Controversial News

The Bolsonaro government is pressing ahead with plans to fast track a powerline through the Waimiri-Atroari Reserve without indigenous consultation.

A spill that coated Brazilian beaches with some 4,000 tons of oil is still a mystery, with critics blasting the Bolsonaro government’s weak response and secrecy of its investigation.

Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro is opening the Amazon and Pantanal wetland biomes to sugarcane production, risking deforestation and intensified carbon emissions.

400,000 rural women are guardians to 25 million hectares of babassu palm forest where the Brazilian Amazon meets the Cerrado savanna, but industrial agribusiness is moving in.

Amazon cattle, soy and timber producers employ “laundering” tricks to hide illegal deforestation. Easy solutions exist, but political will is weak: experts.

An indigenous Guajajara leader was reported murdered by loggers Friday, adding to rising violence occurring against forest protectors under the Jair Bolsonaro government.

Soybeans from a Belgium-sized swath of unregistered farms across Brazil are being exported to China and Europe via U.S. traders, according to a newly released report that raises concerns about environmental regulations being dodged.

Mamuru River traditional riverine and Sateré indigenous communities are fighting to save the rainforest and their way of life against invading illegal loggers and land grabbers.

The Brazilian president met with the Chinese leader last week on trade, but China remained silent on the Amazon fires, deforestation and other environmental issues.

Brazil’s army helped control Amazon fires in September, but loggers, miners and land grabbers — likely emboldened by Bolsonaro’s rhetoric — are bringing a surge in deforestation.

The Chávez and Maduro administrations have concealed vast amounts of vital scientific data on climate change, deforestation, pollution, mining, water quality and much more, as far back as 2011.

Starting October 6, the Catholic Church will hold its first ever synod focused on an ecological biome. Bishops, indigenous leaders and activists will meet and set plans to help save the Amazon.

President Jair Bolsonaro has fired the head the country's land reform agency (INCRA), a move critics say derives from pressure from the powerful farm lobby to entitle cleared land, which should trigger further increase deforestation in the Amazon.

Brazil’s failure to monitor cattle from source, to sale, to slaughterhouse, creates an immense deforestation regulatory loophole according to a new report.

Major investors with $16.2 trillion in assets warn hundreds of companies to either meet supply chain deforestation commitments or risk economic consequences.

The president’s aggressive environmental deregulation, along with rising deforestation leave Brazil with little chance of reducing its carbon emissions.

Subsidizing burning wood for energy as having zero emissions puts us at risk of overshooting the Paris Agreement’s 1.5°C target.

As a torrent of demoralizing disasters and doomsday climate studies pour forth, how do we resist despair, where can we find hope – and most important of all – how should we live?

At least 125,000 hectares (310,000 acres) of Amazon rainforest in Brazil were cleared in 2019 and then burned this August to prepare the land for conversion to agriculture — Mongabay exclusive.

At an Amazon fire meeting, President Jair Bolsonaro and 7 out of 9 state governors pressed forward with plans to open indigenous areas to mining and agribusiness.

KLP, with over $80 billion in assets, could divest in traders such as ADM, Bunge and Cargill that deal with Brazilian producers contributing to Amazon deforestation.

Brazil’s Congress and 400 staff within IBAMA, the nation’s environmental agency, have expressed serious concern at the administration’s anti-environmental actions.

While conservationists point to the link between environmental deregulation and the Amazon fires, one ruralist farmer claims Brazil’s National Park Service set the blazes.

Critics link this year’s Amazon fires, especially in protected forests, to illegal deforesters emboldened by rightist government’s lax enforcement.

Beekeepers fear an even greater die-off from 2020 onward, as Bolsonaro government approves a swath of pesticides, including those known to be toxic to bees.

Forest fires in Brazil jumped 85 percent this year in the wake of soaring deforestation rates, environmentalists say. In the afternoon of August 19, São Paulo’s skies suddenly turned black, spurring discussion about the linkage between the fires and the phenomenon.

Combined impacts of escalating climate change and rising deforestation could result in an up to 58 percent reduction in Amazon tree species richness by 2050.

Unilateral changes made to the Amazon Fund by Jair Bolsonaro have caused Norway to freeze US$33.2 million slated to reduce Amazon deforestation.

Conservation leaders join successfully with technologists to thwart artisanal gold mining and illegal logging by creating early warning systems and transparency.

Displeased with rising deforestation rates and the anti-environmental policies of Pres. Jair Bolsonaro, Germany has cut funding for projects in the Brazilian Amazon, Atlantic Forest and Cerrado biomes.