced newsrooms to focus on sensational and easy to produce news often found in urban areas. It is not surprising that journalists often lack sufficient resources, skills and protection to investigate safely, the issues that occur in the Albertine and Congo Basin regions.

In that context, Environmental Defenders is providing the funding for journalists to investigate, produce and distribute well-researched stories that will power the quest for justice, accountability and the public’s demand for prudent management of environmental resources in the Albertine and Congo Basin.

Mainstreaming perspectives from the Albertine

Globally, people recognize the Albertine region in Uganda, as ecologically important but for many it is often viewed as some far-off, almost romantic and untouched place that is about to be disrupted by global forces interested in oil production.

Most of the conversations, however, miss voices of the people who have lived, tilled and to some extent conserved these important and complicated landscapes.

The discovery of commercial oil reserves beneath Lake Albert and efforts to develop oil production enabling infrastructure, including the East African Crude Oil Pipeline (EACOP) and the Tilenga and Kingfisher oil projects started degrading the landscape and some of the changes are detrimental to nearby populations.

Communities that once relied on fishing, farming, and forest-based livelihoods now face displacement, pollution, and land tenure insecurity. The expansion of commercial agriculture and the development of private conservancies have further complicated land use, creating new power dynamics and marginalizing traditional landowners.

Environmental Defenders has been working with communities in these areas to map customary land, support reforestation, monitor biodiversity, and provide platforms for civic engagement. Through its community radio network, Terra FM, which is part of Environmental Defenders, has broadcast human rights and environmental programs to millions of listeners, often in local languages.

Despite this work, much of what happens in Uganda’s oil zones and mineral-rich DRC remains hidden from national and international scrutiny. That is why this grants initiative hopes to mainstream perspectives from Nwoya, Nebbi, Zombo, Pakwach, Buliisa, Hoima, Kikuube, Kagadi, Masindi, and Ntoroko. These are some of the districts hosting important ecological features in Albertine, including the Ramsar Site in Murchison Falls National Park.

DR Congo: Forests under siege

Across the border in eastern DRC, the situation is equally time-sensitive. The Ituri-Epulu-Aru landscape is one of the most intact and biologically rich forest regions in the entire Congo Basin. It is home to forest elephants, okapis, chimpanzees, and the indigenous Mbuti and Efe peoples, who are among the last true hunter-gatherer communities on Earth.

A deadly mix of illegal gold mining, logging, poaching, land grabs, armed conflict, and state neglect, now threatens these forests. Mining operations, often backed by powerful interests, are contaminating water sources, disrupting traditional livelihoods, and accelerating deforestation. Poaching networks, sometimes linked to militia groups, are decimating endangered species and terrorizing rangers. Meanwhile, indigenous land defenders face harassment, imprisonment, and even assassination.

Environmental Defenders has long worked in eastern DRC to support community forests, provide legal aid, train rangers and paralegals, and document rights violations. It has partnered with the DRC Ministry of Environment, the Congolese Institute for the Conservation of Nature (ICCN), civil society organizations, cultural institutions, and other local actors to protect fragile ecosystems and empower marginalized voices

The journalism grant program in the DRC is therefore designed to support journalists investigating these very issues. Stories will focus on illegal mining, environmental crimes, human rights violations in conservation areas, threats to forest communities, or the exploitation of natural resources by criminal syndicates.