The COVID-19 pandemic has shown that slaughterhouses are among the outbreak hotspots for the disease because of the low temperatures and crowded production lines. But they are also ideal locations for the emergence of new viruses due to the contact between humans and the blood and entrails of cattle.
Despite a growing realization worldwide of the need for environmentally responsible investing, financial institutions and fund managers who have otherwise committed to going green are still funding the sector most responsible for deforestation.
While individual investors have no idea where their money is applied, large finance firms camouflage participation in companies that foment tree-cutting in the Amazon.
The International Finance Corporation injected $85 million into Minerva, even though it was aware that the company’s activities involved deforestation, child labor and land conflict risks. In recent years, Minerva has become Latin America’s largest meat exporter. But doubts remain over whether it has strictly complied with envi-ronmental and social compensation guidelines specified in its contract.
In her first study in the region, Brazilian conservationist and Whitley Gold Award winner Patrícia Medici wants to understand how South America’s largest land mammal responds to changes in the forest caused by human economic activity.
A new study shows taxpayer money is helping to prop up the beef industry in Brazil, one of the primary drivers of deforestation in the country. For every dollar of tax revenue collected from the industry, only 20 cents effectively goes to society — the rest goes back to producers in the form of incentives, easy credit, and even debt forgiveness.
An area half the size of Switzerland in Brazil’s Cerrado biome could see its biodiversity plummet as sugarcane farms expand to meet global demand for bioethanol, a new study says. Researchers calculated that some parts of the Cerrado could see up to 100% loss of mammalian species richness; endangered animals like the maned wolf and the giant anteater will be the most affected.
An unprecedented court settlement guaranteed reparations to the Ashaninka people of the state of Acre, in the Brazilian Amazon, whose lands were deforested in the 1980s to supply the European furniture industry. The indigenous people only agreed with the negotiation because it included an official apology and a recognition of their "enormous importance as guardians" of the Amazon.
Farmers and irregular occupants in the Chico Mendes Extractive Reserve in Acre are enjoying newfound political power and pressuring for the reduction of the first protected area of its kind in Brazil as it approaches its 30th anniversary in March.
In a surprise move even to the sugarcane industry, the president has removed restrictions on Amazon sugarcane production; land speculators could benefit.
Violence and impunity are the fuel that feeds the fires in the Amazon: not just the ones broadcast across the world this August, when it was revealed that fires in…
Naira Hofmeister é jornalista graduada pela Universidade Federal do Rio Grande do Sul, fez especialização em Madri (Espanha), e é mestra em História da Literatura, também pela Ufrgs. Atua como freelancer desde 2006, sempre baseada em Porto Alegre. Ao longo de sua trajetória profissional cobriu o cotidiano político e econômico e escreveu reportagens de fôlego em quase 30 veículos diferentes. No último ano, colaborou com El País, The Intercept Brasil, Agência Pública, Yahoo, Superinteressante e piauí, entre outros meios de comunicação. Já desenvolveu três projetos de financiamento coletivo para o jornalismo independente no Rio Grande do Sul. Em 2018, como cofundadora do Filtro Fact-Checking, foi agraciada com o troféu Antônio Gonzalez de Contribuição à Imprensa, categoria especial do 60º Prêmio ARI de Jornalismo. Também integrou a equipe vencedora do Prêmio Direitos Humanos de Jornalismo, categoria “on-line”, com o projeto Amazônia Resiste, da Agência Pública.
