The reconstruction of the BR-319 highway — a north-south cut through what remains of Brazil’s Amazon forest — is being fast tracked by Pres. Bolsonaro, but the project risks huge socio-environmental impacts.
Avoiding the loss of human life and the economic fallout caused by future pandemics will require a seismic change in our approach to the causes of the emergence of disease-causing…
Brazil’s current 10-year Energy Expansion Plan calls for three more large dams in Amazonia by 2029, and the country’s 2050 National Energy Plan lists many more — putting the environment at risk.
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.
Maned wolves, pumas, giant anteaters, tapirs and other Neotropical mammals are threatened with local extinctions unless more conserved areas are established in Brazil’s savanna biome, say scientists.
JAKARTA — When Indonesian lawmakers passed a hugely controversial deregulation bill on the evening of Oct. 5, Sulaiman was with his fellow fishermen who had just returned home from the…
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.
In 2009, traditional Brazilian Amazon communities and Catholic nuns brought the transnational mining company to the negotiating table and galvanized Amazonia’s land rights struggle.
Humans have not treaded lightly on the Earth. Over the centuries, we have left our mark on almost every ecosystem, contributing to a steady, and increasingly rapid, decline in the…
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…
MANILA — On July 29, the San Miguel Corporation, the Philippines’ largest company by revenue, started planting 25,000 mangrove trees in a coastal area just north of the capital, Manila.…
MANILA — Philippine authorities’ latest efforts to clean up Manila Bay, one of the country’s most polluted bodies of water, has come under fire after they dumped truckloads of white…
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.
In a befuddling move, the Bolsonaro administration last Friday cut all agency funding to fight deforestation and put out fires in the Amazon and Pantanal, then reversed the decision; even as both biomes burned.
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.
The Kayapó Mekrãgnoti Indigenous people have launched a blockade of the BR-163 highway, a key Brazilian commodities shipment route, mostly in protest over lost funding to prevent reserve invasions.
A recent report shows that one of the world’s most highly regarded, and wealthiest, universities invested heavily in land in Brazil’s Cerrado grasslands, where land-grabbing and other environmental crimes are rife.
Note: CIMB has issued a response to this piece. It’s that time of the year: Indonesia is burning once again. Miles and miles of primeval forest are being lost to…
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.
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.
As the COVID-19 pandemic continues to wreak havoc across the world, much of the blame for the human and economic devastation caused by the virus has been directed toward China.…
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.
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 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.
This article was co-published with The Gecko Project. Paskalina called to me by waving her hand and asked me to come to her house in a whisper. It was my…