In early July, the Ashaninka indigenous people from Brazil launched a fundraising campaign to encourage food production in communities living near their territory. The “Ashaninka for the Peoples of the Forest” campaign plans to raise $200,000 to distribute food, farming tools and fishing gear to 1,800 local families, both Indigenous and non-Indigenous.
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.
JBS, a Brazilian company repeatedly accused of “laundering cattle” in the past, has again allegedly been caught purchasing livestock illegally reared in an Amazonian indigenous reserve in Rondônia state, Brazil.
Juma Xipaya, a young indigenous woman, medical student and fierce activist, fought the Belo Monte dam and exposed corruption; now she lives in daily terror of two thugs in a white pickup.
“Based on the high probability of failure of the proposed tailings dam, the Volta Grande Gold Project should be rejected by the Brazilian regulatory authorities without further consideration.”
A federal judge has issued an emergency order giving the Bolsonaro administration just days to evict all illegal miners, and keep them out until the danger of the COVID-19 pandemic is over.
More than 3,660 indigenous people are infected, with many elders dead. Analysts suggest the rising toll may be driven by deep poverty, and the undermining of traditional cultures and overall health by modern intrusions.
An exclusive study shows that 114 properties have been certified inside indigenous territories awaiting demarcation in the Brazilian Amazon, spurred in large part by a recent statute that leaves these reserves unprotected from such illegal land grabs.
Some indigenous communities in the Amazon rainforest are being devastated by the COVID-19 pandemic, recalling memories of the severe toll wrought by diseases introduced during first contact with the outside…
Land grabbers, landed estate owners and even oil companies stand to benefit from a new guideline released by FUNAI, the federal indigenous affairs agency, which opens up 237 indigenous territories in Brazil for sale, subdivision and speculation.
In recent years, five of the most powerful international banks and investment funds have financed oil exploration in the region where the Amazon River begins. These business ventures are impacting indigenous communities and countless species of fauna and flora.
Forest peoples in the Brazilian Amazon rely on their elders as key decision makers and culture keepers; COVID-19 is already killing indigenous elders at a high rate. All fear worse lies ahead.
A series of measures by the Bolsonaro government that attack the environment are putting indigenous peoples at risk, say the authors.
A cattle farmer in Tefé, Brazil, has turned his ranch into a new standard for cattle raising in the forest. It’s a more productive and more profitable system that eliminates the need for cutting down forest to open new pastureland.
Late rainfall, intense drought, dry riverbeds, more forest fires, less food available — indigenous communities across the Amazon suffer social transformations due to climate change.
Ricardo Lopes Dias, an anthropologist and Christian Evangelical pastor, appointed to head Brazil’s isolated indigenous tribes department, has been removed due to a “conflict of interest”
Some 600 indigenous people have seen their crops die due to the expansion of agribusiness in the state of Pará, Brazil. The streams used by the Munduruku have also been damaged, if not dried up.
Four Alter do Châo volunteer firefighters were charged last year with setting Amazon fires; the police lack evidence, while locals say the real suspects — landgrabbers — are likely still on the loose.
38 indigenous groups in Brazil are reporting 537 COVID-19 cases. In Mato Grosso state, a new map tracks the virus, while officials push measures that put indigenous land rights at risk.
A sweeping policy change by the Bolsonaro government opens unregistered ancestral indigenous lands to landgrabbers, loggers, ranchers, and soy growers, with huge risk for the Amazon.
As Earth's largest rainforest, the Amazon is the planet's single greatest repository of biodiversity, houses the largest number of uncontacted indigenous tribes, and is home to the world's mightiest river.…
Extreme flooding in the Ecuadoran Amazon has caused widespread disarray along the banks of the Bobonaza River, all amid the COVID-19 pandemic. Over the past couple of weeks, the surging…
One of the Amazon’s most deforested regions, Lábrea, in Brazil, is remote, poorly policed and suffering from a land tenure crisis. As a result, land grabbing, illegal logging and murder are routine.
Some 400 indigenous people displaced from an informal settlement in Manaus have struggled to make a living amid scarce jobs and limited income sources during the COVID-19 crisis. The capital of Amazonas state, Manaus accounts for Brazil’s fourth-highest number of deaths due to COVID-19; authorities warn that the state’s health system is close to its limit.
The Chico Mendes Extractive Reserve turns 30 this year, but the spirit of sustainable forest use that drove its creation is fading away amid economic and environmental pressures. The reserve’s young people are increasingly being drawn away from the extractivism model to work in more stable activities, such as cattle ranching.
Brazil’s environmental agency IBAMA has stepped up efforts to fight environmental crimes during the COVID-19 crisis. But the fate of these operations is now uncertain, following the firing of IBAMA’s enforcement director.
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.
A valuable Atlantic Forest reserve and the historic setting of the discovery of Brazil, the land of the Pataxó is suffering from the illegal logging of fine woods used to produce handicrafts.
Environmental degradation has already triggered disease outbreaks in Brazil. The risk of a new emergent zoonotic disease arising there, like COVID-19, is intensified by Bolsonaro’s forest policies.
