
Articles by Emma Black
Emma Black is a dedicated, award winning Sierra Leonean journalist. She has worked for over seven years in the media industry as a radio producer and presenter and newspaper reporter. Emma is an active member of Women in the Media Sierra Leone (WIMSL) and the Sierra Leone Association of Journalists (SLAJ). She’s committed to improving conditions for women journalists and the industry. She has written about education issues, the environment, women and children, gender, health, crime, courts and mining. Emma is a “bulldog researcher” and enjoys talking to those whose stories are seldom told.
In 2021, Emma became a Fellow of International Women Media Foundation (IWMF) and received training on COVID-19 vaccines. Emma produced three international stories on vaccines, cold chains, side effects and data in Sierra Leone.
Emma became a Fellow of the Media and Information Bureau (MIB) in 2019 and wrote stories on artisanal gold mining, diamond diggers and women in mines. With MIB, Emma also researched and wrote stories from the justice sector and how women have been discriminated against within the courts.
During the COVID-19 pandemic, Emma wrote stories for Internews on how women have been affected by the virus, the economic impact of COVID-19 on the hospitality industry and w
In November 2010, Emma received a “Journalists for Human Rights” Fellowship to research and write a feature story on a critical education topic. The issue of “ghost students” and school corruption was exposed. The story appeared in African Champion newspaper and won an Independent Media Commission Award in February 2011.
Emma is dedicated to self-improvement and takes advantage of all educational opportunities including an eight-week training session offered by Journalists for Human Rights and the Human Rights Commission of Sierra Leone. She continues to improve her writing and reporting through scholarships and fellowship opportunities.

Special series
Forest Trackers
- Deforestation on the rise in Quintana Roo, Mexico, as Mennonite communities move in
- Logged and loaded: Cambodian prison official suspected in massive legalized logging operation
- Bolivian national park hit hard by forest fires in 2022, satellite data show
- Deforestation ‘out of control’ in reserve in Brazil’s cattle capital

Oceans
- Sea level rise looms, even for the best-prepared country on Earth
- Fishy business of squid vessels needs stronger regulation, study says
- Indonesia’s mangrove restoration will run out of land well short of target, study warns
- As U.N. members clinch historic high seas biodiversity treaty, what’s in it?

Amazon Conservation
- Peru congress debates stripping isolated Indigenous people of land and protections
- Make it local: Deforestation link to less Amazon rainfall tips activism shift
- In Brazil, criminals dismantle one of the best-preserved swaths of the Amazon
- France seeks EU okay to fund biomass plants, burn Amazon forest to power Spaceport

Land rights and extractives
- Peru congress debates stripping isolated Indigenous people of land and protections
- Brazil tackles illegal miners, but finds their mercury legacy harder to erase
- Lula government scrambles to overcome Yanomami crisis, but hurdles remain
- ‘Brought down by gold’: Communities and nature suffer amid Nigerian bonanza

Endangered Environmentalists
- ‘You don’t kill people to protect forests’: New Thai parks chief raises alarm
- Vietnam’s environmental NGOs face uncertain status, shrinking civic space
- ‘We lost the biggest ally’: Nelly Marubo on her friend Bruno Pereira’s legacy
- Murders of 2 Pataxó leaders prompt Ministry of Indigenous Peoples to launch crisis office

Indonesia's Forest Guardians
- Pioneer agroforester Ermi, 73, rolls back the years in Indonesia’s Gorontalo
- After 20 years and thousands of trees planted, Kalimantan’s veteran forester persists
- Aziil Anwar, Indonesian coral-based mangrove grower, dies at 64
- A utopia of clean air and wet peat amid Sumatra’s forest fire ‘hell’

Conservation Effectiveness
- For key Bangladesh wetland, bid for Ramsar status is no guarantee of protection
- Biodiversity, human rights safeguards crucial to nature-based solutions: Critics
- Protecting canids from planet-wide threats offers ecological opportunities
- Mangrove forest loss is slowing toward a halt, new report shows

Southeast Asian infrastructure
- As Indonesia’s new capital takes shape, risks to wider Borneo come into focus
- Tunnel collapse at dam project in orangutan habitat claims yet another life
- Sulawesi nickel plant coats nearby homes in toxic dust
- Indonesia’s grand EV plans hinge on a ‘green’ industrial park that likely isn’t
