New research suggests 75% of the rainforest has become less resilient to stress since the early 2000s.
Indigenous Peoples protest the Brazilian government’s efforts to exterminate their rights and legalize destruction of the Amazon forest at the ‘Luta Pela Vida’ (struggle for life) protest, in August 2021, in Brasilia, Brazil.
(Vanessa Andreotti)
The climate emergency can’t be addressed with simplistic solutions. A network of Indigenous communities in Brazil invites us to reorient colonial approaches and embrace deeper change.
IUCN workers staff pavilions at the seventh World Conservation Congress in Marseille, southern France.
Gao Jing/Xinhua/Alamy Live News
We know surprisingly little about the millions of animals, plants and birds that live in the Amazon – here’s how we can understand them better.
A deforested piece of land in the Amazon rainforest near Porto Velho, in the state of Rondonia, in northern Brazil, on Aug. 23, 2019.
Carl De SouzaA/FP via Getty Images
Because Brazil’s economic prosperity in the last two decades is increasingly linked to the Amazon’s good health, restoring the country’s economy is a critical first step toward ending deforestation.
Cheetahs in the Serengeti in Tanzania.
A J Plumptre
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.