Biography

Franklin Vega is a journalist; he has specialized in environmental issues for 25 years. He discovered his vocation in the newspaper El Comercio of Quito, Ecuador, in 1998. He is currently the Editor and one of the founders of the internet portal specializing in environmental news, Bitácora Ambiental (BAM) www.bitacoraec.com. Vega has developed his work in the Amazon, the Coast, the Sierra regions, and especially in the Galapagos National Park in Ecuador, documenting complex socio-environmental processes. Before the Inter-American Court of Human Rights, he was a witness for his journalistic work on Indigenous peoples in Voluntary Isolation in the Yasuní National Park. Throughout his career, he has issued about 600 journalist reports in Ecuador, Peru, Bolivia, and Brazil. Recently in BAM, he published four pieces with the support of Earth Journalism and Internews about illegal fishing in the Galapagos and the origin of tuna fishing on the high seas of the Ecuadorian fleet. For his work as an environmental journalist, he has received awards from CIESPAL, public institutions, and international organizations in Ecuador and Brazil. This year, the DW Akademie and GIZ awarded him a grant for a data journalism report presented in Berlin. Vega identifies with the phrase of the Argentine journalist Jorge Walsh: "If there is no justice, at least let it be the truth."