A 2020 move to open a futures water market on the Chicago exchange has resulted in a heated conflict between those who say monetizing is a positive step, and those who see speculation as bad for the environment and traditional peoples.
As central and southern Brazil, along with a third of the nation's people, face the worst drought in more than 90 years, Jair Bolsonaro wrestles with how to supply water and electricity to agribusiness and to the nation.
The Kadiwéu Indigenous group, living where the Cerrado and Pantanal biomes meet, has resisted annihilation since the colonial era. Their secret weapon: the creative arts that help define their identity.
The illegal sale of protected land in the Brazilian Amazon has been going on for years, but a new BBC report got deeply inside the criminal network and found some land grabbers advertising on Facebook.
Environmental monitoring and firefighting saw budgets cut by over a third in two years; agencies endured massive deregulation, with nearly 600 rule changes aimed at undermining conservation, say critics.
The governor of Amazonas state in an exceptional appeal — apparently bypassing the Bolsonaro administration — is asking for emergency international assistance to combat a devastating new COVID-19 second wave.
Amazon hospital beds and ICUs overflow, and oxygen runs out as a new, maybe more virulent, COVID-19 variant rages. “It’s not a second wave we’re dealing with, but a whole tsunami,” says a doctor.
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.
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.
Unilateral changes made to the Amazon Fund by Jair Bolsonaro have caused Norway to freeze US$33.2 million slated to reduce Amazon deforestation.
Deforestation in the Brazilian Amazon has started to increase very rapidly, with 73,900 hectares (182,600 acres) of forest felled in the single month of May this year. May is always…
The Brazilian government’s environmental agency, IBAMA, has so far this year imposed the lowest number of fines for illegal deforestation in at least 11 years, while the country’s other leading…
Bolsonaro has consolidated his authority, firing top environmental officials and replacing them with military officers, and easing environmental fines.
Brazil’s government is fast tracking pesticides with record speed, despite warnings by critics that some are exceedingly toxic and unhealthy while others are unneeded.
At least 9 people are known dead in new violent attacks on remote Amazon communities near areas of heavy deforestation and large hydroelectric dams.
Indigenous groups, quilombolas, agrarian reform settlements, and environmentalists are all responding to the new president’s early moves which could undermine past protections.