The historical record shows that Indigenous reserves are only safe from invasion by illegal deforesters once fully protected by government — protections rapidly eroding in Bolsonaro’s Brazil.
Wary of Western medicine and of the prejudice and neglect they say they suffer at hospitals, Amazon's Kokama people decided to turn to traditional healing practices, administered by shamans. The Kokama were the first Indigenous group in Brazil to be infected with COVID-19, and to date there have been more than a thousand confirmed cases and 60 deaths within the community.
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.
New satellite data shows major tree loss, while Brazil’s VP cherry picks the findings, according to experts. Meanwhile, the environment minister appears to welcome illegal miners’ demands for less enforcement.
While MRN, a mining firm makes big profits working within, and harming, a Brazilian conservation unit, traditional people can be fined for collecting Brazil nuts and fishing sustainably in a nearby protected area.
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.
In April, Brazil’s environment minister urged Pres. Bolsonaro to “run the cattle,” using the nation’s focus on COVID-19 as a diversion to dismantle environmental rule of law; some new executive acts appear to do just that.
Brazilian NGO flyovers show that indigenous reserves — including Munduruku lands in the Tapajós basin — are being illegally invaded and deforested by miners likely funded and directed by elite land speculators.
A UN carbon accounting loophole that replaces coal with the burning of forests to make “carbon neutral” electricity is subsidy-driven and will destroy forests vitally needed now for carbon sequestration: Critics.
Niobium is an important element used as a steel additive in the making of cars, planes, nuclear weapons, and even piercings. Jair Bolsonaro would like to see it actively mined, even in indigenous reserves.
In a step towards understanding the impending Amazon rainforest-to-savanna tipping point, scientists have quantified the knock-on effect that drought and deforestation have on each other for the first time.
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.
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.
17 former Brazilian Finance ministers and Central Bank presidents reject Jair Bolsonaro’s environmental policies, urging end to Amazon deforestation and adoption of economic policies addressing climate change.
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.
Temps as high as 100 degrees Fahrenheit in Siberia have triggered record Arctic sea ice melt, raging wildfires, permafrost thaw, and an Arctic oil spill.
The Brazilian riverine communities of Boa Nova and Saracá say they’ve endured decades of environmental harm brought by MRN, the world’s fourth largest bauxite mining company.
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."
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.
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.
A planned industrial shipping channel would destroy vital fish habitat at the Lourencão Rocks on the Tocantins River in the Brazilian Amazon, while also likely wrecking traditional fishing livelihoods.
Soaring gold prices, brought on by the economic meltdown and COVID-19 uncertainty, have led to a rapid, largely un-policed, expansion of illegal gold mining in the Amazon.
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.
The Canadian province says 23% of its forests are old growth, but a new study shows only 1% is left. And without immediate protection that could be sacrificed to supply the booming wood pellet biomass energy industry.
In an attempt to derail the onslaught of anti-environmental policies put forward by Pres. Jair Bolsonaro, NGOs, prosecutors and opposition political parties are taking the government to court.
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.
