Environmental journalism in the Asia and Pacific region

[Extract:] Across the Asia and Pacific region dedicated environment journalists are a rarity. With the exception of Australia and New Zealand, environment beats, locally called rounds, are no longer a newsroom luxury. Editors, journalists, and educators turn to conservation groups and environment non-government organizations to fill the gaps in science knowledge and longer-form investigative pieces. Across the region, climate change copy and environmental stories are subsumed into health, science, and general news rounds. From Fiji to Papua New Guinea, Samoa, Malaysia, and Indonesia, journalists face scarce resources, remote terrain, political bias, government shut outs, and a desperate need for more scientific and environmental journalism training.