315 traditional families in the Brazilian Amazon, evicted from their homes starting in 2015 to make way for the Belo Monte mega-dam, have won the right to resettle near their former Xingu River homes.
Brazil has been mined for gold, bauxite, manganese and more. While companies, investors and nations benefit, the Amazon’s people often haven’t, as they’ve lost traditional cultures, livelihoods and health.
A local court in Peru today reversed a ruling against employees of a company charged with illegal deforestation in the Peruvian Amazon, effectively absolving them of crimes associated with converting…
Osvalinda Alves Pereira is the first Brazilian to win the prestigious Edelstam Prize. As a civil rights defender, and at great risk to herself, Osvalinda is resisting criminals illegally harvesting Amazon timber.
Flor de María Paraná, 47, describes the bleakest moment of her life as the one that made her the leader she is today. "It was the day that everything changed,"…
Nazareth Cabrera is like a 'manicuera' they say, a sacred drink of the Indigenous Uitoto people that is obtained from the sweet yucca or fareka. Everything that is bitter, she…
A plan by Brazil’s Norte Energia, builder and operator of the Belo Monte mega-dam, to drastically reduce Xingu River water flows will be a disaster for habitat, fish, fisheries, and riverine communities, experts say.
María Clemencia Herrera Nemerayema did not get a diploma when she finished primary school at the Santa Teresita del Niño Jesús boarding school in the municipality of La Chorrera, in…
Every year, growing swaths of the Amazon rainforest are degraded by logging, fragmentation, and human-sparked fires. New research using airplane-based laser scanning of trees shows that degraded forests are hotter,…
There was a time when Noemí Gualinga, a leader of the Indigenous Kichwa Sarayaku people of the Ecuadoran Amazon, used to sit out on the stoop of her old house…
Toxic legacy of mining firms — Norwegian-Japanese Albrás, Brazil’s Vale, Norway’s Norsk Hydro, and France’s Imerys Rio Capim Caulim — wreak havoc on livelihoods and health in Amazon communities: Critics.
A day after Brazil announced 11,000 square kilometers of annual deforestation, France, the EU’s biggest buyer of Brazilian soy flour, announced plans to become more self-sufficient on the commodity.
Brazil’s Serra do Divisor National Park is at risk from a BR-364 branch road running from Acre state to Peru. Brazil’s Congress is about to strip away the park’s protections, risking wholesale deforestation.
A mammal native to South America’s savannas, the maned wolf (Chrysocyon brachyurus) now lives in the Amazon Rainforest. That’s the finding of a recent study by researchers in the Brazilian…
Deforestation in the Brazilian Amazon topped 11,000 square kilometers for the first time since 2008 reports the Brazilian government. According to data released today by Brazil's national space research institute…
When Benjamín Rodríguez Grandez, an Indigenous leader in the Putumayo region of the Amazon in northern Peru, became sick with apparent COVID-19 symptoms in July, he was evacuated to Iquitos,…
Major roadbuilding, including the “reconstruction” of the BR-319 highway, now threatens the Brazilian Amazon’s last, vast intact rainforest, vital to Brazilian ecosystem services.
Their territory is suffering the ravages of COVID-19, invasion by 20,000 illegal miners, mercury pollution, severe deforestation, and “genocidal” government apathy, say the Yanomami people.
Almost a fifth of Brazil’s soy and grains already flow down Amazonia’s rivers. Now a boom in private river port construction, with little government oversight, further threatens the region’s waterways.
As more trees die in the Amazon Basin, the forest’s capacity to absorb carbon dioxide weakens. But to understand why trees are dying at a faster rate, researchers first need…
The planned 650 MW dam on the Rio Branco in Brazil’s Roraima state is scheduled to become operational in 2028; it could do extraordinary socio-environmental harm.
Integrating aquatic biodiversity into conservation planning could yield substantial benefits for freshwater species with minimal cost to terrestrial creatures, according to a study published in Science last month. Conservation areas…
Deforestation in the Brazilian Amazon rose 50 percent in October, ending a streak where the region's deforestation rate had declined for three straight months, according to data released Friday by…
Brazil’s mining authority is actively entertaining more than 3,000 requests to mine on Indigenous lands in the Amazon, despite such activity being prohibited under the country’s Constitution, an investigation by…
Brazil’s major meat companies say they want to implement full traceability of cattle by 2025. But Brazil already has the necessary tools to identify cattle farmers who cut forest illegally.
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.
An analysis of 12 Brazilian volunteer projects certified by the REDD+ carbon-offset program found that emission and deforestation reductions were overstated. Improvements in carbon accounting are recommended.
The second half of the 20th century was a time of unprecedented change in the Amazon rainforest. The ecosystem was opened up by government road-building and colonization schemes in the…
At just 25 years old, Camila Chindoy is seen by many in her community as a possible future governor of the Inga Indigenous reserve of Yunguillo in the Colombian Amazon.…
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.
