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n West Kalimantan, Arifin and Muhammad Nur have something to smile about. Over the past two years, the two farmers in Pangkalan Buton village, Kayong Utara district, have separately produced four successful rice harvests through organic farming. They use fermented cow waste.

One co-benefit of organic farming is that it emits less carbon than chemical-based farming. In Indonesia, 8 percent of carbon emissions come from agriculture.

Another agreeable advantage is that organic farming curbs forest encroachment, which risks more carbon emissions. Aries Munandar, Pontianak correspondent of the Jakarta-based Media Indonesia daily, reported these findings in a two-page spread with pictures and smart infographics on Aug. 6, 2014, titled '€œSepetak Lahan Menyelamatkan Hutan'€ (One land block saves forests).

Meanwhile, in Riau, Muhammad Hapiz reported from ground zero in the aftermath of the major peat fires in February and March that devastated the hamlet of Bukitlengkung in Bengkalis district. His twin-page highly descriptive dispatch with photos appeared in Riau Pos daily on March 2, 2014, titled '€œMimpi Hasil Kebun yang Nyatanya Api'€ (Harvest Dreams Ablaze).

Hapiz related how oil palm smallholders coped after the deliberate burning of peat swamp to convert it to oil palm fields got out of hand. Sudaryanto, 43, with his eyes red and moist, sprayed well water on his house and the immediate surroundings to keep the peat fires at bay.

He lost his kitchen, a chicken coop and 4 hectares of his oil palm plot to the peat fire. Within hours on that night of Feb. 21, 2,000 hectares of palm field were scorched.

Each year Riau loses 188,000 hectares (ha) of its forest cover and 73.5 percent of it is slashed-and-burned peat swamp, according to Muslim Rasyid, coordinator of Jikalahari, a save-the-forests-of-Riau NGO.

Why peat fires regularly occurred was because of weak law enforcement and weak land use regulations that allowed for major expansions in palm plantations from converted peatland, said Rasyid, as quoted by Hapiz.

Fine stories do not go unrecognized. Aries'€™ piece on low carbon emission organic farming in West Kalimantan won first prize in the print media category in a journalism contest on reporting on climate change. The competition was organized by the Jakarta chapter of the Alliance of Independent Journalists, AJI Jakarta, and the Indonesia Climate Change Trust Fund.

The prize for Aries is an expense-paid trip to cover the United Nations climate conference in Lima, Peru, on Dec. 1-12.

Hapiz in Riau and Aries in West Kalimantan are two in a growing number of journalists in the region who cover local climate issues. Climate coverage got a boost in April when journalists in Sumatra, Kalimantan and Papua procured Norway-funded travel fellowships to report on a climate issue in a third province, meaning outside Jakarta and their home province.

Public radio broadcaster RRI reporter Marga Rahayu in Samarinda, East Kalimantan, flew to Bengkulu on the southwest coast of Sumatra where she reported on the shrinking of Pulau Tikus (Mouse Island) due to abrasion. Indian Ocean tides have reduced the island'€™s land size from 2 ha to 0.77 ha in the past 15 years.

Ma'€™as, Media Jambi reporter in Kota Jambi, journeyed to Papua to report on mass tree removal in the uphill outskirts of Jayapura that resulted in floods in the provincial capital during the rainy season.

Meanwhile Zaki Setiawan, Batam correspondent for the Koran Sindo daily in Jakarta, ferried inland up the Musi River in South Sumatra to Nusantara village in Ogan Komering Ilir district. He found a defiant community of can-do resettled farmers that refused to sell their productive rice land to a company that wants to convert the paddy fields into an oil palm spread.

Dinda Wulandari, correspondent in Palembang, South Sumatra, for the Jakarta-based Bisnis Indonesia, reported on a class action filed by residents in Samarinda, East Kalimantan, against the city authorities.

The city government allowed operators to mine coal around the provincial capital that caused major environmental damage and health hazards.

A second group of journalists from Sumatra, Kalimantan, West Papua and Central Java undertook similar travel fellowships in August.

The reportorial output of the journalists provides insight into local climate change issues throughout Indonesia. Their immediate audience gets the benefit of enriched knowledge of situations beyond the local coverage area of the reporter concerned.