Jhesset O. Enano is an independent journalist and educator based in Manila, Philippines. Her current reporting work focuses on climate and environmental issues in the Philippines and in the Global South, and explores the intersections of climate, biodiversity, human rights, policy and culture. Her words and visuals appear in foreign and local publications, including The Washington Post, National Geographic, Al Jazeera English, Rappler and GMA News Online.
She spent several years of her reporting career as a staff reporter for the English daily newspaper Philippine Daily Inquirer, where she extensively covered human rights and social justice stories, including the violent drug war and worsening economic inequalities in her country. She later led the paper’s climate and environment coverage, where she began investigations on wildlife trafficking and illegal wildlife trade, exposed the gaps in climate policy and local action and reported on the killings of land and environmental defenders in the Philippines.
Jhesset has been recognized for her reporting, most recently by the 2022 Covering Climate Now Journalism Awards as a finalist in the Emerging Journalist category. The judges lauded her “body of fine journalism reporting on the stories of people in vulnerable countries and their fight for climate justice.”
She is a member of the third cohort of the Oxford Climate Journalism Network of the Reuters Institute of Journalism at the University of Oxford and a fellow of Climate Tracker. She received multiple reporting grants from the Earth Journalism Network and Thomson Reuters Foundation.
She has been interviewed about her work on NPR-WBUR’s Here and Now, BBC Newshour and CGTN’s Asia Today.
Outside her editorial work, Jhesset is a journalism educator. She is a university lecturer at the University of the Philippines Diliman, teaching environmental journalism, and leads the Climate Disaster Project in the Philippines. She also holds workshops and training on news reporting, feature writing and science communication for students, scientists and researchers.
Jhesset is available for assignments and commissions globally.
Contact: jhessetenano (at) gmail (dot) com