EJN Forest Governance Story Grants: 2025 Round Closed

EJN Forest Governance Story Grants: 2025 Round Closed

This call is finished. The Earth Journalism Network (EJN) closed applications for its Forest Governance Story Grants 2025 round on 6 January 2026 at 11:59 PM (Pacific/Niue). The call planned to award up to seven story grants, with an average budget of about £1,500 per grant and editorial mentorship during production. There is no application to submit through this archived entry.

The Forest Governance Media Initiative (FGMI) may publish other training or organisational opportunities, but those are different instruments. The official EJN opportunities index is the place to check for a new story-grant announcement. Until EJN publishes one, do not treat a related workshop, a media-organisation grant, or a general forest-governance project page as a new individual reporting grant.

At a Glance

What the closed round funded

This was an in-depth reporting grant, not a fellowship or a stipend. Selected journalists received an average grant of about £1,500 to cover reporting costs, plus one-to-one editorial mentorship from EJN through the production of the story. Applicants could be from any country, but EJN said plainly that it was particularly interested in journalists based in Cameroon, Liberia, Ghana, Vietnam and Indonesia writing about forest governance at home, and in journalists in the UK, EU member states, China, India and Japan covering the international processes that shape what happens in producer countries.

That second category is the part most applicants underuse. Forest governance is not only a story about a logging concession in a specific district; it is also a story about import rules, due-diligence law, procurement policy and trade negotiation happening thousands of miles away. EJN funded both ends of that chain deliberately.

EJN may publish results and project updates separately from the opportunity page. Those updates are not an application route and do not create a new deadline. This archive preserves the terms of the call itself, not a promise that an individual reader was selected or that the same funding level will be offered again.

No successor round announced

The official EJN opportunity pages checked for this update do not announce a new Forest Governance Story Grants round after the 2025 call. The program should therefore be treated as ended for application purposes. A related FGMI workshop or a separate grant for media organisations may be useful, but neither changes this record’s status or provides a route to submit an individual story proposal under the closed call.

That distinction matters because EJN uses similar language for several kinds of support. A story grant pays an individual journalist or a reporting group to produce a defined piece of journalism. A workshop provides training. An organisational grant supports a newsroom, network, or other institution. The subject may be forest governance in all three cases, but the applicant, budget, deliverables, and submission route are different. Readers should open the exact opportunity page before assuming that a new listing replaces this one.

The safest current action is to monitor the EJN opportunities index and the Forest Governance Media Initiative project page. Do not submit through an old account draft, reuse the archived deadline as if it were live, or send an unsolicited pitch by email. EJN’s FAQ says that funding or story pitches are accepted through listed opportunities rather than through general unsolicited requests.

How the closed application worked

The original application route was the EJN online opportunity platform. Applicants first used the Apply now control on the call page, then logged in or created an EJN account. The account step mattered: the EJN FAQ explains that a person who is not logged in cannot apply, and that a saved draft can be reopened from the opportunity page while the call is live. Those instructions describe the completed process and should not be read as evidence that the archived form still accepts submissions.

The application itself required a focused story proposal, a reporting plan, a detailed budget in the EJN Excel template with justification for the requested amount, a signed editor letter confirming that the outlet would publish the resulting story, and two samples of published work or links to relevant reporting. Proposals had to be submitted in English. Applicants also had to be transparent about any generative-AI tools used to revise a proposal; EJN reserved the right to exclude work that was submitted as AI-generated material presented as the applicant’s own.

The practical sequence was:

1. Confirm that the proposed story concerned forest governance rather than only a general environmental topic.
2. Select a reporting question, affected communities, decision-makers, documents, interviews, and publication outlet.
3. Secure the editor’s signed publication commitment before submitting.
4. Build a realistic budget around reporting costs such as travel, data gathering, interviews, translation, and production.
5. Attach the two work samples, complete the online form in English, and submit before the published deadline.

No one can complete that sequence for the closed round now. It remains useful as a preparation checklist only, and a future EJN call may change the budget template, eligibility, required samples, or publication conditions.

What a successor round would likely require

EJN’s story-grant calls are consistent in structure across programmes, so the requirements from this round are a fair template. Prepare these now and you can file quickly when a fitting call opens.

An editor’s letter of support. This round required a commitment from an editor to publish the resulting story by September 2026. Every EJN story grant ties funding to a real publication route. If you are a freelancer without a standing outlet relationship, this is the item that takes longest to secure — start it before you write anything else.

A proposal in English. EJN accepted applications only in English for this round. If English is not your first working language, budget time for editorial help on the proposal itself, not just the story.

A narrow, provable governance question. “Corruption is rising” is not a proposal. “This district’s timber permits were issued after the moratorium, and here is the register that shows it” is. Name the mechanism, the decision process, and the people whose lives change depending on how it goes.

A method you can actually execute. Planned interviews, the document trail you intend to pursue (permit registers, licensing files, procurement lists, company filings, court records, budget lines), any field travel, and who produces the multimedia component if there is one.

A budget that fits the sum. At roughly £1,500, every line has to justify itself: local travel and logistics, transcription and translation, document access fees, minimal production costs. Ambitious travel asks against a small grant read as inattention to the call.

Two published clips or work samples. They do not have to be environmental if they show equivalent discipline — verified investigative or data reporting delivered on schedule.

Source safety. If your reporting touches communities under land-use pressure, state your consent and protection practice explicitly. Reviewers notice its absence.

Honest self-assessment before the next round

Answer each of these in one word. More “no” than “yes” means the fix is a smaller, testable story, not a longer proposal.

• Can I state the governance conflict in one sentence without jargon?
• Do I know where the first two interviews happen?
• Do I have at least one document I can realistically obtain?
• Do I have an editor who will commit in writing to publishing this?
• Is my budget honest at roughly £1,500?
• Can I finish inside the production window stated in the next call?

The applications that fail are rarely the ones with weak ideas. They are the ones with vague impact claims, no named publication route, a budget that does not match the method, or a scope so broad that no single reporting trip could close it.

Official links

• EJN opportunities index (check here for what is currently open): https://earthjournalism.net/opportunities
• The closed 2025 call page: https://earthjournalism.net/opportunities/forest-governance-story-grants-2025
• Forest Governance Media Initiative project page: https://earthjournalism.net/what-we-do/projects/forest-governance-media-initiative
• EJN home: https://earthjournalism.net/

What to do now

1. Treat this story-grant round as closed. Do not send a proposal to it.
2. Check the EJN opportunities index and FGMI project page for a separately announced workshop, organisational grant, or successor story grant.
3. Sign up for EJN’s mailing list so a successor forest round reaches you at announcement rather than shortly before the deadline.
4. Secure an editor’s letter of support now. It is portable across reporting grants, and it is the item most likely to delay a short application window.
5. Keep a one-page version of your proposal — question, method, budget, publication route — ready to adapt when EJN publishes a new call.