- Mongabay Founder and CEO Rhett Ayers Butler argues that journalism supplies the conditions necessary for effective environmental action—credible, timely, public information that converts private harm into collective accountability and enables governments and communities to act.
- He contends that for philanthropists focused on climate and biodiversity, journalism is a high-leverage investment that strengthens all other interventions by bringing hidden risks to light, creating transparency, and ensuring that resources for conservation and climate solutions are used effectively.
- Evaluations from leading foundations show that journalism funding leads to tangible outcomes such as policy reforms, regulatory reviews, and stronger civic engagement; Butler concludes that supporting independent reporting is not sentimental but strategic—an essential form of infrastructure for democratic and environmental resilience.
- This article is a commentary. The views expressed are those of the author, not necessarily of Mongabay.
When a logging concession in Gabon threatened a community’s ancestral forest, their appeals to officials went nowhere—until the story was reported. Once the facts reached the public record, the environment minister revoked the company’s permit and moved to legally protect the forest, officially recognizing a community’s stewardship. The example illustrates a quiet but potent truth: journalism is not a substitute for policy or enforcement, yet it supplies the conditions those actions require—credible information, in time, in public. It can convert private harm into shared knowledge, and shared knowledge into collective pressure.
For philanthropists focused on climate and biodiversity, supporting journalism may seem peripheral compared with protecting land, funding clean technology, or reforming supply chains. In practice, it is a high-leverage investment that strengthens and multiplies the effectiveness of all the above. Environmental damage thrives in opacity—unrecorded deforestation, unverified carbon credits, unexamined subsidies. Independent reporting brings hidden risks to light, creating the accountability that allows other interventions to work.
Consider the case of United Cacao in Peru. When the company raised $10 million on the London Stock Exchange to fund a “sustainable” cacao plantation, it presented itself as restoring the rainforest. A short series of investigative reports, supported by satellite imagery and local sources, revealed that more than 2,000 hectares of Amazonian forest had already been cleared. The reporting itself represented a modest portion of the newsroom’s overall budget—yet its consequences were vast. The Peruvian government revoked the permit; the company was later delisted, curtailing the planned expansion that would have destroyed roughly 100,000 hectares of forest and released an estimated 29 million metric tons of CO₂. This small investment in reporting costs forestalled tens of millions in environmental damage—proof that transparency can yield exponential returns.
Trust and responsiveness
Such examples illustrate what Laurene Powell Jobs and MacKenzie Scott have both urged in recent years: that genuine generosity relinquishes control. Powell Jobs warns that “giving that expects control is anything but generous,” while Scott’s image of a murmuration of starlings captures a form of collective movement guided by trust rather than command. Supporting independent journalism embodies that same principle. It decentralizes authority, invests in truth that anyone can use, and respects communities as participants rather than subjects.
Journalism’s path to impact is rarely linear. Most stories inform, some inspire, and a few shift entire systems. Sustained investment across many such efforts creates the conditions for catalytic moments to spark change. The return on visibility can be extraordinary: once wrongdoing becomes public, markets react, regulators respond, and communities gain leverage. For philanthropists accustomed to measuring hectares or tons, journalism offers a parallel metric—the number of decisions improved because the facts were known.
Well-targeted reporting acts as information infrastructure for civic and environmental action. It translates technical science into accessible insight, reveals where governance fails, and supplies shared facts for coalitions that might otherwise work in silos. Investigations have exposed illegal mining and fishing networks that prompted new enforcement operations; revealed loopholes in carbon-credit schemes, triggering reforms; and highlighted Indigenous conservation successes that informed national policy. Each is a small correction in a complex system—evidence that informed scrutiny can redirect entire trajectories.
Tracking the ripple effects
The effects of journalism are also increasingly measurable. Evaluations by foundations such as Ford, Walton, and MacArthur have shown that journalism funding leads to demonstrable policy debates, regulatory reviews, and greater diversity of public voices. A 2024 Media Impact Funders study found that more than half of major journalism funders had increased their giving over five years, citing “high returns in civic impact.” Local models scale as well: the American Journalism Project’s 2023 portfolio produced $86 million in revenue—evidence that philanthropic capital can build durable, mission-driven news capacity. For donors who require evidence, these outcomes suggest that information itself can be tracked and valued as a public good.
Some funders still worry that journalism is too indirect or too political. Yet information amplifies every other intervention. Conservation projects, policy research, and community initiatives all depend on public understanding and accountability to sustain momentum. Editorial independence is non-negotiable; philanthropic support should fund capacity—data analysis, safety, translation, distribution—not conclusions. The goal is factual integrity, not advocacy. As MacKenzie Scott has shown through her trust-based giving, relinquishing control can actually magnify impact: “Generosity is generative. Sharing makes more.”
Effective journalism funding mirrors the best of modern philanthropy: it is long-term, flexible, and rooted in trust. Multi-year, unrestricted grants allow outlets to invest in investigative teams, local correspondents, and data tools. Collaborative models pairing reporters with scientists and technologists improve reach and safety. Investment in translation and republication ensures that information circulates in the languages and places where it matters most. And embedding evaluation—tracking policy references, legal actions, or corporate shifts—creates shared learning across the field. These are the information-sector equivalents of what Scott refers to as “seeding by ceding”: empowering recipients to decide how resources can best serve the public interest.
The need is global. Around the world, civic space is shrinking and environmental defenders are under threat. Where journalists are silenced, corruption deepens and ecological harm accelerates. Conversely, when local reporting flourishes—from Borneo to Brazil—community oversight strengthens governance and investors face pressure to act responsibly. Funding journalism in such contexts is not a luxury of open societies; it is a prerequisite for keeping them open.
Information as civic infrastructure
Public and private funders spend many billions on energy transition, climate adaptation, and conservation, yet allocate a vanishing fraction to the mechanism that ensures this money is well used: independent reporting. Without scrutiny, even well-intentioned initiatives can drift toward inefficiency, opacity, or capture. Supporting journalism is therefore not sentimental but strategic—a safeguard for every other investment in planetary health. It keeps information verifiable, governance visible, and markets honest. Even modest grants can shift outcomes dramatically. A single story can help save a forest, protect a community, or redirect a subsidy. Few other investments deliver such outsized impact for so little cost.
Truth, when placed where it can be used, is catalytic. In a century defined by ecological and informational collapse alike, journalism is not a luxury—it is infrastructure for survival. And in funding it, philanthropy invests not only in truth, but in society’s capacity to see clearly and act wisely.
Banner image: Why the nautilus? I selected a bisected nautilus for the image as a metaphor for journalism, which like the chambers of a nautilus shell, provides the hidden structure that supports and connects the systems around it: verified information forming the scaffolding for public decision-making. The nautilus’s expansion outward mirrors how journalism’s impact compounds over time: each investigation builds on the last, creating an ever-growing body of shared knowledge that strengthens accountability. By revealing what’s usually concealed, both the bisected shell and independent journalism expose the underlying logic of complex systems—showing that truth-telling is not decorative but essential to the health of societies and the ecosystems they depend on. A stretch? Maybe.
Credits
