As Wake Forest’s Pulitzer Fellow this year, I was able to travel to Thailand to report on the role of Buddhist monks in the Thai environmental movement. The Buddhist religion is deeply integrated into daily life throughout Thailand and Buddhist monks are stepping up not only as spiritual guides, but as environmental leaders. Many of these monks, known as “ecology monks,” are using their position of respect in society to add a moral dimension to the Thai environmental movement and encourage their followers to help conserve natural resources and protect wildlife. I spent three and a half weeks traveling all throughout Thailand, where I lived in a Buddhist temple, hiked through sacred forests filled with ordained trees, and interviewed many non-governmental organization university professors, and prominent ecology monks, to determine the impact that these religious leaders were making on this movement.
I was excited to be able to work with Mongabay, an environmental news outlet, to publish my article and spread this story to a wider audience. In Thailand, these monks are illuminating the harsh realities of deforestation, climate change, and harmful cash-cropping contracts, and the people are listening.
Thank you to the Pulitzer Center on Crisis Reporting in Washington, DC for helping to make this story possible.
Read Kiley’s work here: https://asiancorrespondent.com/2018/08/trees-ordained-monks-thailand/