During 18 months, Mongabay investigated allegations challenging the “sustainable” status of the Brazilian palm oil supply chain, unveiling the opposite, with impacts including deforestation and water contamination, discovering what appears to be an industry-wide pattern of brazen disregard for Amazon conservation and for the rights of Indigenous people and traditional communities in northern Pará state.
A recent Mongabay investigation into Brazil’s palm oil supply chain will be included in up to two legal actions targeting Biopalma, whose use of pesticides led to water contamination in an Indigenous reserve in the Amazon.
A Portuguese language version of this report is published on Mongabay Brasil TOMÉ-AÇU, Brazil — Guided by an Indigenous leader, we drove down dusty roads in the Turé-Mariquita Indigenous Reserve, a…
Sonia Castro says her family stayed in self-isolation for two months in the Jambuaçu Territory in Brazil’s Pará state. She recounts how they eventually fell ill, their condition worsening bit…
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…
Forty percent of samples collected from 116 tapirs in a Cerrado study were poisoned with 13 toxic residues including 9 insecticides and herbicides, plus 4 heavy metals: report.
On the same day that President Jair Bolsonaro made his anti-indigenous speech at the U.N. General Assembly in New York, Brazil’s Indigenous Missionary Council (CIMI) released its annual report, “Violence…
Environmentalists are alarmed as Brazil approves 290 new pesticides and reduces restrictions for toxicological product evaluations, paving way for more approvals.
In 2010, some 400 companies grouped under the Consumer Goods Forum agreed to the goal of achieving zero net deforestation by 2020 for the four commodities responsible for the majority…
In recent weeks, some media outlets have run eye-popping headlines on rising deforestation in the Brazilian Amazon: "Deforestation of Brazilian Amazon surges to record high" read a June 4th headline…
Study finds pros and cons in a REDD+ carbon credit scheme in the Brazilian Amazon that rewards small-scale ecosystem service providers in local communities.
Small-scale oil palm projects show that sustainable supply chains, coupled with tough environmental regulation could benefit both farmers and forests.
Indigenous reserves and other conserved lands in nine Amazonian nations are under extreme pressure as roads, mining, dams, oil drilling, fires and deforestation encroach.
The president’s coercive methods are meeting with fierce opposition from NGOs, indigenous groups, scientists, Brazil’s Congress, high court and the international community.
Globally, the land we use for pasture is contracting, according to a new report from the Breakthrough Institute, an environmental think tank based in Oakland, California. The technical know-how also…
Climate change threatens to push endemic species in the Cerrado, Brazil’s vast tropical savanna, into extinction while allowing the spread of species already commonplace elsewhere, a new study says. This…
The homegrown banks that back the flood of soy into China have with little knowledge of the deforestation their funding is potentially supporting, according to the nonprofit CDP, an international…
Indigenous women have a long leadership tradition in the Amazon and across Brazil, but perhaps never more so than since the election of Jair Bolsonaro, whose policies they oppose.
Business-as-usual Brazilian deforestation could result in loss of 606,000 square kilometers of forest by 2050, triggering local temperature rise of up to 1.45 degrees Celsius: study.
Sainsbury’s, Asda, Morrisons and Lidl accused of buying corned beef sourced from Brazilian supplier JBS, a firm notorious for large-scale corruption and Amazon deforestation.
A new report urges the EU — a major Brazilian trading partner — to pressure the Bolsonaro government to end its regressive indigenous and environmental policies.
Bolsonaro has consolidated his authority, firing top environmental officials and replacing them with military officers, and easing environmental fines.
Soy, cattle and timber producers charged with illegal Amazon deforestation continue to trade actively with international markets and to be financed by global investors.
A farm newly placed on the Brazilian Ministry of Labor’s “Dirty List” had been certified by Starbucks and Nestlé; both have since ceased buying coffee from the farm.
Brazil’s government is fast tracking pesticides with record speed, despite warnings by critics that some are exceedingly toxic and unhealthy while others are unneeded.
If Brazil alone were to cover the US-China soy deficit, land area dedicated to soy in Brazil could increase by 39 percent, with a loss of up to 13 million hectares of forest.
Analysis of new satellite data released by the Brazilian government links international soy exports to major deforestation in the Amazon and Cerrado.
Brazil’s president met with Donald Trump this week, with trade and agribusiness topping the agenda; a USAID $100 million Amazon biodiversity impact investment fund was also advanced.
80% of Brazilian deforestation between 2000-2014 resulted from new pasture creation, with 20% directly due to new croplands; however, land speculation drove the process.
Cargill, Bunge, ADM, Louis Dreyfus, Glencore Agriculture, and Chinese firm COFCO have agreed to reveal soy supply chain data for 25 “high risk” areas – a step toward zero deforestation.
