Dialogue Earth Indigenous Voices Fellowship 2025 (Funding available)

Deadline: October 13, 2024

Applications are open for the Dialogue Earth Indigenous Voices Fellowship 2025. Indigenous voices are critical to building a more just and sustainable world. But they are too often excluded or pigeonholed outside mainstream conversations on environmental governance and climate policy.

Dialogue Earth is aiming to help address this by running a fellowship programme for Indigenous journalists, writers and storytellers from November 2024 to December 2025. The fellowship intends to highlight and amplify issues of concern to Indigenous peoples across South Asia, Southeast Asia, Africa, and Latin America, from the diverse perspectives of Indigenous journalists and writers themselves.

Each fellow will enter regional and global conversations on the environment and receive support from Doalogue Earth’s editors to publish two pieces of work on Dialogue Earth and beyond. They will be invited to attend next year’s COP30 climate conference in Brazil, in person, where they will participate in a special event. COP30 will be a critical moment for policymakers and other stakeholders engaged in climate action to meet and try to solve the climate crisis and other environmental issues.

Fellowship Details

The Indigenous Voices fellowship will support a cohort of eight Indigenous journalists, writers or storytellers from South Asia, Southeast Asia, Africa, and Latin America to pitch and develop stories. Proposals can be for written articles or multimedia content. Here are some potential themes and topics, but they welcome stories on other environmental and climate issues too.

Indigenous stewardship of global forests

• Traditional land-management practices
• Indigenous-led fire management
• The impact of extractive industries and commodity supply chains on forests
• Reducing deforestation through finance, traceability, and regulations

Indigenous knowledge in conservation and nature-based solutions, beyond forest protection

• Traditional ecological knowledge, biodiversity and climate science
• Food systems, seeds and sovereignty
• Citizen science approaches to data collection
• Indigenous communities’ role in ecosystem restoration

Policy approaches and Indigenous environmental movements

• Indigenous voices on intellectual property rights, access to benefits, and co-management agreements
• Indigenous access to climate finance
• Water protectors, protest, and environmental movements
• Protecting the rights of environmental defenders

Benefits

• Fellows will engage with regional and head office editorial teams who will offer support to their development as journalists, writers and storytellers.
• Fellows will be required to work with Dialogue Earth’s team to deliver two articles: one investigative/multimedia/on-the-ground, for which fellows will receive a budget of up to USD 1,750, and one desk based, for which fellows will be paid USD 500, according to the timeline above.
• All participants will be invited to attend an event by Dialogue Earth at the COP30 climate conference, held in Brazil in November/December 2025. Fellows will be required to register as media to gain access to COP30. Dialogue Earth will offer support throughout the application process. All travel and accommodation costs will be provided by Dialogue Earth, and fellows will be provided with a per diem for expenses while at the conference.

Eligibility

• The fellowship seeks to support Indigenous writers, journalists, and storytellers from South Asia, Southeast Asia, Africa and Latin America.
• Applicants must commit to attending COP30 in Brazil and to delivering two articles – one investigative/on-the-ground/multimedia, and one desk-based – in the timeline outlined.

Application

Send an email to [email protected] with the subject line ‘Indigenous Voices Fellowship’ by 18:00 BST on October 13, 2024. The email must contain:

• A description in 200 words or so of why you would like to join the fellowship, including some details about your relationship to Indigeneity. How does Indigeneity inform your life, work, and perspective on climate and environment?
• An outline of no more than 300 words of a specific story you would like to write on Dialogue Earth. This pitch can be for an investigative, on-the-ground or multimedia article, with budget of up to USD 1,750.
• Some examples of previous reporting, writing or other storytelling work or experiences.

For more information, visit Indigenous Voices Fellowship.