Now, there is major rainforest journalism fund!

Now, there is a major investment in rainforest journalism to increase the quantity and quality of reporting on tropical forests!

At the Global Climate Action Summit here on Thursday, the Pulitzer Centre on Crisis Reporting announced the creation of the Rainforest Journalism Fund supported by a five-year $5.5 million grant from the Norwegian International Climate and Forest Initiative.

This initiative will seek to increase the quantity and quality of reporting on tropical forests by funding nearly 200 original reporting projects along with annual regional conferences designed to raise the level of reporting on global rainforest issues such as deforestation, its drivers and effect on climate change.

The fund will also provide hostile-environment and first-aid training to 75 journalists operating in rainforest regions during the course of the grant.

The Pulitzer Centre will cooperate closely with the Amazon, Central Africa and South-East Asia.

An emphasis will be put on supporting the work of journalists from within each rainforest region.

The Global Climate Action Summit, an initiative by California Governor Jerry Brown, will conclude on Friday under the theme "taking ambition to the next level".

The summit will showcase climate action around the world, along with bold new commitments, to give world leaders the confidence they need to go even further by 2020 to meet the Paris Climate Agreement goals.

(Vishal Gulati is in San Francisco at the invitation of the Climate Trends to cover the Global Climate Action Summit (GCAS). He can be contacted at vishal.g@ians.in)

--IANS

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