Environmental Investigative Forum – EIF

About the network

Registered in France as a non-profit in 2020, EIF serves as a global consortium of environmental investigative journalists. The organisation is composed of a team of 6 volunteers, as well as a consortium of 107 individual members bringing together various journalists and environmental experts worldwide, aiming to foster new initiatives related to investigative environmental journalism on a global scale. They do so on 3 levels:

Networking

EIF’s force develops with its number of individual members and external partners. Since its creation, EIF has grown to 107 individual members worldwide and will open a new advisory board reserved to regional organisations worldwide. Its networking activities include:

• Bringing together journalists, experts and newsrooms at partner events and webinars.
• Connecting individual profiles around potential reporting initiatives they can participate in.
• Informing members monthly about ongoing opportunities for environmental investigative journalism through a newsletter.

Supporting journalists

EIF offers free support to its members in order for them to foster new investigative ideas, explore innovative reporting methods and fundraise their stories. It does so by:

• Providing fundraising advice and expertise to journalists to support them into developing their projects;
• Joining members’ investigations whenever EIF can bring on significant added value;
• Providing free technical support and expertise on environmental tools and data techniques for investigating environmental issues;

Developing capacity and resources

EIF provides volunteer training and consultancy services for environmental investigative programmes designed by its partners. It also aims to develop open source tools for journalists worldwide in order to enhance the journalism community’s efforts to uncover environmental wrongdoing. It does so notably by:

• Drafting groundbreaking tools and concepts to develop and feature on the website and in partner’s feeds (1 prototype tool funded for 2022-2023, to be launched in the next summer);
• Providing training and mentoring services (CFI France, CENOZO, International Center for Journalism, Open Climate Reporting initiative, ARIJ, Journalism Fund EU, among others).

Projects

Here are some of the things the EIF has uncovered so far: Unlawful gas extraction in the tunisian part of the Sahara Desert, repression and authoritarianism surrounding the soon-to-be biggest crude oil pipeline in the world project in Tanzania and Uganda, unaccounted water pollution following the discharge of millions of cubic liters of waste water in the Varna Lake, Bulgaria.

Most recently, their investigation on illegal extractive processes and environmental prejudices in Democratic Republic of Congo by French oil giant Perenco even led to some major impact, with the company being sued in France over EIF’s revelations published by Disclose and Investigate Europe.

These are just a few of the stories that were developed by EIF and published thanks to the support of renowned donors in the field of investigative journalism, such as the Calouste Foundation, Internews, the Pulitzer Center, Internews, the Journalism Fund EU and others.

Contact

Website: https://www.eiforum.org
Name: EIF Team
Email: team@eiforum.org