Both El Niño and climate change contributed to the lack of rainfall in the region, but climate change also led to extremely high temperatures and increased water evaporation.
With reduced support in Brazil’s Congress following the 2022 elections, the administration of President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva has been unable to prevent the passage of bills dismantling environmental safeguards in favor of agribusiness interests.
The need to fast-track the regularização of smallholder titles motivated the Terra Legal programme, which sent teams of surveyors to selected municipalities to accelerate the process for landholdings established prior…
An unprecedented time-series study in the basin of the Tapajós River, a major tributary of the Amazon, assesses the level of degradation of small rivers threatened by agribusiness expansion.
Rural real estate markets in the Pan Amazon are regulated by institutions that are a legacy of the agrarian reform movements that played a prominent role in domestic politics during…
The adage ‘possession is nine-tenths of the law’ is not legally true, but the concept reigns supreme on frontier landscapes in the Pan Amazon. Land grabbers and peasant pioneers share…
From September to November 2023 Manaus, a city located in the relatively intact forest area in the central part of Brazilian Amazonia, was surprised to find itself under a dense…
One of the final stages in demarcating the Amazonian territory of the isolated Kawahiva tribe is set to take place this year, Brazil’s Ministry of Indigenous Peoples has announced. It’s…
New roads open wilderness landscapes to development, and commodity markets drive the expansion of the agricultural frontier. These two causes of deforestation are at the centre of deforestation policy discussions.…
Last week, Mongabay published a recap of the major trends in the world’s tropical rainforests for 2023. Here’s a glimpse into some of the key issues to monitor in 2024.…
The Surucuá community in the Brazilian state of Pará is the first to receive an Amazonian Creative Laboratory, a compact mobile biofactory designed to help kick-start the Amazon’s bioeconomy.
The following is Mongabay’s annual recap of major tropical rainforest storylines. This year, the list is more concise than in the past. Previous year-in-reviews: 2022 | 2021 | 2020 |…
Water bodies across the Brazilian state of Roraima have shrunk in area by half over the past 20 years, according to research from the mapping collective MapBiomas.
Study finds Earth could reach 2° Celsius (3.6° Fahrenheit) above preindustrial levels by 2040 and shows regional climate variables in fine detail. These findings, along with others, are very worrying for the Brazilian Amazon.
There is only limited potential for finance to change agricultural practices in the Andean Amazon, because landscapes are largely populated by smallholders who are notoriously risk-adverse in how they manage…
This is a critical moment for the most damaging infrastructure project in the Amazon. On Monday, December 18th, a proposed law (PL 4994/2023) was put on the plenary agenda of…
On the afternoon of November 29, Quinto Inuma Alvarado, Indigenous Kichwa leader and chief of the Santa Rosillo de Yanayacu community, was murdered in front of his family with three…
Both Lula and the Supreme Court have previously called the measures in the bill unconstitutional and against public interests, and Indigenous organizations announced they will challenge the law.
Brazil has an abundance of wildlife, including many mammal species found nowhere else on Earth. Most of Brazil's 701 native mammal species provide services that benefit people, such as helping…
Some of the world’s largest soy producers have announced improved commitments to stopping deforestation in vulnerable biomes throughout South America. But despite the improvements, the commitments might still not be…
The agricultural producers of the Amazon have access to radically different levels of credit depending upon national policies, the willingness of each country’s financial services industry to engage rural populations…
Sustainability initiatives have been organised for most of the agricultural commodities of the Pan Amazon, including palm oil, soy and beef, but also for coffee and cacao. Several of these…
Deforestation in the Brazilian Amazon has decreased for the eighth consecutive month, despite the region being affected by a severe drought. According to the latest data from Brazil's National Space…
This year’s COP28 kicked off in Dubai on Nov. 30 and saw Amazonian countries arriving with a string of environmental triumphs since the last climate summit hosted in Egypt. While…
Iracambi is a Brazilian NGO in the Serra do Brigadeiro mountain range, located in the heart of the Atlantic Forest, a biome largely destroyed by rampant deforestation.
A severe drought across the Amazon Rainforest continues to be felt along the Tapajós River in Brazil’s state of Pará, where locals say it “is the worst one ever.”
The most lucrative agricultural system in the Amazon is neither soy nor palm oil, but coca leaf, which is cultivated for both legal and illegal markets. There are two species,…
Between 15 and 18% of the least-studied areas in the Brazilian Amazon are at high risk of severe climate and land-use changes by 2050, research has shown, meaning we could…
Many of our staple food products are highly dependent on industrial agriculture and global supply chains, but small farmers in the Amazon continue to produce foodstuffs for their families, local…
One of Brazil’s largest states is ramping up efforts to monitor cattle ranching in the hopes of combatting deforestation and reducing carbon emissions. A new traceability program will keep tabs…