Media and communications professionals play an important role in highlighting the experiences of land, indigenous, environmental, and climate defenders. Through their detailed storytelling, the world is able to better understand how people everywhere are speaking out for climate action.
While they are at the forefront of climate solutions, these defenders also face many challenges. They are being harassed, sued, arrested, and jailed at unprecedented rates. Laws are narrowing what constitutes acceptable dissent. The aggressors trying to silence climate defenders, primarily governments and big corporations, wield enormous power and weaponize the law and other tools to bully and intimidate those fighting for a better climate future.
“A Guide to Climate Defender Sensitive Reporting” will discuss the ethical and safety considerations media professionals should take into consideration when reporting on climate defenders who are living under legal, mental, or physical threat, and increased mass surveillance.
This free webinar, hosted by Global Climate Legal Defense, is for anyone telling stories about climate change who want to do so with people’s safety and security in mind.
Panelists:
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Andrés Bermúdez Liévano is a Colombian journalist who works at the Latin American Center for Investigative Journalism (CLIP) and whose reporting has focused on environmental issues, drug policy, transitional justice, and how victims of Colombia's armed conflict rebuild their lives. His work includes in-depth looks at how politicians and businessmen use secrecy jurisdictions (as part of the Pandora Papers, the largest collaborative cross-border investigation to date), irregularities in how Colombia's largest carbon offset project calculates its avoided deforestation rates and violence against environmental defenders, as well as two books on Colombia's 2016 peace agreement. Born in Bogota, he received his bachelor’s in literature at Los Andes University and master’s in journalism from Columbia University and Sciences Po Paris. He has been a grantee of the Pulitzer Center's Rainforest Journalism Fund.
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Karla Mendes is an award-winning Brazilian journalist working as a Rio de Janeiro-based Investigative and Feature Reporter for Mongabay and a member of the Pulitzer Center's Rainforest Investigations Network. She was elected to the board of directors of the Society of Environmental Journalists (SEJ) for the 2023-2026 term. Karla is the first Brazilian ever elected to the SEJ board; her election also marks the first time that Latin America has a seat on the SEJ board. She was also nominated SEJ's Second Vice President and Diversity, Equity and Inclusion Chair. Karla has been working as a correspondent for international outlets since 2015 and she specialized in covering environmental, land and property rights issues since 2017. She worked as a land and property rights correspondent for the Thomson Reuters Foundation between August 2017 and December 2018. Prior to that, Karla was a business reporter for over 10 years in Rio, Madrid, Brasilia and Belo Horizonte, including with newspapers O Globo, O Estado de S. Paulo, Expansión and news agency S&P Global Market Intelligence. Karla has a Master in Investigative and Data Journalism from the University of King’s College, Canada, and an MBA in finance from São Paulo’s Fundação Instituto de Administração (FIA). She is fluent in English, Spanish and Portuguese. Image by Fábio Nascimento.
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Katie Surma is a reporter at Inside Climate News covering the rights of nature movement and international environmental justice. Her work has a strong focus on the intersection of human rights and the environment. Before joining ICN, she practiced law, specializing in commercial litigation. Her journalism work has been recognized by the Overseas Press Club, the Society of International Journalists, the Society of American Business Editors and Writers and others. Katie has a master’s degree in investigative journalism from Arizona State University’s Walter Cronkite School of Journalism, an LLM in international rule of law and security from ASU’s Sandra Day O’Connor College of Law, a J.D. from Duquesne University, and was a History of Art and Architecture major at the University of Pittsburgh. Katie lives in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania.
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Diana Taremwa Karakire is an multi-award winning journalist based in Uganda but covering the Great Lakes Region. She is the founder of Indigenous Times Media an independent digital cross- border newsroom centering issues of indigenous peoples (https://indigenoustime.com/). She writes for both local and international publications covering topics including energy, human rights, environment, extractives and indigenous communities. Diana leverages storytelling to amplify voices of marginalized communities, promote human rights, social justice and environment conservation, expose corruption and hold government and corporations accountable.
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Betsy Apple is the executive director of Global Climate Legal Defense (CliDef). Previously, she was the advocacy director for the Open Society Justice Initiative based in New York, where she oversaw and undertook legal advocacy on a broad range of human rights issues. Prior to joining the Justice Initiative, she was the legal director at AIDS-Free World, where she led the legal team challenging the Jamaican anti-sodomy law at the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights, and assembled a dossier for the South African national prosecutor seeking an investigation into mass election-related rape. She also served as the Director of the Crimes Against Humanity program at Human Rights First, Deputy Director of the Women's Environment and Development Organization (WEDO), and the Managing/Legal Director of EarthRights International, in Thailand and the United States. Early in her career, she litigated at a private firm and worked at a legal aid organization. Betsy Apple teaches international human rights law.