Today is the day! 🗞️ It's out in Mongabay, one of the most challenging and demanding investigative projects I’ve worked on over the past 12 months – one that I’m genuinely proud of! "As traditional forest governance erodes in Peru, ‘ghost permits’ fill the vacuum" is a piece that looks at a part of the Peruvian Amazon where things start to get messy: Indigenous governance, land rights, and forest protection systems that, on paper, should work. In reality, however, they’re being bent, reused, and sometimes exploited, with consequences that go well beyond deforestation. What sits at the core of this complexity? The collision between internal fractures and external pressures and the implications they have for communities that have historically served as the forest's most resilient defence system. You can read it here ➡️ https://lnkd.in/dqHBP64N It’s also the project that probably reflects most what I took away from my time at Columbia University - Graduate School of Journalism’s Stabile Center for Investigative Journalism: in-depth field interviews; OSINT techniques ranging from geolocation to permit tracing and document digging; data-informed reporting; and a qualitative, survey-driven empirical spine. Last but not least, huge thanks to editor Latoya Abulu for believing in the story from the very beginning and pushing it to be sharper at every stage, as well as to the Pulitzer Center for making the reporting possible through its financial support 🌟 Stay tuned as I continue to work on new projects in the years ahead! 📰
