At the Rio+20 United Nations Conference on Sustainable Development, I came prepared to learn about new challenges journalists around the world will face as they try to find accurate information about environmental and development issues. As a Knight International Journalism Fellow, I also came armed with some practical approaches for addressing these new challenges – at least here in the Amazon region where my work is based.

Although criticized by some as weak and vague, the Rio+20 final document created a road map for negotiations on specific targets for eliminating poverty and protecting biodiversity and the water supply, among other issues. If governments agree to set new goals by the 2014 deadline, these new targets will replace the current UN Millennium Development Goals starting in 2015.

Among the measurements that governments are rethinking: the way environmental degradation is tracked and the calculation of a country’s gross domestic product, which currently does not reflect different levels of quality-of-life. This means journalists may soon be relying on new indicators to report on the health of ecosystems and development policies.

To help media prepare for this new reality, the Brazilian non-profit news agency O Eco and U.S. media development organization Internews – both partners in my Knight International Journalism Fellowship project – organized a training program for 20 journalists from 18 countries. I passed along some of the skills to help them improve how they report on sustainable development. For example, I led a field trip where they learned about the Ilhas do Rio project. The project aims to bring government, scientists and local fisherman together to conserve the Cagarras Islands, an iconic and important biodiversity hotspot near Rio de Janiero. The training focused on helping journalists to think about all of the competing interests that have made the effort to protect this vulnerable area so difficult.

In another session at the Instituto Brasileiro de Análises Sociais e Econômicas, 30 people including journalists and developers learned about using digital mapping for storytelling. The idea was to show how software programs such as Google Earth, MapBox and Fusion Tables can be powerful tools for getting accurate information on the issues raised during Rio+20. The training session was held just before the launch of the InfoAmazonia data portal. This visual and graphic representation of the world’s largest rainforest is mainly based on information generated by governments as part of their effort to stop deforestation of this important natural resource.

Rio+20 highlighted how journalists are poised to play a significant role in this effort by doing what they do best: questioning projects and policies that affect the environment and development. What I hope I was able to show them was the need to rely on every available tool to find out if the global promises made at Rio+20 become reality.