Letter from the Editors

Dear Reader,

Welcome to our first Annual. We figure this is a good way to encapsulate all we did in the past year and encourage you to re-read (or read) our stories. Here, we present each story from 2022 in one or two visuals, a summary, and links so you can go to the full stories or listen to podcasts.

Some highlights (though we love and value every single one of our stories):

Following from our first series on drivers of deforestation in 2021, we dived into another key driver this year: forest plantations. Most - if not all - of these monoculture estates have been approved in forest reserves. But Yao Hua found that developers have cleared twice more the area than they have replanted; meanwhile, existing projects are poorly managed (p6).

Yao Hua also flagged anomalies in other deforestation projects. One had cleared forest before submitting its Environmental Impact Assessment report (p12), and another wants to convert forest for oil palm when the oil palm cannot be certified for sale (p20).

We also embarked on an ambitious Special Project which comprised training, mentoring

YEAR 2022

and producing 3 stories in 3 languages by 3 writers and as many editors, our largest team ever (p18).

In an election year, series editor Siew Lyn wanted to prompt a rethink of tanah air. As Malaysians, we are bound to land and water in so many ways: as a nation and citizens, through the actual and imaginative, the collective and the personal.

The series looks at food security and the climate crisis; reclamations and ecosystems; and small island pollution as the proverbial tip of the waste iceberg.

Among our firsts this year, we finally covered a Sarawak story, on the migratory bird haven of Bako-Buntal Bay (p8); we featured our first video interviews in an article (by a Sprouts new journalist, no less) (p30); and we produced our first animation condensing a story point, for our social media.

Collaborations are important to provide readers with the rich and varied perspectives needed for complex issues.

This year, we are pleased to have collaborated with Taiwan’s Commonwealth Magazine on the climate crisis and water (p10), and with Earth Journalism Network (Asia-Pacific) on meat consumption and One Health (p16). In conjunction with the Climate COP27, the Guardian UK invited us to co-publish a 30-newsroom global joint editorial on the urgency for climate action. Our stories, either in full or abridged, were republished in Al Jazeera, Oriental Daily, Sin Chew Daily, and South China Morning Post.

We remain passionate about and committed to training and mentoring environmental journalists. From pages 30—34, we highlight the pieces painstakingly produced by our Sprouts new journalists. Read what they say about their own stories.

We also believe in creating a groundswell of environmental journalism. We therefore conducted lots of environmental media training for working journalists this year, with Siew Lyn leading 2 multi-day workshops, and a several-month long climate mentorship.

So, all this and much more in the following pages. We hope you enjoy the Annual!

Siew Lyn and Yao Hua

Hyperlink Glossary

READ

Story link Radio interview

TV interview

Also appeared in

Webinar

Training

Tell us what you think of the Macaranga Annual 2022!