President Jair Bolsonaro has revived a plan, conceived in the 1970s, to extend the BR-163 highway, the main soy corridor in Brazil, north to the border with Suriname. The Trombetas State Forest, one of the four conservation units the road would cut through, stores 2.3 billion tons of carbon dioxide — more than Brazil’s entire emissions in 2018.
Like much of the world, Argentina remains locked down, its citizens more or less homebound due to the global COVID-19 pandemic. Amid the torpor, Yamana Gold, a Canada-based mining company,…
Despite the global economic slowdown due to the COVID-19 pandemic, deforestation in the Brazilian Amazon appears to be continuing largely unabated with forest clearing over the past 12 months reaching…
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.
PUCARÁ ALTO, Ecuador — Bellowing winds thrashed the farmers’ corn stocks and the wild patches of eucalyptus cropping up the largest hill in Pucará Alto. Then there was a crack,…
Applications to mine on indigenous lands in the Amazon have increased by 91% under the Bolsonaro administration. Among the applicants are mining giant Anglo American, small-scale cooperatives whose members are embroiled in a range of environmental violations, and even a São Paulo-based architect.
*This article is a collaboration between Semana Sostenible of Colombia and Mongabay Latam. Sofía and Nicole, two young girls from the Colombian village of Terraplén, sing at the top of…
Ecuador is in a deep economic and health crisis due to the COVID-19 pandemic that has spread seriously in the city of Guayaquil, in the province of Guayas. Amid that…
José Ramírez Talango is a retired teacher and beekeeper. When he was a child he used to walk through the jungle to reach Laguna Chakanbakán in the southeastern Mexican state…
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.…
Two environmental agency coordinators with a record of deeply reducing illegal mining and deforestation in the Amazon’s Xingu basin were sacked after they led a recent successful raid.
For the past five years, the indigenous Matsés people of the Peruvian Amazon region of Loreto ventured deep into their territory to draw up a complete map of everything that…
An area half the size of Switzerland in Brazil’s Cerrado biome could see its biodiversity plummet as sugarcane farms expand to meet global demand for bioethanol, a new study says. Researchers calculated that some parts of the Cerrado could see up to 100% loss of mammalian species richness; endangered animals like the maned wolf and the giant anteater will be the most affected.
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…
The land rights of quilombos — communities of runaway slave descendants —are assured by Brazil’s Constitution; but those rights are now largely disregarded by agribusiness and Bolsonaro.
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.
LOS ASIENTOS, Panama — It was auction day in the town of Santiago, and ranchers from the region gathered to buy and sell cattle. A metallic clatter rang out from…
From spiderweb-inspired shampoo to a hotel whose architecture is based on the thermal properties of toucan beaks, scientists and companies in Brazil are betting on nature’s intelligence to create innovative solutions that reduce impacts on the planet.
Let’s be honest: many conservationists may start their careers with big ambitions. But as they, and their careers, age, those ambitions — especially in light of the Anthropocene — understandably…
Huge swaths of Brazil’s Amazon rainforest are drier than usual after a rainy season with rainfall index well below historical levels, raising concerns about a further spike in wildfires and deforestation as the dry season approaches.
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.
Last December, I flew to Brazil to learn everything I could about Amazon conservation. As a global citizen, I wanted to understand more about deforestation and how I can help.…
In March 2020, just prior to COVID-19 being a pandemic, I spent a few days in the tri-border region of Brazil, Colombia, and Peru. There I used a drone to…
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.
The continued use of wood-derived biomass could result in a potential 30% increase in worldwide forest cover — more than a billion hectares (2.5 billion acres) — by the year…
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.
This story is a journalistic collaboration between Semana Sostenible of Colombia and Mongabay Latam. Eugenio Chacón scans the colorful branches of the trees with his strong, sharp gaze. The 58-year-old…
Agribusiness proponents in the Brazilian states of Rondônia, Acre and Amazonas plan to create a joint agricultural area, Amacro, inspired by the successful multi-state Matopiba region that is now the country’s grain-growing heartland.
