Excited and honored to be a finalist in the Walkley Foundation Mid-Year Media Prizes for 2025 Freelance of the Year. The nominated stories are for a body of work titled “Fighting for the future”: The people at the front line of a changing planet’. They ran in Nature, Yale Environment 360 and The Monthly magazine. … Continue reading
Author Archives: Jo Chandler
Pushing the needle: What drives people from climate despair to direct action
We’ve heard plenty about climate tipping points in the atmosphere, over landscapes and in the oceans. In my latest reporting project, published in the April edition of The Monthly, I take a deep dive into the wildly unpredictable world of human responses – the moments that tip ordinary people from the sidelines into frontline protests, … Continue reading
For Nature Magazine: ‘Cocaine of the seas’ — how a luxury food is wreaking ecological mayhem in PNG waters
It’s two years since I climbed into a dinghy with Yolarnie Amepou to visit some of the communities in the Kikori delta PNG where she advocates for humans and other creatures grappling with fast rising seas, climate devastation & the fallout of an exploding fishery. Since then, I’ve taken a deep dive into the mysterious … Continue reading
For ABC Radio ‘Pacific Scientific’: In the Kikori Delta, a fisheries gold rush.
A while back I was lucky enough to spend a couple of days with the awesome Yolarnie Amepou – zoologist, turtle mama and tireless activist for threatened humans and non-humans – as she went about her business in the Kikori Delta, Papua New Guinea. I’ve previously written about what she showed me of how rising … Continue reading
7am Podcast: Why the PNG landslide should be Australia’s problem too.
The landslide catastrophe in Enga, PNG, will reverberate for years after the emergency phase. I was invited by the 7am podcast to talk briefly about the broader context of an event like this in the highlands. The things I tried to highlight are the remoteness/lack of basic services; how years of tribal fighting will complicate … Continue reading
Can “high integrity” carbon projects save the Pacific’s vanishing forests? And benefit landowners?
Having witnessed the damaging antics of carbon cowboys and, more recently, self-interested greenwashing industry in REDD+ forest projects in PNG, I was sceptical and intrigued about the notion of “high integrity” carbon. So, I went to the Solomon Islands to see what it looked like on the ground. This issue is one of the most … Continue reading
Melbourne Press Club Quills finalist ‘Best Feature’
Very chuffed to be a finalist in the 2023 Melbourne Press Club Quills Best Feature for my story “Climate justice in the Pacific” for The Monthly magazine. Congratulations to fellow finalists (below) in this and all categories. And good luck also to our Unimelb Master of Journalism alum and superstar talent Sasha Gattermayr who is … Continue reading
Preparing for the next big drought in PNG
In late 2022 I did a couple of field trips in PNG exploring questions of climate change, climate justice & locally lead responses to changing conditions. As well as visiting coastal areas, where rising seas are the urgent issue, I went to the highlands where shifts in rainfall and conditions can wipe out crops and … Continue reading
Terms of development: Reflections on the Australasian AID Conference
At the end of particularly gruelling teaching semester, I shot up to Canberra for the Australasian Aid and International Development conference hosted by the Development Policy Centre at ANU. Very grateful for this opportunity to reconnect with some Pacific and development experts and longtime ‘contacts’, and to think about issues in the region. This story for … Continue reading
Australia Museum Eureka Prize for Science Journalism (third time lucky!)
So excited and honored to be awarded the Australia Museum Eureka Prize for Science Journalism in Sydney last week. The prize was for my 2022 piece for Griffith Review on the quest for a million year old ice core – Buried Treasure: A Journey Into Deep Time. It’s a story about both the smallness of … Continue reading