Philip Jacobson

I'm a full-time senior editor at Mongabay, the world's largest environmental news site, with over 120 staff around the world and hundreds of active contributors. I was briefly imprisoned in Indonesia in 2020 after years of producing investigations for Mongabay about the forestry and plantation sectors that shaped the national conversation, often in collaboration with The Gecko Project and outlets such as BBC News, Al Jazeera's 101 East Program, Tempo magazine, Malaysiakini, the Korea Center for Investigative Journalism(KCIJ)-Newstapa and others. Since then I've broadened my reporting to the global fishing industry, going in-depth on China's tuna sector and Brazil's shark meat trade, while continuing to commission and edit stories for Mongabay's Southeast Asia desk. I've also focused on data-driven reporting, building unique datasets of palm oil-driven land conflicts (based on local media reports), prosecutions of slash-and-burn farmers (based on Borneo court case registries) and government shark meat purchases (based on Brazilian procurement records) for various stories. My work has spurred government sanctions, influenced policy changes and won or been recognized by numerous awards, including the Society of Publishers in Asia/SOPA Awards (for investigative and environmental reporting), the TRACE Prize for Investigative Reporting, the Society of Environmental Journalists/SEJ Awards, the Online Journalism Awards, the Fetisov Journalism Awards, and the Oktovianus Pogau Award for Courage in Journalism.