Sharing knowledge through stories informs, inspires and sustains effective action worldwide.

The belief that credible independent journalism is essential to successfully address the planetary emergency is at the core of Mongabay.

Since our inception, Mongabay’s strategy has always been based on the idea that journalism can contribute to real-world results by raising awareness about the importance of nature, generating opportunities for accountability for environmental destruction and inspiring people to work toward solutions. Over the years, we’ve built upon on this strategy to effectively convey information in compelling formats in relevant time frames to critical audiences that shape policy and influence global trends, and ultimately inspire real-world change.

To achieve this, Mongabay prioritizes original coverage in regions facing acute socio-environmental threats and leverages our expertise staff and international network of 1,000-plus contributors from more than 80 countries who are locally based and can best identify, understand and report on globally significant issues from the ground up.

With this model, Mongabay works to…

Mongabay’s approach to impact is based on a theory of change rooted in the understanding that ineffective conservation and unsustainable consumption and management practices are fundamental drivers of global ecosystem challenges. This situation is, in part, propelled by four specific and intersecting dimensions where Mongabay’s journalism has a reliable track record of having an outsized impact:

• Transparency: a lack of frequent, objective, accurate and timely information around conservation and environmental issues and/or easy access to this information.
• Information supply: null or limited capacity of mainstream media outlets to report on scientific developments and news around conservation and environmental issues.
• Governance: effective accountability for policies and practices around natural resources management as well private-sector practice, including corruption and criminal behavior.
• Awareness: a lack of awareness about social and environmental issues related to conservation and sustainable management of ecosystems.

How we track impact:

As an independent journalism organization, Mongabay doesn’t approach any issue with an outcome in mind. We objectively measure the organization’s effectiveness at the highest level using an online tool to capture and monitor outcomes from reporting. Examples of collected metrics include, but aren’t limited to expanded third party media coverage, increased funding and visibility for groups working on the ground, greater engagement around best practices for land-use management and activism, evidence of consumption by specific audiences and individuals, policy changes, and local behavior change informed with Mongabay’s reporting. Additionally, Mongabay collects analytics, such as article views, audience engagement, republications and citations, total time spent on specific content, and geographic distribution of use and engagement. Ultimately, the information collected informs Mongabay’s impact evaluation approach that identifies, verifies, analyses and interprets ‘outcomes’ (i.e. changes). The result of this outcome harvesting process is a story explaining Mongabay’s contribution to an observed impact. A sampling of these impact stories are shared publicly in the Impacts an Programs pages of this website. 

Beyond the reporting…

Mongabay’s impact goes beyond the news produced, awareness raised and actions inspired. As an organization, Mongabay also plays a growing role in capacity building within the journalism sector via our Network Building program.