Environmental Rights for Journalists: A Guidebook on Best Practices

"Putting the environment at the centre of media coverage also means understanding key concepts, such as the relationship between environmental harm and human rights."

This guide for journalists, published by the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) Brazil Country Office, seeks to create a better understanding of the intersection between human rights and the environment and the work of activists who defend environmental rights. It is intended for journalists, communications specialists, media professionals, journalism and media lecturers, instructors, and students and is designed to be used to support the causes of environmental defenders and for the general realisation of the right to a clean, healthy, and sustainable environment for current and future generations. The guidebook provides background information on environmental rights, some key concepts on the subject, examples of good practices, and tips for better media coverage.

The guidebook forms part of UNEP's Environmental Rights Initiative, which was launched in 2018, partially in response to the increased violence against environmental defenders. The programme involves a range of environmental rights work to help state and non-state actors to promote, protect, and respect human rights obligations related to the environment. This approach includes working with the media to offer training to improve coverage on the topic.

As explained in the guidebook, the term "environmental rights" is generally understood to mean rights related to the environment. These rights are seen as interconnected, as human rights cannot be enjoyed without a clean, ecologically balanced, and safe environment. In addition, sustainable environmental governance cannot exist without the recognition of human rights in relation to the environment and, consequently, socio-environmental justice.

The chapters in the guidebook offer information on environmental law, environmental rights, and environmental defenders in response to needs identified during UNEP's engagements with journalists, media professionals, environmental defenders, students, researchers, and civil society organisations in Brazil.

The chapters are as follows:

• Human rights and the environment - includes a discussion on the number of environmental activists killed, as well as framework principles on human rights and the environment.
• Why does media coverage on environmental rights matter? - looks at the role of journalists and the value of environmental news.
• What is lacking for the media coverage on environmental rights? - discusses the need to put the environment at the centre of media coverage.
• Why do environmental rights matter to each journalist and each channel? - highlights the role of the media in countering fake news.
• What's the news? - seeks to define the topic of environmental news, which is not just about climate change and sustainability.
• Covering environmental rights - includes six steps on how to ensure safety when covering environmental issues.
• Tips on how to find a good topic and tell a story better - discusses 10 intersections with the environment, such as health, economy, sport, and tourism.
• Visual resources and the use of images, maps and graphics - discusses the importance of visually presenting information for greater impact.

Case studies are interspersed throughout the chapters and include, for example:

• The Centre for Justice Governance and Environmental Action (CJGEA), an organisation focused on human rights and the environment, whose mission is to protect marginalised people and periphery communities around extractive industries and toxic sites in Kenya.
• NOTIMIA news agency, which originated in Central America and Mexico and is comprised of a network of female indigenous and afro-descendant communicators. The network seeks to make visible, promote, qualify, train, and disseminate the organisational processes of communities and peoples from different indigenous languages around the world.
• Land of Resistants (Tierra de resistentes), a collaborative and cross-border journalistic project to investigate episodes of violence against environmental defenders in Latin America.
• Earth Journalism Network (EJN), a global network of reporters working to improve the quantity and quality of environmental reporting.
• Aruanas TV series in Brazil, which tells the story of four women's fight to protect the forest and indigenous lands from the ravages of illegal mining and corruption.
• InfoAmazonia, an online information tool that collects data, maps, and news reports geolocalised in the Amazon region, the world's largest continuous tropical rainforest.