The Roraima state bill legalizing garimpo prospecting, if signed into law by the governor, could put the Yanomami reserve and other Indigenous territories at greater risk of invasion and COVID-19 infection.
The governor of Amazonas state in an exceptional appeal — apparently bypassing the Bolsonaro administration — is asking for emergency international assistance to combat a devastating new COVID-19 second wave.
Amazon hospital beds and ICUs overflow, and oxygen runs out as a new, maybe more virulent, COVID-19 variant rages. “It’s not a second wave we’re dealing with, but a whole tsunami,” says a doctor.
Deep inside the Brazilian Amazon, in areas still inaccessible to the outside world, the wildlife follows its natural cycle. Their remoteness guarantees a certain degree of isolation from human civilization,…
Brazil’s Ferrovia Paraense (FEPASA) railroad will run from Pará state’s rainforest interior to the Amazon estuary; traditional communities say they haven’t yet been consulted as required by international law.
The advent of the Amazon soy moratorium in 2006 seemed to usher in a new era of hope for ending deforestation for food production in the world’s largest rainforest. From…
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.
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.
The Karipuna Indigenous Territory in the Brazilian Amazon, home to a tribe that was nearly wiped out, became a sanctuary for the survivors when it was ratified in 1998. Today,…
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.
It’s been more than a year since the Sinop hydroelectric dam started operations in the northern part of the Brazilian state of Mato Grosso. But residents say the business consortium…
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.
South America’s French Guiana, a French overseas department, is slated for major new liquid biofuel power stations, fueled by soy plantations that will cause largescale Amazon deforestation, say environmentalists.
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.
It was another intense year for fires in the Amazon. More than 2,500 major blazes burned across Brazil’s Legal Amazon between May 28 and November 3, according to a fire…
Tamandua and Baita are two of the last three remaining members of the Piripkura Indigenous people in northwest Mato Grosso state, Brazil. They’re also survivors of a massacre, increasingly being…
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.
In the Peruvian Amazon, two Indigenous groups have been battling the government and oil companies for decades to prevent an incursion they believe would forever alter their homeland. An immense…
Amazon fires are burning this year within the protected lands inhabited by isolated uncontacted Indigenous peoples. The fires, largely illegal and intentionally set by land grabbers, ranchers and farmers, are…
Jair Bolsonaro and 6,000 of his appointees come from Brazil’s military, which historically sees Amazon infrastructure and development as vital to national security and to averting foreign invasion: Analysis.
For the first time, researchers have developed a model capable of anticipating drought periods in the Amazon up to 18 months in advance. The study was conducted by scientists from…
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.
Mining, both legal and illegal, impinges on more than one-fifth of Indigenous territory in the Amazon, according to a new study from the World Resources Institute (WRI) and the Amazon…
Age-old Indigenous knowledge has guided the sustainable management of wilderness areas around the world: how to preserve the land, anticipating what will happen throughout the year, and adapting to how…
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.