As the world’s largest rainforest, the Amazon is not only an important carbon sink, but also home to thousands of species of plants and animals and a crucial part of the water cycle.
Deforestation and extreme blazes threaten the region’s biodiversity, risk transforming the rainforest into a semi-arid savannah and expose people to zoonoses that could spur new pandemics.
The Bolsonaro government cannot simply allow Brazil’s out-of-control coronavirus pandemic to decimate its Indigenous population, Brazil’s Supreme Court says.
A new study finds 70% of Amazonian dung beetles were killed by the severe fire and droughts of 2015 to 2016. By spreading seeds and poop, dung beetles fertilize forests and aid regrowth of vegetation.
Native Brazilians are among the Amazon’s most effective defenders against logging and mining, because they’re fighting not just for the environment but for their people’s very survival.
Brazilian evangelicals are politically conservative, but they still believe in climate change. Turning them into climate activists, however, will be a challenge for the environmentalist movement.
Hundreds of bishops, priests, missionaries and tribal leaders are at the Vatican for the Synod of the Amazon, a three-week meeting focused on the environmental crisis threatening Amazonian peoples.
Reversing the damage from fires in Brazil’s rainforest is not as simple as allowing trees to grow back. Decades of research shows how fires degrade their long-term health and utility.
Professor, Interim Director of the Peter Wall Institute for Advanced Studies at UBC and Incoming Dean of the Faculty of Education at the University of Victoria., University of British Columbia