Countries across Africa face an escalating environmental and climate crisis, with communities increasingly impacted by extreme weather events, deforestation, biodiversity loss, water scarcity, and the adverse effects of extractive industries. These and other challenges have far-reaching consequences for livelihoods, security, and sustainable development.
Robust, fact-based, independent journalism is essential to addressing these challenges. The media play an indispensable role in informing the public, holding governments and businesses accountable, and driving meaningful action and policy responses.
Yet across Africa journalists covering critical environmental and climate-related stories face attacks, abuse, and harassment. These attacks – including physical threats and violence, legal harassment, censorship, access restrictions, and targeted disinformation fuelling mistrust in the media – impede the public’s right to news and information as well as the search for sustainable solutions.
In response to these growing threats, the International Press Institute (IPI)’s Africa programme, with support from Global Affairs Canada, has launched a new initiative focused on defending and supporting environmental and climate journalism in Africa.
The programme builds on IPI’s work advocating for press freedom and journalist safety in sub-Saharan Africa, as well as our in-depth research into the challenges and threats that environmental and climate journalists face in Africa and globally.
“Around the world, journalists covering the climate crisis are on the frontlines of both environmental protection and democratic accountability”, IPI Executive Director Scott Griffen said. “Environmental journalism is a vital pillar of public-interest reporting, especially in sub-Saharan Africa where climate change and environmental degradation are directly impacting communities and livelihoods. This programme reaffirms IPI’s commitment to defending press freedom and the safety of journalists in Africa and strengthening the role of media in driving accountability, public debate, and informed action.”
IPI’s climate journalism programme seeks to protect and support journalists on the frontlines of investigating environmental destruction and the climate crisis.
- Read our call on states to bolster and support protections for environmental and climate journalists on the occasion of World Environment Day 2025.
- Read our report “Climate and Environmental Journalism under Fire” on the global threats to environmental reporters.
For more information and updates on the project, visit IPI’s website.