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.
Fire consumes land deforested by cattle farmers near Novo Progresso, Para state, Brazil, Aug. 23, 2020.
(AP Photo/Andre Penner)
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.
Forest that has been disturbed – but not cleared – by logging or fire can be hard to spot from satellites.
Satere-mawe Indigenous men in face masks paddle the Ariau River in hard-hit Manaus state during the coronavirus pandemic, May 5, 2020.
Ricardo Oliveira /AFP via Getty Images
The Bolsonaro government cannot simply allow Brazil’s out-of-control coronavirus pandemic to decimate its Indigenous population, Brazil’s Supreme Court says.
There are more than 3,600 territories in Brazil that are home to Quilombola, descendants of escaped slaves, but few hold titles to the land.
(Elielson Pereira da Silva)
Mining strips nitrogen from the soil and means the forest struggles to grow back even after mines are abandoned.
An Amazon forest in Brazil’s Para state after deforestation and wildfires March 9, 2019. Unlike in some tropical forests, the animals of the Amazon are not adapted to survive fire.
Gustavo Basso/NurPhoto via Getty Images
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.
Collecting firewood on the Waiapi indigenous reserve in Amapa state, Brazil, Oct. 13, 2017. A new bill could open Brazil’s Native lands to development.
APU GOMES/AFP via Getty Images
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.
Pope Francis at the start of the Amazon synod, at the Vatican, Oct. 7, 2019.
AP Photo/Andrew Medichini
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.
The El Segundo Chevron oil refinery, left, and the Bom Futuro National Forest, right.
Pedro Szekely/WikimediaCommons, Reuters/Nacho Doce
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.
The Amazon’s new record-breaking tree.
Tobias Jackson
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