Brazil’s Ferrovia Paraense (FEPASA) railroad will run from Pará state’s rainforest interior to the Amazon estuary; traditional communities say they haven’t yet been consulted as required by international law.
The advent of the Amazon soy moratorium in 2006 seemed to usher in a new era of hope for ending deforestation for food production in the world’s largest rainforest. From…
Brazil is suffering from the third-highest number of COVID-19 infections in the world, and the second-highest number of deaths, behind only the U.S. But for the residents of the municipality…
A day after Brazil announced 11,000 square kilometers of annual deforestation, France, the EU’s biggest buyer of Brazilian soy flour, announced plans to become more self-sufficient on the commodity.
South America’s French Guiana, a French overseas department, is slated for major new liquid biofuel power stations, fueled by soy plantations that will cause largescale Amazon deforestation, say environmentalists.
Almost a fifth of Brazil’s soy and grains already flow down Amazonia’s rivers. Now a boom in private river port construction, with little government oversight, further threatens the region’s waterways.
Brazil’s major meat companies say they want to implement full traceability of cattle by 2025. But Brazil already has the necessary tools to identify cattle farmers who cut forest illegally.
Georeferencing, a digital process for registering land ownership, is now widespread in South America, but it is high-tech that can be used by landgrabbers and companies to obtain deeds to collective ancestral lands.
More than 120 major fires have been detected in Bolivia since August, more than a quarter of them in protected areas, including Noel Kempff Mercado National Park, a UNESCO World…
Meatpackers in the Amazon are eyeing the Chinese market, but their certification is often the result of intense pressure amid systematic failures to consider environmental requirements.
The prominent placement of Brazil’s three biggest meatpackers — JBS, Marfrig and Minerva — on the country’s stock exchange has seen them net $121 million in investments.
Wall Street fund manager BlackRock administers 2.2 billion reais ($408 million) in shares in the three largest Brazilian meatpackers operating in the Amazon today. The cattle purchase and slaughter operations…
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.
Low carbon investment in agriculture, industry and energy shows better economic prospects than business-as-usual scenario, raising hopes Brazil will add environmental priorities to COVID-19 economic recovery plan.
An area nearly 5 times that of New York City’s land area has burned so far in 2020, most of it recently deforested, and now illegally burned over, to make way for new cattle pastures and croplands.
The world watched in horror and surprise as the Amazon burned in 2019, windblown smoke darkening the sky over far-off São Paulo, Brazil. The ability to predict where fires are…
As the 2020 Amazon fire season moves toward its August peak, hundreds of blazes — almost all in Brazil, mostly illegal, and some on conserved lands — have been detected: Report.
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.
For two years, regions of Brazil that depend on precipitation fed by Amazonian vegetation have seen rainfall below historical averages, impacting crops and harvests. A recent bulletin from a federal agency points to agribusiness itself as one of the drivers of this pattern.
The new Science Panel for the Amazon — modeled on the UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change — aims to consolidate knowledge on the Amazon rainforest and guide future public policies to conserve it.
In Pará, the Brazilian state with the highest deforestation rate, communities inside Tapajós National Forest have for the past 15 years run one of the most successful native timber management projects.
Brazil is well positioned to benefit from forest restoration and agroforestry, but policies in states like Maranhão fail to address that potential and could contribute to further deforestation.
Most of the fires in the Amazon rainforest last year were associated with industrial agriculture, according to a study cross-referencing NASA satellite data with corporate supply chains.
Jan Erik Saugestad, executive vice president of Norway’s Storebrand Asset Management, who has led an international pressure campaign against deforestation in the Brazilian Amazon, says the government must back up its promises with action to reverse the rising trend.
New research finds that roughly 20% of Brazilian agricultural exports to the EU are linked to illegal deforestation, but only about 2% of agricultural properties produce the majority of this forest loss.
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.
Censorship, persecution, and dismissals of supervisors have become the norm in Brazil’s environmental agencies since Jair Bolsonaro took office. Now, prosecutors are seeking the dismissal of his environment minister, Ricardo Salles, alleging "countless initiatives that violate the duty to protect the environment."
With the Amazon fire season looming, 38 transnational firms, including Alcoa, Bayer, Shell, Siemens, Suzano, and Amaggi asked Brazil to act against environmental crimes. Brazil’s vice president has responded with a fire ban — critics say much more is needed.
It’s the one-year anniversary of the finalization of a gigantic trade agreement between the EU and Mercusor, a bloc of Latin American nations, but Brazil’s soaring deforestation rate puts ratification at risk.
