Environmental Justice Reporting: Humanitarian Aid in the Borderlands

In a remote corner of southwestern Arizona, humanitarian aid groups must navigate a rugged desert landscape governed by a complex array of public land use policies. While important to conservation, federal environmental policies pose limitations on humanitarian aid groups' efforts to provide water, locate missing persons, and collect crucial data on the scale of border-crossing deaths. As a graduate student in UM's Environmental Science and Natural Resource Journalism program, I am creating a short documentary exploring the realities of providing humanitarian aid in the remote desert landscape of the southwestern Arizona-Mexico border. My project aims to provide a meaningful contribution to broader discussions about the intersection of land management policies, conservation, immigration, and humanitarian efforts on the Arizona-Mexico border. My goal for this story is not to point fingers. Rather, I strive to provide an opportunity for further discussion on the ethics and values associated with preservation and land use in the context of a human rights crisis. My poster will feature footage stills, interview quotes, key statistics about the Arizona-Mexico border, and a QR code linking to a preview of my film. Additionally, I will provide a succinct overview of how I leveraged graduate-level electives in Law, Environmental Studies, and Natural Resource Science and Management to deepen my understanding of social-environmental justice issues. I also briefly discuss how an internship with the National Geographic Society's Impact Story Lab helped prepare me to take on this intensive project. In doing so, I will demonstrate how my coursework and internship contributed to my professional project and allowed me to tailor my master's program to focus on environmental justice reporting.