Articles by Glenn Scherer

Indigenous group entered Brazilian museum and retrieved sacred funeral urns that courts said were rightly theirs, but which dam construction firm and authorities kept from them.

Amazon mega-dam was built with 11,233 MW capacity, but has fallen far short, even as deforestation and drought make the goal more remote. The US$9.5 billion dam may never be profitable.

Three indigenous men in Amazonas state, and two peasant farmers in Maranhão, have been killed so far this month in violence experts say is spurred by Pres. Bolsonaro’s policies.

The Estrondo mega-farm exports soy to the EU and China, but it is accused in a mega-land grab; it also has a long record of threatening traditional people.

Transnational mining firms are in a rush to get access to the protected Amazon as the Bolsonaro administration plots with them to mine in RENCA and indigenous reserves.

Land grabbers and agribusiness are the big beneficiaries of new, little publicized policies; Amazon forests, indigenous and traditional peoples are the big losers.

A legal battle brewing since 2013 is coming to a head as the Mura people resist a Potássio do Brasil transnational mining project that could change their way of life for good or ill, forever.

The town of Autazes has potash deposits vital to agribusiness; the Potássio do Brasil mine wants to open, but remains blocked — it lies on the land of the Mura indigenous group.

Meat and dairy consumption in Europe are contributing disproportionately to habitat destruction of charismatic species like the giant anteater in Brazil's Cerrado savanna.

Brazil started the decade as an example to the world, dramatically curbing Amazon deforestation, but under Jair Bolsonaro the nation is moving toward ecological ruin.

The Amazon worst-case scenario has arrived, say leading researchers, as predicted signs of a shift from rainforest-to-savanna begin to be seen in real time on the ground.

Scientists warn that escalating deforestation due to mining, agribusiness and other human disturbance is reducing the ability of intact tropical forests to sequester carbon.

Forty percent of samples collected from 116 tapirs in a Cerrado study were poisoned with 13 toxic residues including 9 insecticides and herbicides, plus 4 heavy metals: report.

Analysts are calling the COP25 climate summit in Madrid a colossal failure — undermining the carbon reduction goals set by the 2015 Paris Agreement, leaving the world in mortal danger.

Two top officials have announced that after 2020 the EU will look at closing the biomass carbon neutrality loophole that has created a boom in emission-producing wood pellets.

While the Bolsonaro govt. pushes Amazon ‘development’ and agribusiness in Madrid, social movements defend forests, indigenous and traditional land rights.

Interviewed in Madrid, Will Gardiner, CEO of the UK’s largest biomass plant, said his firm leads way in energy decarbonization, despite scientific evidence to the contrary.

A company attending the COP25 climate summit says its dam will reduce Indonesia’s carbon emissions, but current science says tropical dams are greenhouse gas emitters.

Even as delegates to COP25, the Madrid climate summit, sidestep the environmental and human rights goals of the Paris Agreement, a godly 71-year-old woman steps up.

Negotiators drafting Paris Agreement Article 6 rules appear to be assuring loopholes to up carbon emissions, turn forests into plantations, and failing to protect human rights.