Large hydropower dams that obstruct the Amazon basin have long come under fire for their environmental and cultural impact — Belo Monte being the most prominent example. Yet a bigger…
The protected swathes of primary Amazon Rainforest in the Paru State Forest in the north of Brazil became the fifth-most deforested conservation unit in October, official data show. Illegal land-grabbing…
Six months ago, more than 100 Indigenous people from five different ethnic groups entered the Itaquaí River, close to the city of Atalaia do Norte, in the Javari Valley, in…
NOVA CALIFÓRNIA, Brazil — Hamilton Condack smiles and points to a towering ipê tree rooted in the plot of land where he lives and produces food. “When I first got…
Officials and NGOs have hailed the European Union's agreement on a law banning the import of commodities associated with deforestation, but say it falls short of protecting areas typically not…
At the recently concluded COP27 climate summit in Egypt, 14 major agricultural commodity companies, including Cargill, ADM and JBS, released a plan to end deforestation associated with the production of…
Artisanal gold mining is driving the global demand for mercury, with 2,058 metric tons of the toxic metal contaminating water, land and air every year, according to a recent report…
When Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva takes office at the start of 2023 as president of Brazil, his third term in the post, he faces the difficult task of making…
As a Black Amazonian woman, former environment minister and just-elected congresswoman, Marina Silva is one of the most complex and fascinating figures in current Brazilian politics. As the daughter of…
For 26 years, the last member of the Tanaru people resisted contact and lived alone in his protected land in the Brazilian state of Rondônia. Ranchers and miners had massacred…
Soy cultivation and cattle ranching are two of the biggest drivers of deforestation in the Brazilian Amazon. But instead of clearing more forest area for farmland, what if soy was…
Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva was elected president of Brazil on Oct. 30 in a close runoff with incumbent President Jair Bolsonaro. But voters of eight out of the 10…
You probably haven’t heard of Vieira’s titi, a monkey found only in the Brazilian Amazon. Until recently, even researchers knew so little about it that they couldn’t determine its conservation…
A radical change to how Brazil’s Indigenous affairs agency functions has prompted alarm among activists, who say it effectively threatens to end the demarcation of Indigenous territories and set back…
Wild felids in Brazil’s Amazon face a myriad of pressures from habitat loss and, most recently, the threat of fires. In the central Amazon region, a long-running community-based monitoring program…
In a civilized world, commitments should be kept. Sometimes it is impossible due to uncontrollable factors, such as a pandemic or an extreme event. But when it comes to Brazil…
As the rest of the world closely watched Brazil’s presidential election on Oct. 2, the country’s conservative bloc made significant gains in a Congress that it already dominates. This could…
After four years of a government that led the Amazon rainforest and other biomes to record levels of destruction, the world's attention is on the Brazilian presidential elections in October…
The Americas have a long history of occupation based on the destruction of nature and the violent massacre of native peoples, all in the name of a particular idea of…
Moisés Oliveira de Carmo tells of the day in 2020 when he watched a chain of flames spread sideways at the edge of his farm, melding together to create a…
The European Parliament has approved a bill blocking the import of "dirty commodities" by members of the European Union, in an effort to combat global deforestation. Under the new bill,…
Brazilians will go to the polls in October to vote in presidential and congressional elections that many consider a critical moment for the fate of the environment in Brazil. Activists…
Brazil has lost a Belgium-sized swath of the Amazon Rainforest since Jair Bolsonaro took office as the country’s president at the start of 2019. Deforestation has soared under his administration,…
Men on horseback enter a protected Indigenous area, bringing along 100 head of cattle. Next to a village with no road access, inhabited by the Parakanã people, the men find…
Towns in the Brazilian states of Amazonas and Pará have experienced a recent bout of skies overcast with thick clouds of smoke, the result of fires raging in the Amazon…
A Brazilian company stands poised to start mining inside an Indigenous territory in the Amazon as soon as October, highlighting the precarious nature of the protections afforded to Indigenous lands…
Coordinated raids by police in Brazil have shed new light on the workings of the illegal mining industry in the Amazon. Federal police carried out three simultaneous raids against the…
Two of the world’s largest agricultural producers are caught up in another scandal involving soy grown on illegally seized Indigenous land in Brazil. Both Cargill and Bunge source some of…
When Brazilian farmer Hamilton Guterres Jardim realized the latest drought had wiped out two-thirds of his soy crop, he felt emotionally and financially shaken up, he told Mongabay. As a…
The state of Mato Grosso has approved a bill that allows extensive ranching and tourism in protected areas of the Pantanal, the world’s largest tropical wetland. The move comes just…