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Illegal gold mining creeps within a kilometer of Amazon’s second-tallest tree
- Prosecutors in Brazil’s Amapá state have warned of an illegal gold mine operating just 1 kilometer (0.6 miles) from second-highest known tree in the Brazilian Amazon — an 85-meter (279-foot) red angelim.
- Illegal gold miners have been moving into Amapá in the wake of federal raids on mining hotspots in other parts of the Brazilian Amazon, including the Yanomami and Munduruku Indigenous territories.
- A surge in the gold price has fueled the miners’ destructive potential and their capacity to open new areas in highly isolated places.
For scandal-ridden carbon credit industry, Amazon restoration offers redemption
- As REDD projects around the world face setbacks, restoration projects in the Amazon are flourishing as a means of reviving market confidence in forest-based carbon credits.
- In Brazil, the golden goose for restoration, this business model has attracted companies from the mining and beef industries, banks, startups, and big tech.
- Federal and state governments are granting public lands to restoration companies to recover degraded areas.
- Restoration projects require substantial investments and long-term commitment, face challenges such as increasingly severe fire seasons, and deal with uncertainty over the future of the carbon market.
After outcry, Brazil Supreme Court nixes proposal for mining on Indigenous lands
- Brazil’s Supreme Court backed down and withdrew its proposal to open up Indigenous territories to mining and economic activities from a controversial bill that critics say violates the Constitution.
- On the same day, the Federal Attorney General’s Office presented a draft presidential decree also excluding mining activities on Indigenous territories but allowing tourism and other activities led by Indigenous communities.
- Both drafts would keep contentious articles regarding compensation for non-Indigenous settlers, which could make the land demarcation process unfeasible, critics say.
- The proposals are the outcome of a yearslong legal battle centered in the highly controversial time frame thesis, aiming to nullify any Indigenous land demarcation claims to areas that weren’t physically occupied before the 1988 Constitution.
Brazil plans new Amazon routes linking the Pacific & China’s New Silk Road
- New roads and riverways integrating the Brazilian Amazon and ports on the Pacific coast of South America are expected to be announced in 2025, reducing shipment costs to supply China.
- Brazil’s plans to build ports and roads to help move grains, beef and iron ore from the rainforest echo a development vision that dates back to the military dictatorship in the 1960s and 1970s.
- Environmentalists warn the new routes boost deforestation and encourage land-grabbers and ranchers to keep exploring the Amazon as a commodity hub.
Chinese business in the Amazon generates controversy
- In recent years, several corruption scandals emerged, involving Chinese companies and businessmen in the Pan Amazon region.
- In countries like Bolivia, they were found to have bribed authorities to obtain benevolent licenses, including the sale of shares in the state-owned YPFB. In Peru and Ecuador, manipulation of the contracting system to benefit the Chinese company was reported.
- Countries that have been more successful in tackling corruption have in place better governance systems, stronger institutions and judicial systems.
‘Unprecedented’ Supreme Court bill threatens Indigenous rights in Brazil
- Presented in February by Supreme Court Justice Gilmar Mendes, a draft bill violates Indigenous people’s constitutional rights by stripping their veto power against impactful activities on their ancestral lands and adding further obstacles to an already long land demarcation process.
- Critics say the Supreme Federal Court’s act is “unprecedented” in Brazil’s history by an institution that’s entitled to protect Indigenous and minorities’ rights — as dictated by the Constitution.
- The move comes months after the same court decided those Indigenous rights couldn’t be stripped by a legislative bill, with the support of Mendes.
- Critics say the bill “brings together the main threats to Indigenous peoples” and “directly contradicts the Brazilian Constitution, the decisions of the Supreme Court itself and international human rights law.”
The rough road to sustainable farming in an Amazon deforestation hotspot
- Far from international forums and economical centers, locals in one of the Amazon deforestation hotspots seek alternatives to agribusiness and gold mines.
- Mongabay went to Pará state’s southwest and found examples of people struggling to keep sustainable initiatives in a region dominated by soy, cattle, gold and logging.
- Despite the bioeconomy buzz, people working on the ground say they miss support from banks and public administrations.
Land distribution in the Pan Amazon is tainted by corruption
- Small family farmers waiting for years to obtain documents validating their land claims often need to pay a small bribe to speed up bureaucracy. More flagrant abuses of the land tenure system are perpetuated by land grabbers who manufacture property deeds using several well-known fraudulent schemes.
- Land fraud is very common in jurisdictions where local elected officials collude with their constituents to expedite land grabbing.
- According to an investigation into the Instituto Nacional de Colonização e Reforma Agrária,1,000 politicians and 140,000 civil servants had improperly received public lands, while more than 37,000 parcels were awarded to individuals who were dead at the time of their application.
Yanomami youth turn to drones to watch their Amazon territory
- In the Yanomami Indigenous Land, the largest in Brazil, leaders believe in their youths’ skills to maintain their ancestors’ legacy and safeguard the future of a sprawling territory covering almost the size of Portugal.
- Located in the Brazilian Amazon between the states of Roraima and Amazonas, the Indigenous territory faced a severe humanitarian and environmental crisis with the invasion of around 20,000 illegal miners in search of gold and cassiterite.
- Trained youths can now act as multipliers of drone monitoring and watch the land against new invasions.
Endemic fish wiped out in Brazilian Amazon hydroelectric dam area, study finds
- The construction of the Balbina hydroelectric dam in the Brazilian Amazon led to the loss of seven endemic fish species in the Uatumã River, researchers have found.
- The hydroelectric dam has transformed the Uatumã River’s fast-flowing habitats into static environments, making them unsuitable for certain fish species.
- Researchers call for the investigation of unaffected tributaries, such as the Jatapu River, as possible refuges for the missing species and future conservation efforts.
- The study underscores the broader threat of hydropower dams and other environmental stressors, like industrial fishing and climate change, to Amazonian fish populations.
As the rainforest gets drier, Amazon Indigenous groups thirst for clean water
- The 2024 extreme and historical drought that hit the Amazon exposed a chronic problem: access to drinking water and sanitation in Indigenous lands, where only a third of households have proper water supply systems.
- In some Amazon rivers in Brazil, cases of diseases related to inadequate basic sanitation, such as malaria and acute diarrhea, have been increasing amid climate change and population growth.
- Indigenous organizations have been demanding the implementation of adapted infrastructures in the villages, such as water tanks, wells, cesspools and septic tanks.
- The Brazilian federal government already has resources and plans to begin addressing these issues.
Cargill weakens Amazon no-deforestation vow, raising concerns about wider backslide
Commodity-trading giant Cargill recently signaled that it will weaken its no-deforestation commitments in the Amazon Rainforest, an investigation by Repórter Brasil has revealed. In its latest sustainability report, released in December 2024, Cargill changed how it measures deforestation in its soy supply chain. It had initially committed to following the guidelines of the Amazon Soy […]
The Pan Amazon as a hotspot of cultural diversity
- The Amazon is known not only for its biodiversity, but also for its cultural richness, built by Indigenous nations and other groups that have migrated to the region over the past 500 years.
- Indigenous communities in the region include those that have experienced various amounts of cultural loss and/or modification of their cultural traditions, as well as urban dwellers who retain their ethnic identity while partially joining a different stakeholder group.
- Non-governmental organizations provide a moral counterweight to many of the forces that make frontier societies unfair, representing both conservative and progressive viewpoints that reflect the diversity of Pan Amazonian society.
Amazon states lead rebellion on environmental enforcement
- Brazilian Amazon states are leading an offensive against environmental regulations in the Amazon and beyond.
- The movement gained momentum in October when Brazil’s granary, Mato Grosso state, approved a bill undermining a voluntary agreement to protect the Amazon from soy expansion.
- Before Mato Grosso, other Amazon states like Acre and Rondônia had already approved bills reducing protected areas and weakening the fight against illegal mining.
- With its economy highly reliant on agribusiness, Mato Grosso is considered a successful model for other parts of the Amazon.
Yanomami sees success two years into Amazon miner evictions, but fears remain
- Brazil’s federal government celebrated a decrease in deaths and the decline in gold mining two years after agents started to evict invaders on the Yanomami Indigenous territory in the Amazon.
- The Yanomami report that rivers are cleaner, and people are finally healthy enough to work in fields and resume rituals.
- Once estimated as 20,000 in the territory, hundreds of illegal miners still remain and may expand business at the slightest sign of the security forces withdrawing.
Probe details the playbook of one of Amazon’s top land grabbers
- Professional land grabbers operating in the Brazilian Amazon have sophisticated strategies to steal and deforest public lands and get away with it.
- According to the Federal Police, Bruno Heller is one of Amazon’s largest deforesters and relied on legal and technical advice, including a fake contract, bribing police officers, and near-real-time monitoring of deforestation work through satellite imagery, investigators said.
- Low penalties and hurdles faced by federal bodies in seizing back stolen lands from criminals have spurred the land-grabbing industry in Brazil.
Vested interests and social tribes in the Pan Amazon
- Local and regional actors, particularly commercial and landowner elites in mid-sized cities, play an important role in the expansion and improvement of road networks. In Brazil, lobbying by private interests played a big role in the development of Rodovia Transamazônica and BR-319.
- In Brazil, agribusinesses exert political power via the Frente Parlamentar da Agropecuária (FPA), often referred to as the Bancada Ruralista, a multi-party congressional voting bloc.
- One of the most significant accomplishment of the ruralistas was their 2012 campaign to modify Brazil’s the Forest Code. Changes included amnesty for property owners who had illegally deforested land before 2008 and adjusted requirements to reforest portions of landholdings that had exceeded legal deforestation limits.
After a searing Amazon fire season, experts warn of more in 2025
- South America recorded the highest number of fire outbreaks in 14 years in 2024, with Brazil at the epicenter of the crisis.
- In the Amazon, fire outbreaks grew out of control even amid a sharp reduction in deforestation rates, indicating deforesters are relying on fire as a new technique to clear land.
- Experts are urging more investment in fire prevention since the rainforest may face another intense fire season in 2025.
Amazon communities reap the smallest share of bioeconomy profits
- Recently praised by environmentalists, governments and companies as a solution for rainforest conservation, bioeconomy has been practiced for centuries by Amazon’s traditional communities.
- Despite their key role in generating income from the standing forest, these communities continue to reap the smallest share of the profits, according to a new book.
- Traditional people need more financing, better access to energy and improved roads to get their products into the market.
The Amazon in 2025: Challenges and hopes as the rainforest takes center stage
- The Amazon Rainforest, where next year’s COP30 climate summit will be hosted, is reeling from two consecutive years of severe drought, with major rivers at record lows, leading to water shortages and transportation disruptions for local communities.
- While deforestation in the Brazilian Amazon plunged during that period, the rainforest remains under threat from land grabbing, illegal gold mining, diminishing rainfall, and outbreaks of fire, many of them ignited by criminals.
- The world’s greatest tropical rainforest has also drawn the interest of carbon traders, but evidence of fraud within some carbon credit projects unearthed by Mongabay highlights the need for greater transparency and accountability in the carbon market.
- Amid all these threats, reforestation and restoration projects led by Indigenous communities and conservation organizations offer hope for a sustainable future for the Amazon.
Brazil’s illegal gold miners carve out new Amazon hotspots in conservation units
- President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva’s administration reduced the expansion of illegal gold mining in the Brazilian Amazon, but miners keep finding new sites.
- In 15 conservation units, illegal gold miners destroyed 330 hectares (815 acres) in only two months.
- According to experts, gold miners expelled from Indigenous territories may be migrating to conservation units.
- Alliances with narco mafias and the rise in gold prices are obstacles to fighting illegal mining.
Brazil plans new reserves to curb deforestation near contested Amazon roads
- Unallocated public areas account for 28% of deforestation in the Brazilian Amazon, and the destruction of these lands keeps rising even as rates plummet across other parts of the rainforest.
- To tackle the problem, Brazil’s federal government plans to convert lands around controversial Amazonian highways into protected areas.
- One of the priority areas is along the BR-319 highway, where experts warn deforestation may increase fourfold under another government plan to pave the highway.
- Despite the advances in comparison with former President Jair Bolsonaro, Indigenous and land reform movements are unhappy with the pace of land designation under President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva.
Migration opens up new territories in the Brazilian Amazon in the 20th century
- Internal migration in Panamazonia was driven by the gold rush, improved infrastructure, land grabbing and job opportunities in large-scale infrastructure projects such as industrial mines and hydroelectric plants.
- Rondônia’s population grew from 100,000 in 1972 to more than 400,000 in 1982, when it became one of Brazil’s states. By 1990, it had surpassed one million inhabitants.
- Migration within the Brazilian Amazon is now largely internal, as Amazonian residents move to cities. Internal migration is motivated by lack of opportunity in rural communities and the creation of temporary jobs linked to construction sites
Researchers find high levels of mercury in Amazon’s Madeira River water & fish
- In a groundbreaking expedition, researchers from Harvard and Amazonas State University began monitoring water quality and mercury contamination in the Amazon Basin’s largest tributary.
- The Madeira River Basin has been heavily impacted by human actions, such as hydropower plants, deforestation and illegal gold mining, which degrade its ecosystems.
- Initial results from Harvard reveal high levels of mercury in the Madeira, although still below the limit recommended by Brazil’s authorities.
- Predatory fish species showed mercury levels above the recommended limit, while scalefish traditionally consumed by riverine populations were below.
Brazil beef industry still struggling with deforestation from indirect suppliers, survey finds
- Surveys of Brazil’s beef industry found there is still a serious lack of transparency throughout the supply chain, including from slaughterhouses and retailers. If better regulations aren’t implemented, they could be exposed to 109 million hectares (270 million acres) of deforestation by 2025.
- The survey was conducted by Radar Verde, a cattle monitoring initiative made up of several climate groups. It reviewed the regulations and exposure to deforestation of dozens of companies in Brazil.
- Indirect suppliers of beef are the most difficult to track, the survey found, with none of the 132 companies or 67 retailers competently able to demonstrate whether cattle had been raised on illegally deforested land.
- Struggles to monitor indirect suppliers could pose a challenge for companies trying to meet the EU deforestation-free products regulation (EUDR), which will require suppliers to prove beef and other commodities exported to the EU aren’t sourced to illegally deforested land.
Prosecutors urge suspension of Amazon carbon projects, citing Mongabay investigation
- Brazilian prosecutors asked the Amazonas state government to suspend carbon projects in 21 conservation units.
- According to the lawsuit, the government had failed to consult local communities.
- The filing mentioned Mongabay’s investigation linking some of Amazon’s largest REDD+ projects to an illegal logging scheme.
Brazil calls for ambition at COP but struggles over its own climate policy
- Brazil is trying to resume its role as a protagonist in the environmental arena by hosting COP30 in 2025 and urging other countries to present ambitious targets to cut emissions.
- However, Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva’s administration failed to openly discuss the country’s nationally determined contribution (NDC) and allocated small budgets for climate transition.
- Experts state that zeroing out deforestation, recovering thousands of hectares of native vegetation and stepping back from oil expansion plans are crucial to meeting Brazil’s commitments.
- UPDATE (11/11/2024): The Brazilian government released its NDC on the evening of Nov. 8, hours after the publication of this story.
New Canadian-backed potash mine under fire from Amazon Indigenous groups
- For more than a decade, Potássio do Brasil, a Canadian-backed mining company, has tried to exploit the Brazilian Amazon’s potash reserves, despite legal challenges.
- In April, the Amazonas Environmental Protection Institute (IPAAM) granted the company several installation licenses, which authorized the project’s implementation as well as the construction of a road and shipping port.
- According to the Federal Public Prosecutor’s Office (MPF) and Funai, the issuance of these licenses by the Amazonas government was illegal, as the project overlaps with Indigenous lands and many communities were not consulted.
- Many Mura residents, most of whom are concerned about the impact the project will have on the environment and their livelihoods, say the company did not consult them and instead co-opted leaders and falsified documents.
JBS broke its own rules while buying cattle from deforested areas in Pantanal
- JBS, the world’s largest meatpacking company, has over the last five years been buying cattle from farms that were caught illegally deforesting Brazil’s Pantanal wetlands despite the company’s claims of environmental responsibility.
- An Unearthed investigation found that JBS suppliers cleared vast areas of the Pantanal wetlands in the past five years, with Fazenda Querência being the largest deforester, having cleared an area half the size of Paris.
- JBS has repeatedly violated its own zero-deforestation policies by continuing to purchase cattle from farms under embargo for illegal deforestation.
- The expansion of agribusiness, especially the demand for cattle and the introduction of invasive species like brachiaria grass, is threatening the Pantanal’s unique biodiversity and its ability to recover naturally from drought and wildfires.
Deforestation plunges but environmental threats remain as Colombia hosts COP16
- As global leaders, experts, activists and Indigenous voices meet this October in the Colombian city of Cali at the U.N. Biodiversity Conference, COP16, missteps and successes within President Gustavo Petro’s environment agenda are watched closely.
- COP16 occurs two years after the country’s first-ever left-wing president was sworn in, pledging to turn Colombia into “a leader in the protection of life,” as his four-year plan centers on energy transition, Indigenous causes and tackling climate change.
- But while praised internationally for his efforts to promote conservation, shift away from fossil fuels and surround himself with green-abiding authorities, Petro remains under pressure, as many of his environmental proposals are still on paper, upholding Colombia’s long-lasting socioenvironmental struggles.
- Experts attribute a lack of sufficient environmental resolutions to various factors, including a Congress resistant to government initiatives, challenges in curbing deforestation and Colombia’s status as the most dangerous country for environmental defenders, as highlighted by recent reports.
Extreme drought wrecks rivers and daily life in Amazon’s most burnt Indigenous land
- Almost 20% of the Kayapó Indigenous Territory has burned in this year’s Amazon drought, the worst ever recorded in Brazil.
- The land has for years been subjected to illegal mining, cattle ranching and burning of forests, degrading both the soil and rivers and significantly disrupting the way of life for the Mebêngôkre-Kayapó people.
- The Indigenous inhabitants now confront a growing crisis as wildfires and drought threaten their lands, particularly along the Riozinho River.
- According to ecologist Rodolfo Salm, who has worked with the Kayapó since 1996, fire has now surpassed illegal logging as the greatest danger to the region.
Amazon voters elect environmental offenders and climate denialists in Brazil
- The Amazonian population elected climate change deniers and politicians with a history of environmental fines to govern some of the region’s major cities.
- Pará’s state capital, Belém, which will host COP30 in 2025, may elect a mayor unconcerned about climate change.
- According to experts, opposing illegal activities is political suicide in municipalities whose economies rely on deforestation, illegal mining and illegal logging.
‘World’s largest’ carbon credit deal in the Amazon faces bumpy road ahead
- The Brazilian state of Pará has agreed to sell millions of carbon credits to multinational corporations, including Amazon, Bayer and Walmart Foundation, but many challenges loom.
- Experts are concerned the deal is overly ambitious and worry about the state’s long history of carbon credit project scams.
- Although Indigenous, Quilombola and extractive community entities support the arrangement, other community members state they have not been consulted about the project on their lands.
New conservation model calls for protecting Amazon for its archaeological riches
- Across the Amazon, archaeological remains indicate that the human presence in the rainforest is much older, larger and more widespread than previously thought.
- Researchers in Brazil are lobbying to register archaeological sites as national monuments, which would confer a new layer of protection status to parts of the rainforest.
- Earthen mounds known as geoglyphs, for instance, have been revealed to stretch from Acre state north into neighboring Amazonas; formally recognizing them under Brazil’s heritage law could protect this vast swath of rainforest.
- “Today we know it’s highly likely that part of the forest has been changed by people,” said Dutch biologist Hans ter Steege, co-author of research that has shown there may be up to 24,000 earthworks hidden throughout the rainforest that could qualify for protection.
Brazil cracks down on illegal gold mining, sparking anger in the Amazon
Brazil has ramped up efforts to quell illegal gold mining over the last two years. Police raids in the Brazilian Amazon’s gold capital have destroyed mining machinery, leaving miners angry and struggling to keep their operations running, Mongabay’s Fernanda Wenzel reports. Federal agents destroyed 150 backhoes and 600 dredgers used in illegal mining in 2023, […]
‘We need white men on our side to save the Amazon from destruction,’ 92-year-old Indigenous Chief Raoni says
- Indigenous leaders gathered at New York Climate Week to call on global leaders to address the unprecedented drought and wildfire crisis in the Amazon Rainforest.
- Chief Raoni Metuktire, a historic Indigenous leader of Brazil, asked non-Indigenous communities to reflect on their responsibility — mainly the introduction of illegal mining, logging and cattle ranching that are accelerating the impacts of climate change.
- Many Indigenous communities are in the path of wildfires, and isolated Indigenous peoples (PIA) are the most vulnerable.
CHAPTER 6. Culture and demographics defines the Pan Amazon’s present
- The dynamics unfolding across the Pan Amazon have been centuries in the making, with drivers of deforestation and ecosystem degradation evolving as a result of social and economic change.
- A colonial focus on resource exploitation, development policies and migration as well as the resistance of Indigenous peoples have transformed the Amazon.
- Latin America’s repeated failure to capitalize on the inherent advantages of its natural and human capital has been blamed on economic mismanagement, endemic corruption, entrenched inequality, legal insecurity and market cycles that undermine periodic attempts at reform.
Report exposes meatpackers’ role in recent chemical deforestation in Brazil
- A new report links Brazil’s top meatpackers — JBS, Marfrig and Minerva — to widespread deforestation across the Pantanal, Amazon and Cerrado; of five farms investigated between October 2023 and February 2024, 86% of the destruction occurred in the Pantanal.
- Fazenda Soberana ranch is at the center of environmental controversy and is under investigation for using toxic herbicides to destroy tens of thousands of hectares of native vegetation, marking the largest environmental crime in Mato Grosso state history.
- Major meatpackers are criticized for failing to fully monitor indirect suppliers and for not ensuring that their supply chains are free from socioenvironmental violations.
- The report calls for supermarkets to cut ties with meatpackers linked to deforestation and for full transparency regarding the origin and supply chains of beef products.
How the Brazilian military sabotaged protection of Indigenous people in the Amazon
- The Brazilian military has been involved in a series of controversial episodes that have undermined emergency efforts to tackle the humanitarian crisis in the Yanomami Indigenous Territory.
- Reports show it failed (or sabotaged) airspace control and food deliveries to the Indigenous people, who suffer from malnutrition as a result of mercury contamination from illegal mining.
- President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva has spent millions trying to evict the illegal miners and provide care to the Yanomami, but some 7,000 miners remain in the territory, while malnutrition, malaria and other diseases continue to afflict the Yanomami.
- Experts blame the military’s inaction of action against the illegal miners on a colonial ideology that was prevalent under Brazil’s former military dictatorship, and which was revived under the administration of Lula’s predecessor, Jair Bolsonaro.
Extreme drought pushes Amazon’s main rivers to lowest-ever levels
- Amid an extreme, unprecedented drought, almost all major Amazon rivers have registered their lowest levels in history.
- Experts say the outlook for the next months is even worse, putting researchers on alert for the possibility of Amazon’s worst drought ever.
- The low river level in Manaus, Amazonas’ state capital, may increase prices of products shipped through the city’s harbor.
- The drought has isolated some Indigenous communities, while others have to walk long distances through dry riverbeds carrying groceries and equipment.
Resilient and resourceful, Brazil’s illegal gold capital resists government crackdown
- Following regulatory changes and heavier enforcement of the gold trade, the Amazonian municipality of Itaituba, notorious as Brazil’s illegal gold capital, is struggling to deal with the new restrictions.
- Yet a series of raids and destruction of mining equipment hasn’t fazed the illegal miners, known as garimpeiros, who have simply picked themselves back up again and started working to resume their operations.
- The crackdown on illegal gold and its environmental destruction has outraged the garimpeiros, who accuse the government of preventing them from working in a region historically dedicated to gold extraction.
Brazil launches ‘war’ on widespread fire outbreaks & criminal arsonists
- Fire outbreaks are setting records all over Brazil, with flames burning the Amazon, the Cerrado, the Pantanal and the São Paulo state.
- Federal authorities say most fires are criminal and they are launching investigations.
- Smoke from fires spread through 10 Brazilian states, impacting air quality and air traffic.
Study shows most Amazon beef & soy demand comes from Brazil — not exports
- A study shows that an area equivalent to nine times the size of Greater London was deforested in the Brazilian Amazon in 2015 to address the demand for beef from other parts of the country.
- The article, published in Nature Sustainability, concluded that the domestic market answered for three times more deforestation than international sales.
- Despite the predominance of domestic consumption, beef exports from Brazil have been increasing, and international capital has a crucial role in financing the country’s largest meat and soy companies.
Biden Administration mistakenly seeks delay of EU’s new deforestation regulation (commentary)
- “If the Biden Administration is serious about a global zero-deforestation agenda while helping US agribusiness, it should proactively support the EU Deforestation Regulation (EUDR) abroad, and double down at home on support for U.S. soy farmers and cattle ranchers to comply with the EUDR,” a new op-ed argues.
- Rather than support it, the U.S. is demanding that the European Union delay the EUDR, parroting arguments put forth by a small number of the U.S.’s least ethical producers, while ignoring thousands of companies and investors actively supporting the EUDR.
- “The U.S. has such limited deforestation exposure on soy and cattle it exports to the EU that most U.S. soy and cattle exports to Europe will likely benefit from the EUDR. The exact opposite of what Vilsack, Raimundo, and Tai’s letter argues.”
- This post is a commentary. The views expressed are those of the author, not necessarily Mongabay.
Raw materials become high-value bioeconomy goods at an Amazon science park
- Ahead of hosting 2025’s COP30 climate summit, Belém is betting on the development of products such as honey-based spirits, digital glasses from local wood and jambu-infused medicine at a local tech park.
- The Guamá Science and Technology Park (PCT), operating since 2010 and the first of its kind in the Brazilian Amazon Rainforest, uses technology to transform forest-based resources into high-value products.
- It’s a step toward building a sustainable and thriving billion-dollar bioeconomy that provides local populations with alternatives to deforestation and increases the appeal of sustainably harvesting the region’s resources.
- Future plans include expanding the park for further innovation and to build more science and technology parks in the Amazon as well as fostering networks with other Pan Amazonian countries with similar hubs such as Colombia, Ecuador, and Peru.
After historic 2023 drought, Amazon communities brace for more in Brazil
- In the Brazilian Amazon, low river levels and insufficient rain might lead to 2024’s dry season being worse than 2023’s historic drought.
- Amazonian states are already feeling early signs of the drought, although bolder actions are lacking.
- Enduring water loss is an issue throughout the country, but it hits the Amazon and the Pantanal especially hard, as wildfires are breaking records.
Brazil’s new pro-agribusiness pesticide law threatens Amazon biodiversity
- A priority project of Brazil’s congressional agribusiness caucus, the so-called Poison Bill eases restrictions on the sale and use of a wide range of agrochemicals dangerous to humans and the environment.
- The bill went into effect as the use of pesticides banned long ago in the European Union exploded in the Brazilian Amazon.
- In the rainforest, use of the fungicide mancozeb skyrocketed by 5,600%, and the use of the herbicide atrazine increased by 575% in just over a decade.
- Experts warn that lax pesticide controls will worsen impacts at the edge of the Amazon, where the chemicals affect intact biodiversity and aggravate risks to Indigenous people, riverside communities and small farmers.
Fire bans not effective as the Amazon and Pantanal burn, study says
- Brazil issued three bans on legal fires in the Amazon in 2019, 2020 and 2021, but only the first one succeeded in reducing the number of fires, a new study shows.
- This year, both the Pantanal and the Amazon have recorded alarming rates of burning, with the wetland breaking recent records that caused an international uproar.
- A real solution depends on reducing deforestation and convincing ranchers not to use fire to renew pastures during the dry season, experts say.
- The outlook for the coming dry season is bleak, given an ongoing strike of government environmental agents and the long-lasting effects of the historic 2023 drought.
Wai Wai people’s push for direct access to Brazil nut market
RORAIMA STATE, Brazil — The Wai Wai people, an Indigenous community residing in the dense forest interiors of northern Brazil and neighboring Guyana, hold Brazil nuts in deep cultural and economic significance. These nuts are not just a staple in their diet but also play a crucial role in their livelihoods. In the modern-day, Brazil […]
Indigenous Wai Wai seek markets for Brazil nuts without middlemen
- Brazilian nuts are embedded in the culture of the Wai Wai people, who live across the forested interiors of northern Brazil and neighboring Guyana.
- Today, Brazil nuts account for the main cash income, as well as the base of the cuisine and diet, for the 350 families that live in the Wai Wai Indigenous Territory in Brazil’s Roraima state.
- By selling directly to companies, the Wai Wai were able to earn much more for Brazil nuts than by selling to middlemen who typically pay the lowest price on the market.
- Yet agreements often fall through, reflecting the difficulties Indigenous and other traditional communities face in entering the potentially lucrative bioeconomy.
Fraud and corruption drive illegal wildlife trade in the Amazon
- A new report has found wildlife smugglers employ sophisticated methods to smuggle species from the Brazilian rainforest, including widespread fraud and corruption.
- In recent years, smugglers have been caught altering a wide range of documentation — from export licenses to microchips — to give their operations a veil of legality.
- There are multiple reports of bribery within traffic routes originating in Brazil, including of the public officials responsible for wildlife protection.
Brazil police raid Amazon carbon credit projects exposed by Mongabay
- The Brazilian Federal Police arrested people and seized assets linked to some of the country’s largest carbon credit projects.
- According to the investigators, the group was running land-grabbing and timber laundering crimes in the Amazon for more than a decade and profiting millions of dollars.
- The projects were exposed at the end of May in a one-year investigation published by Mongabay, which showed links between the REDD+ projects and an illegal timber scam.
- Authorities and experts hope the findings will raise the bar for projects in the country and persuade lawmakers to create strict rules for the Brazilian carbon market, which is now under discussion.
New bill to expand farmlands in the Amazon may derail Brazil’s green efforts
- A bill that would reduce the amount of primary forest that landowners in the Brazilian Amazon must preserve may lead to the deforestation of an area twice the size of Rio de Janeiro state.
- The bill has been tailored for the interests of the agribusiness lobby by permitting an increase in legal deforestation and would bring regulation of the Amazon closer to that of the heavily deforested Cerrado savanna biome.
- For environmental organizations, its potential approval would undermine Brazil’s stated goals of reducing carbon emissions and putting an end to deforestation by 2030.
Mongabay investigation is turned into art for World Press Freedom Day event
- Mongabay’s award-winning investigation that revealed water contamination from palm oil plantations in Indigenous territories in the Brazilian Amazon inspired an art installation at UNESCO’s World Press Freedom Day Conference in Santiago; the artwork was also exhibited at Chile’s Museum of Contemporary Art.
- A group of 12 theater design students and three professors from the University of Chile worked together with Mongabay reporter Karla Mendes to create the concept of an art exhibition to highlight the hidden environmental damages of “sustainable” palm oil found in many common items bought at grocery stores without our being aware of the impacts.
- Published in 2021, the Mongabay investigation revealed water contamination from pesticides used on oil palm crops and clearing of native forests for crops impacting the Tembé people in northern Pará state; in late 2022, the investigation was used as key evidence by federal prosecutors to obtain a court decision to probe the environmental impacts of pesticides used by oil palm plantations in Pará.
- The palm oil art installation and other successful projects in which journalists and artists collaborated were also highlighted at a panel focused on how to promote more inclusive journalism narratives to convey environmental and climate change issues.
How environmental crimes are covered up in the Amazon?
A paper trail left by a notorious land grabber reveals how he used relatives and an employee as fronts to evade environmental fines and lawsuits, shedding light on this widespread practice in the Brazilian Amazon. This strategy, described as commonplace in the Amazon, has long been a stumbling block for investigators. By hiding behind fronts […]
A web of front people conceals environmental offenders in the Amazon
- A paper trail left by a notorious land grabber reveals how he used relatives and an employee as fronts to evade environmental fines and lawsuits, shedding light on this widespread practice in the Brazilian Amazon.
- Fronts prevent the real criminals from having their assets seized to pay for environmental fines, besides consuming time and resources from the authorities, who spend years trying to prove who the real financier of the deforestation is.
- Experts say it’s best to go after environmental offenders where it hurts the most, by seizing their assets, rather than to chase down their true identity.
- This investigation is part of a partnership between Mongabay and Repórter Brasil.
Tropical forest loss puts 2030 zero-deforestation target further out of reach
- The overall rate of primary forest loss across the tropics remained stubbornly high in 2023, putting the world well off track from its net-zero deforestation target by 2030, according to a new report from the World Resources Institute.
- The few bright spots were Brazil and Colombia, where changes in political leadership helped drive down deforestation rates in the Amazon.
- Elsewhere, however, several countries hit record-high rates of forest loss, including the Democratic Republic of Congo, Bolivia and Laos, driven largely by agriculture, mining and fires.
- The report authors call for “bold global mechanisms and unique local initiatives … to achieve enduring reductions in deforestation across all tropical front countries.”
Squeezed-out Amazon smallholders seek new frontiers in Brazil’s Roraima state
- As infrastructure projects and soy plantations pump up land values in the Brazilian Amazon, smallholders are selling up and moving to more distant frontiers, perpetuating a cycle of displacement and deforestation.
- The isolated south of Roraima state has become a priority destination for these migrants, who buy land from informal brokers with questionable paperwork; much of the land has been grabbed from the vast undesignated lands of the Brazilian government.
- Although the appetite for land grabs has diminished since the start of the Lula administration, the region has seen an increase in deforestation in recent years.
Meet the think tank behind the agribusiness’ legislative wins in Brazil
- Agribusiness giants in the soy, beef, cotton and pesticides industries, among others, maintain a strong lobbying presence in Brazil’s Congress that offers advisory, technical and communication support to “ruralist” legislators.
- Central to these lobbying efforts is Pensar Agro (“thinking agribusiness”), or IPA, the think tank behind newly passed legislation like the so-called time frame bill that undermines Indigenous land rights and opens up the territories to mining and agribusiness.
- The institute’s strategy includes spreading fake news and crafting talking points for legislators from the agribusiness caucus to force through their bills.
Why the Amazon’s small streams have a major impact on its grand rivers
- An unprecedented time-series study in the basin of the Tapajós River, a major tributary of the Amazon, assesses the level of degradation of small rivers threatened by agribusiness expansion.
- Researchers from several universities will assess the conservation status of 100 streams spread between the municipalities of Santarém and Paragominas, at the confluence of the Tapajós and the Amazon, which were first analyzed in 2010.
- The impact of dirt roads and their network of river crossings, which causes sediment load, siltation, erosion and changes in water quality, was one of the factors that caught researchers’ attention in the initial time-series study.
- Experts say that local development models should ideally start from water to land, rather than the other way around, given the importance of water for the rainforest, its biodiversity, and the inhabitants who depend on both.
Promise of full demarcation for isolated Amazon tribe rings hollow for some
- The 23-year struggle to declare a territory for the isolated Kawahiva people of the Brazilian Amazon could finally conclude this year after the government announced the closing stages of the demarcation process will begin soon.
- The physical demarcation will formally define the boundaries of the 412,000-hectare (1.02-million-acre) territory in Mato Grosso state, home to some 45-50 Kawahiva, which is a crucial step before a presidential declaration recognizing the Indigenous territory.
- However, some Indigenous experts remain skeptical the territory will ever be fully demarcated in the face of ever-present delays and structural problems within the Indigenous affairs agency.
- The territory sits within the “Arc of Deforestation” in the southern part of the Brazilian Amazon, which is slowly moving north as cattle ranchers, miners, loggers and soy growers clear forest for more land.
Rural finance in the Pan Amazon: the Brazil success case
- Mongabay has begun publishing a new edition of the book, “A Perfect Storm in the Amazon,” in short installments and in three languages: Spanish, English and Portuguese.
- Author Timothy J. Killeen is an academic and expert who, since the 1980s, has studied the rainforests of Brazil and Bolivia, where he lived for more than 35 years.
- Chronicling the efforts of nine Amazonian countries to curb deforestation, this edition provides an overview of the topics most relevant to the conservation of the region’s biodiversity, ecosystem services and Indigenous cultures, as well as a description of the conventional and sustainable development models that are vying for space within the regional economy.
- Click the “A Perfect Storm in the Amazon” link atop this page to see chapters 1-13 as they are published during 2023 and 2024.
Roundtables and certification schemes in the Pan-Amazon
- Mongabay has begun publishing a new edition of the book, “A Perfect Storm in the Amazon,” in short installments and in three languages: Spanish, English and Portuguese.
- Author Timothy J. Killeen is an academic and expert who, since the 1980s, has studied the rainforests of Brazil and Bolivia, where he lived for more than 35 years.
- Chronicling the efforts of nine Amazonian countries to curb deforestation, this edition provides an overview of the topics most relevant to the conservation of the region’s biodiversity, ecosystem services and Indigenous cultures, as well as a description of the conventional and sustainable development models that are vying for space within the regional economy.
- Click the “A Perfect Storm in the Amazon” link atop this page to see chapters 1-13 as they are published during 2023 and 2024.
Coca in the Amazon – The anti-development crop
- Mongabay has begun publishing a new edition of the book, “A Perfect Storm in the Amazon,” in short installments and in three languages: Spanish, English and Portuguese.
- Author Timothy J. Killeen is an academic and expert who, since the 1980s, has studied the rainforests of Brazil and Bolivia, where he lived for more than 35 years.
- Chronicling the efforts of nine Amazonian countries to curb deforestation, this edition provides an overview of the topics most relevant to the conservation of the region’s biodiversity, ecosystem services and Indigenous cultures, as well as a description of the conventional and sustainable development models that are vying for space within the regional economy.
- Click the “A Perfect Storm in the Amazon” link atop this page to see chapters 1-13 as they are published during 2023 and 2024.
Local and national food crops in the Andean Amazon
- Mongabay has begun publishing a new edition of the book, “A Perfect Storm in the Amazon,” in short installments and in three languages: Spanish, English and Portuguese.
- Author Timothy J. Killeen is an academic and expert who, since the 1980s, has studied the rainforests of Brazil and Bolivia, where he lived for more than 35 years.
- Chronicling the efforts of nine Amazonian countries to curb deforestation, this edition provides an overview of the topics most relevant to the conservation of the region’s biodiversity, ecosystem services and Indigenous cultures, as well as a description of the conventional and sustainable development models that are vying for space within the regional economy.
- Click the “A Perfect Storm in the Amazon” link atop this page to see chapters 1-13 as they are published during 2023 and 2024.
The man who made a pact with wild bees in Colombia’s Amazon
- Delio de Jesús Suárez Gómez, a member of the Indigenous Tucano community in Colombia, is combining ancestral knowledge with science to help pollinating bees survive the harsh conditions of life in the rainforest.
- In return, the bees provide honey for families, which is sold, and boosts the communities’ food and fruit supply through pollination.
- The newly-formed group Asomegua (Asociación de Meliponicultores del Guainía) is the result of a decade of beekeeping in La Ceiba, a community on the banks of the Inírida River near the famous Mavicure Hills.
- Bee populations around the world, which participate in the pollination of 75% of the world’s food crops, are on the decline, according to the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO).
High quality cacao in Amazonia
- Mongabay has begun publishing a new edition of the book, “A Perfect Storm in the Amazon,” in short installments and in three languages: Spanish, English and Portuguese.
- Author Timothy J. Killeen is an academic and expert who, since the 1980s, has studied the rainforests of Brazil and Bolivia, where he lived for more than 35 years.
- Chronicling the efforts of nine Amazonian countries to curb deforestation, this edition provides an overview of the topics most relevant to the conservation of the region’s biodiversity, ecosystem services and Indigenous cultures, as well as a description of the conventional and sustainable development models that are vying for space within the regional economy.
- Click the “A Perfect Storm in the Amazon” link atop this page to see chapters 1-13 as they are published during 2023 and 2024.
Cultivation and processing of Amazonian coffees
- Mongabay has begun publishing a new edition of the book, “A Perfect Storm in the Amazon,” in short installments and in three languages: Spanish, English and Portuguese.
- Author Timothy J. Killeen is an academic and expert who, since the 1980s, has studied the rainforests of Brazil and Bolivia, where he lived for more than 35 years.
- Chronicling the efforts of nine Amazonian countries to curb deforestation, this edition provides an overview of the topics most relevant to the conservation of the region’s biodiversity, ecosystem services and Indigenous cultures, as well as a description of the conventional and sustainable development models that are vying for space within the regional economy.
- Click the “A Perfect Storm in the Amazon” link atop this page to see chapters 1-13 as they are published during 2023 and 2024.
Coffee and cacao in the Pan Amazon
- Mongabay has begun publishing a new edition of the book, “A Perfect Storm in the Amazon,” in short installments and in three languages: Spanish, English and Portuguese.
- Author Timothy J. Killeen is an academic and expert who, since the 1980s, has studied the rainforests of Brazil and Bolivia, where he lived for more than 35 years.
- Chronicling the efforts of nine Amazonian countries to curb deforestation, this edition provides an overview of the topics most relevant to the conservation of the region’s biodiversity, ecosystem services and Indigenous cultures, as well as a description of the conventional and sustainable development models that are vying for space within the regional economy.
- Click the “A Perfect Storm in the Amazon” link atop this page to see chapters 1-13 as they are published during 2023 and 2024.
The coveted legacy of the ‘Man of the Hole’ and his cultivated Amazon forest
- Tanaru, also known as The Man of the Hole, was an Indigenous person who survived several massacres that decimated his relatives in the state of Rondônia, in the Brazilian Amazon, in the 1980s and 1990s.
- He was the last of his group and refused contact with non-Indigenous Brazilian society and with other Indigenous people for decades, and he died peacefully in 2022.
- Tanaru’s dramatic story was told in Corumbiara, a documentary by Vincent Carelli, who hoped to capture Tanaru’s footage to persuade the Brazilian state to recognize the land as an Indigenous territory.
- Now Indigenous people and advocates are fighting for the Tanaru Indigenous land to remain an Indigenous territory, but ranchers want to take possession of the plot to turn it into pastures and soy fields.
French banks accused of money laundering linked to Amazon deforestation
- A coalition of NGOs has filed a criminal complaint against several French banks for allegedly financing meat companies driving deforestation in Brazil.
- Between 2013 and 2021, the four French banks involved invested a total of nearly $70 million in bonds issued by leading meat companies in Brazil generating about $11.7 million in profits.
- This is the first time that French banks have received a criminal complaint for money laundering, receiving stolen goods related to funding deforestation and profiteering from it.
- An analysis of JBS and Marfrig slaughterhouses in Pará and Mato Grosso found that more than 50% and 40% of suppliers, respectively, showed evidence of irregularities, including deforestation and intrusion into Indigenous lands and protected forests.
Palm oil cultivation in Colombia, Ecuador, Peru and Brazil
- Mongabay has begun publishing a new edition of the book, “A Perfect Storm in the Amazon,” in short installments and in three languages: Spanish, English and Portuguese.
- Mongabay has begun publishing a new edition of the book, “A Perfect Storm in the Amazon,” in short installments and in three languages: Spanish, English and Portuguese.
- Chronicling the efforts of nine Amazonian countries to curb deforestation, this edition provides an overview of the topics most relevant to the conservation of the region’s biodiversity, ecosystem services and Indigenous cultures, as well as a description of the conventional and sustainable development models that are vying for space within the regional economy.
- Click the “A Perfect Storm in the Amazon” link atop this page to see chapters 1-13 as they are published during 2023 and 2024.
Study links pesticides to child cancer deaths in Brazilian Amazon & Cerrado
- According to new research, for every 5 tons of soy per hectare produced in the Brazilian Amazon and Cerrado, an equivalent of one out of 10,000 children under 10 succumbed to acute lymphoblastic leukemia five years later.
- The researchers estimate that 123 childhood deaths during the 2008-19 period are associated with exposure to pesticides from the soy fields, amounting to half the deaths of children under 10 from lymphoblastic leukemia in the region.
- Experts say that the research is just the tip of the iceberg, and many other diseases and deaths may be associated with chemicals used in crops; further studies are needed.
Oil palm in the Pan Amazon
- Mongabay has begun publishing a new edition of the book, “A Perfect Storm in the Amazon,” in short installments and in three languages: Spanish, English and Portuguese.
- Author Timothy J. Killeen is an academic and expert who, since the 1980s, has studied the rainforests of Brazil and Bolivia, where he lived for more than 35 years.
- Chronicling the efforts of nine Amazonian countries to curb deforestation, this edition provides an overview of the topics most relevant to the conservation of the region’s biodiversity, ecosystem services and Indigenous cultures, as well as a description of the conventional and sustainable development models that are vying for space within the regional economy.
- Click the “A Perfect Storm in the Amazon” link atop this page to see chapters 1-13 as they are published during 2023 and 2024.
Agriculture in the Pan-Amazon: Swine and poultry – Adding value to farm production
- Mongabay has begun publishing a new edition of the book, “A Perfect Storm in the Amazon,” in short installments and in three languages: Spanish, English and Portuguese.
- Author Timothy J. Killeen is an academic and expert who, since the 1980s, has studied the rainforests of Brazil and Bolivia, where he lived for more than 35 years.
- Chronicling the efforts of nine Amazonian countries to curb deforestation, this edition provides an overview of the topics most relevant to the conservation of the region’s biodiversity, ecosystem services and Indigenous cultures, as well as a description of the conventional and sustainable development models that are vying for space within the regional economy.
- Click the “A Perfect Storm in the Amazon” link atop this page to see chapters 1-13 as they are published during 2023 and 2024.
Agriculture in the Pan Amazon: Industrial infrastructure for grains and cereals
- Mongabay has begun publishing a new edition of the book, “A Perfect Storm in the Amazon,” in short installments and in three languages: Spanish, English and Portuguese.
- Author Timothy J. Killeen is an academic and expert who, since the 1980s, has studied the rainforests of Brazil and Bolivia, where he lived for more than 35 years.
- Chronicling the efforts of nine Amazonian countries to curb deforestation, this edition provides an overview of the topics most relevant to the conservation of the region’s biodiversity, ecosystem services and Indigenous cultures, as well as a description of the conventional and sustainable development models that are vying for space within the regional economy.
- Click the “A Perfect Storm in the Amazon” link atop this page to see chapters 1-13 as they are published during 2023.
Intensive agriculture in the Pan Amazon: Soy, maize and other field crops
- Mongabay has begun publishing a new edition of the book, “A Perfect Storm in the Amazon,” in short installments and in three languages: Spanish, English and Portuguese.
- Author Timothy J. Killeen is an academic and expert who, since the 1980s, has studied the rainforests of Brazil and Bolivia, where he lived for more than 35 years.
- Chronicling the efforts of nine Amazonian countries to curb deforestation, this edition provides an overview of the topics most relevant to the conservation of the region’s biodiversity, ecosystem services and Indigenous cultures, as well as a description of the conventional and sustainable development models that are vying for space within the regional economy.
- Click the “A Perfect Storm in the Amazon” link atop this page to see chapters 1-13 as they are published during 2023.
Livestock farming in the Andean Amazon and the rest of the Amazon
- Mongabay has begun publishing a new edition of the book, “A Perfect Storm in the Amazon,” in short installments and in three languages: Spanish, English and Portuguese.
- Author Timothy J. Killeen is an academic and expert who, since the 1980s, has studied the rainforests of Brazil and Bolivia, where he lived for more than 35 years.
- Chronicling the efforts of nine Amazonian countries to curb deforestation, this edition provides an overview of the topics most relevant to the conservation of the region’s biodiversity, ecosystem services and Indigenous cultures, as well as a description of the conventional and sustainable development models that are vying for space within the regional economy.
- Click the “A Perfect Storm in the Amazon” link atop this page to see chapters 1-13 as they are published during 2023.
Plan to bring Mennonite farmers to Suriname sparks deforestation fears
- Investors from Argentina and the Netherlands have spent the past several years trying to bring Mennonite farming communities to Suriname from Belize, Mexico and Bolivia.
- Mennonite farmers have faced criticism for clearing thousands of hectares of forest across Latin America, often in protected areas and Indigenous territories.
- The company behind the project is called Terra Invest Suriname & Guyana, and plans to purchase as much as 30,000 hectares (about 74,000 acres) for approximately 1,000 Mennonite families.
Cacao and cupuaçu emerge as Amazon’s bioeconomy showcases
- A handful of pioneering Amazonian chocolatiers are promoting keeping the rainforest standing by taking advantage of two forest products: cacao and cupuaçu.
- Selling high-end chocolate made from both of these closely related pods increases the value of the products and also allows local communities to earn higher incomes, thereby giving them an incentive not to deforest.
- Portable biofactories are also set to teach traditional communities how to make bean-to-bar premium chocolate products, helping to increase the value of the raw cacao by up to 2,000%.
- These projects are part of an emerging bioeconomy in the Amazonian region, which experts say will keep the rainforest standing while also lifting the region’s population out of poverty.
EU bill and new green policies spur progress on Brazil’s cattle tracking
- Brazilian banks have created new rules for releasing credit to meatpackers and slaughterhouses in Amazonian states in which their clients must implement traceability and monitoring systems by 2025 to show that their cattle didn’t come from illegal deforestation.
- Even the powerful Brazilian Agriculture and Livestock Confederation (CNA) recognizes the cattle tracking demand and proposes a traceability model to the federal government.
- A new study shows that existing cattle companies’ zero-deforestation commitments have reduced Brazilian Amazon deforestation by 15% and that the devastation could be halved by scaling up the implementation of supply chain policies.
- The ideal animal tracking model is individual, but experts defend a middle-of-the-road solution to reduce illegal deforestation based on cross-referencing from inter-ranch cattle transport data and the Rural Environmental Registry (CAR).
In Roraima, Indigenous communities forge sustainable solutions amid threats
- Sustainable farming, mercury-free fishing and circular trade are among the strategies Amazon Indigenous peoples have been developing to survive in one of the most hostile states for Indigenous people in Brazil.
- Territorial and Environmental Management Plans (PGTAs) are one of the Indigenous-led tools for communities to create strategies to manage their natural resources and provide income for families in their territories.
- For long-term survival, these sustainable initiatives require investments, but previous experience has shown that a top-down approach is often counterproductive.
- But even as they achieve successes with various initiatives, monoculture agribusiness, illegal mining and land grabbing continue to threaten their livelihoods.
How the Amazon’s ‘greatest devastator’ sold cattle to a Carrefour supplier
- Arrested by Brazilian Federal Police, cattle rancher Bruno Heller and relatives have already received over $5 million in environmental fines. He is also suspected of land grabbing.
- Heller transported cattle from a family farm fined for environmental violations to two other properties free from environmental implications — this maneuver is an indication of the so-called “cattle laundering.”
- A Frialto Group meatpacking plant confirmed that it slaughtered 249 animals for the Heller family. The facility supplies Carrefour, but the French retail company states that the meat from animals raised by Heller did not reach its supermarkets.
Oil palm and balsa plantations trigger deforestation in Ecuadorian Amazon
- Roads constructed for the oil industry have facilitated timber extraction in the Amazon for decades. Recent deforestation alerts show that this problem is ongoing.
- In Via Auca, one of the most deforested areas of Ecuador’s Amazon, farmers are turning to planting oil palm under the contract farming model.
- On the Via a Loreto, Indigenous Kichwa people are focusing on cultivating balsa trees used for a material that has been in high demand in the wind energy industry for the last five years.
Despite lawsuit, Casino Group still sells beef from Amazonian Indigenous territory
- A new investigation shows that farms located in the Uru-Eu-Wau-Wau Indigenous Territory in the Brazilian Amazon supplied two JBS meatpacking plants that sell beef to brands of the French supermarket giant.
- In most cases, animals were not transferred directly from ranches in the Indigenous land to JBS, but went through different farms before arriving at slaughterhouses, when it was no longer possible to differentiate between cattle from the Indigenous land and others.
- This maneuver is known as ‘cattle laundering’ and aims to hide any potentially illegal origin of the animals.
- Casino said its suppliers are required to detail the supply route and that it directly rechecks all farms, but it’s up to meatpackers to monitor indirect suppliers; meanwhile, the meatpacker says it has no control over indirect suppliers.
Climate emergency may channel millions in resources toward corn-based ethanol in the Amazon
- An agribusiness magnate from the U.S., who is already the biggest producer of corn-based ethanol in Brazil, plans to leverage “green” investments from governments and banks to meet negative carbon emissions using an unproven method.
- His company is trying to implement in the Brazilian state of Mato Grosso a copy of his Midwest Carbon project, an initiative that plans to capture 12 million tons of carbon in ethanol plants and store them in North Dakota, below ground.
- Even though the company alleges that it is rigorously controlling the environmental practices of its corn suppliers in Brazil, an investigation found that the local executives are themselves connected to illegal deforestation in Mato Grosso.
Colombian chef spearheads a food-based bioeconomy in the Colombian Amazon
- Colombian chef Mauricio Velasco Castro, founder of Amazonico restaurant in Mocoa, Putumayo, has turned to the Amazon Rainforest for inspiration and identity; he hopes to help build a bioeconomy through food and sustainable ingredients and native medicinal and edible products.
- Amazonico gets its supplies from 22 small-scale producers from Putumayo, including from Indigenous communities and campesinos.
- The bioeconomy is an economic system based on renewable biological natural resources, and it is an integral part of Colombia’s new national plan created by President Gustavo Petro and approved by Congress in May; Petro has said the bioeconomy in Amazonia will be key to saving the rainforest and raising the region’s living standards.
Agro giants buy grains from farmers fined for using Indigenous land in Brazil
- Bunge, Cargill, COFCO, Amaggi, ADM do Brasil, Viterra and General Mills bought soy and corn in an area where “grain laundering” is admitted by producers and civil servants.
- The illegal crops came from areas on the border of the Amazon Rainforest which had restrictions for production, but the real origin of the grains were concealed through paperwork.
- The revelations come from a joint investigation by the Brazilian news outlets Repórter Brasil and O Joio e o Trigo.
Amazon Rainforest loss could reach new height in just 5 years, study says
- A recent study has found that in the five-year period between 2021 and 2025, the Amazon could lose half the total forest cover it lost in the previous 20 years, amounting to a further loss of 237,058 square kilometers (91,529 square miles).
- From 2001-20, the rainforest lost more than 500,000 km2 (200,000 mi2) of forest cover, an area larger than Spain, mostly because of road development, agricultural expansion and mining.
- Deforestation rates continue to accelerate in almost all nine Amazonian countries, especially in Brazil, Bolivia, Peru and Colombia.
- Implementing efficient public policies and strengthening control and monitoring are essential to reduce rising deforestation rates, but experts warn economic interests often clash with conservation efforts in the Amazon.
Logging permit threatens Quilombola bioeconomic ‘paradise’ in the Amazon
- Loggers have entered the Trombetas River Biological Reserve in Oriximiná, in Brazil’s Pará state, to develop a forest management project that has divided the local Quilombola community.
- The reserve is known for its successful bioeconomy project, but the association representing the six local communities signed a contract with a logging company to explore timber in the area.
- The Quilombola say they weren’t properly consulted about the contract and the Public Ministry of Pará recommended interrupting actions for timber management, but the association says it will not suspend the work without a judicial order.
- The Quilombola territory is part of the mosaic of protected areas between the Amazon River and the border with Suriname and Guyana, one of the largest continuous forest blocks in the world.
Brazil’s Indigenous groups demand a voice in new soybean railway project
- The Ferrogrão railway project was conceived with a view to reducing transportation costs between the Brazilian states of Mato Grosso and Pará, where soybeans are one of the main export products.
- The railway has been met with resistance from the region’s Indigenous peoples, who will be impacted by the socio-environmental risks associated with the project.
- A study by the Federal University of Minas Gerais highlighted that the Ferrogrão railway line will cross several Indigenous territories in the Xingu River Basin, something that could see more than 230,000 hectares (568,000 acres) of rainforest lost to deforestation in Indigenous territories in the state of Mato Grosso by 2035; more than half of this would be in the Xingu Indigenous Park alone.
- After the project was suspended by Brazil’s Supreme Court in 2021, it has since been marked as a priority by the current government and its future will be decided by the Court’s plenary session in May this year.
Deforestation could pose disease threat to Amazon’s white-lipped peccaries
- White-lipped peccaries are vital ecosystem engineers and an important source of food for people living in the Amazon.
- Deforestation has reduced their habitat and, in addition, researchers highlight that disease is an understudied factor in their conservation.
- Scientists say it could represent an additional threat to an already vulnerable species, as continuing deforestation and expanding agricultural frontiers can bring greater contact between domestic animals and wildlife, potentially leading to spillover events.
Bolivia has a soy deforestation problem. It’s worse than previously thought.
- Recently released satellite data from Bolivia shows that soy plantations were responsible for over 900,000 hectares (2.2 million acres) of deforestation between 2001 and 2021.
- Nearly a quarter of the deforestation was caused by Mennonite communities, who purchased the land legally in hopes of expanding their simple, rural lifestyles.
- This better understanding of Mennonite activity in Bolivia comes from a new data set from Global Forest Watch, which combined soy plantation mapping with forest loss imagery to determine soy-driven deforestation.
Lula wants to mirror Amazon’s lessons in all biomes, but challenges await
- A new decree intends to protect all of Brazil’s biomes and promote sustainable development in arguably one of the country’s most ambitious environmental policies to date.
- The mandate establishes action plans for the Amazon Rainforest, Cerrado savanna, Atlantic Forest, semi-arid Caatinga, Pampas grasslands and Pantanal wetlands, based on past strategies in the Amazon that have already proven successful against deforestation.
- Environmentalists have welcomed the decree amid the country’s surging deforestation levels and rising greenhouse emissions during the past four years under Jair Bolsonaro’s rule.
- The decree’s implementation won’t be easy, experts warn, and its success depends on coordinated action across all levels of the government, increased personnel in struggling environmental enforcement agencies and highly tailored plans for each biome.
Violence in Brazil’s Amazon are also crimes against humanity, lawyers tell international court
- Three organizations, including Greenpeace Brazil, filed a case with the International Criminal Court (ICC) pressing for the investigation into a network of politicians, law enforcement and business executives they suspect are responsible for systematic attacks against land defenders.
- They documented over 400 murders, 500 attempted murders, 2,200 death threats, 2,000 assaults and 80 cases of torture that occurred between 2011 and 2022.
- Former Brazil President Jair Bolsonaro is one suspect in these crimes, yet the organizations say the attacks are part of a larger system operating in Brazil, and will likely continue even when he’s out of office.
- If the criminal court choses to go forward with this case, it will be the first time they investigate crimes against humanity committed in the context of environmental destruction.
Deforestation ‘out of control’ in reserve in Brazil’s cattle capital
- Forest destruction has ravaged Triunfo do Xingu, a reserve earmarked for sustainable use that has nonetheless become one of the most deforested slices of the Brazilian Amazon.
- Fires burned swaths of the reserve in recent months and forest clearing has surged, with satellite images showing even the most remote remnants of old-growth rainforest were whittled away last year.
- Advocates say the forest is mainly giving way to cattle pasture, although illegal mining and land grabbing are gaining ground.
- The destruction, facilitated by lax environmental regulation, is placing pressure on nearby protected areas and undermining agroforestry efforts in Triunfo do Xingu, advocates say.
Weakening of agrarian reform program increases violence against settlers in Brazilian Amazon
- Residents of a landless workers’ settlement in Anapu, Pará state, in Brazil’s Amazon region, accuse the federal government of favoring large landowners, land-grabbers and corporations at the expense of poor and landless peasants.
- This year, the settlers have already suffered three attacks by landowners, with houses set on fire and a school destroyed.
- In 2021, Incra, the Brazilian federal agency responsible for addressing the country’s deep inequalities in rural land use and ownership, made an agreement with the mining company Belo Sun, which ceded 2,400 hectares (5,930 acres) of an area reserved for agrarian reform for gold exploration in exchange for equipment and a percentage of mining profits.
- In protest, landless peasants occupied one of the areas included in the agreement; since then, they have been threatened and intimidated by Belo Sun supporters and armed security guards hired by the mining company.
From deforestation to restoration: Policy plots path to Amazon recovery
- Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, Brazil’s new president, took office and promised to halt deforestation and to restore degraded land but plans to regenerate deforested areas remain unclear.
- The Science Panel for the Amazon at the COP27 climate summit provided the scientific basis to guide debates and decisions around the large-scale recovery of deforested and degraded areas.
- The most significant opportunity for large-scale and low-cost restoration is concentrated in public forests, protected areas and Indigenous lands that have suffered recent degradation.
- For areas with high levels of degradation, especially on private lands, productive restoration models capable of providing sustainable economic development are the main bet.
In Brazil’s Amazon, land grabbers scramble to claim disputed Indigenous reserve
- The Apyterewa Indigenous Territory has been under federal protection since 2007, but in recent years has become one of the most deforested reserves in Brazil, as loggers, ranchers and miners have invaded and razed swaths of forest.
- As President Jair Bolsonaro prepares to leave office, land grabbers are rushing to “deforest while there is still time,” advocates say, with forest clearing in Apyterewa on track to hit new highs this year.
- The surge in invasions has aggravated a decades-long tussle for land between Indigenous people and settlers, who first started trickling into Apyterewa in the 1980s and have since built villages, schools and churches within the reserve.
- The Parakanã people say the outsiders, new and old, are polluting their water sources, depleting forest resources, and threatening their traditional way of life.
Mongabay’s top Amazon stories from 2022
- Violence against activists and Indigenous people in the Amazon has made world headlines, with little progress on tackling impunity.
- The victory of Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva in Brazil’s presidential race and a more prominent role in the government for Indigenous representatives have brought more hope around slashing deforestation and preventing the Amazon from reaching a point of no return.
- Infrastructure and mining projects have continued sprouting across the Amazon basin, threatening the livelihoods of Indigenous people and driving more forest loss.
- Deforestation rates in Brazil dropped by about 11% in 2022, but an overview of President Jair Bolsonaro’s term shows the worst forest loss in decades.
Amazon-produced cacao offers climate solutions
- Cacao plantations in the Brazilian state of Pará have helped to recover about 150,000 hectares (370,660 acres) of degraded land in the last 25 years.
- The Brazilian government has supported agroforestry within key commercial crops, such as cacao, to fight rampant deforestation in the Amazon and offset carbon.
- By 2030, another 250,000 cacao trees are expected to be planted in the region, according to some sources, increasing cacao’s currently cultivated area by 25%.
- One hectare of cacao plantation under an agroforestry system can remove 165 tons of carbon from the atmosphere, Brazilian research shows, which could make carbon markets an attractive opportunity for farmers in the Amazon.
How agroforestry can restore degraded lands and provide income in the Amazon
- As Brazil prepares to turn the page on the Bolsonaro government, finding sustainable and economically viable alternatives for the Amazon region remains challenging.
- Advocates tout agroforestry as a sustainable farming alternative to soy monocultures and cattle ranching. It can restore degraded pastures and provide a stable income for small farmers.
- One such project is RECA, a sustainable farming cooperative and an agroforestry pioneer in Brazil’s Amazon, with more than 30 years of experience.
- Yet expertise, financing, scale, science and technology are significant challenges.
To be effective, zero-deforestation pledges need a critical mass, study shows
- The importance of rapidly halting tropical deforestation to achieve net-zero emissions was a key message at this year’s climate summit, but corporate efforts to this end have stalled for decades.
- Cattle, soy and palm oil are the main commodities driving deforestation and destruction of other important ecosystems. Zero-deforestation commitments from the companies that trade in those commodities are seen as an important way to reduce deforestation globally.
- A new study compares the effectiveness of corporate commitments to reduce soy-related deforestation in the Brazilian Amazon and Cerrado, showing that zero-deforestation commitments can reduce deforestation locally, but only if there is widespread adoption and implementation among both small and big soy traders.
- Overall, the study points to the limitations of relying just on supply chain agreements to reduce regional deforestation and protect biodiverse ecosystems, and highlights the need for strong public-private partnerships.
Brazil’s new environmental future under Lula: Q&A with Marina Silva
- Considered for Brazil’s Ministry of the Environment, environmentalist Marina Silva says in an interview with Mongabay that the election of Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva means a new cycle of prosperity for the country, “when it will be possible to make the transition to a new development model that is capable of fighting inequality with democracy and sustainability.”
- “Part of the agribusiness sector is realizing that this practice by Bolsonaro is bad for business,” the congresswoman-elect said about the possibility of reconciling the environmental agenda and the demands of agribusiness.
- Silva stressed that the current challenges are much greater than those faced when she was a member of Lula’s first administration in 2003: “We are not going to become sustainable in the blink of an eye. It’s a transition.”
Delayed Indigenous ‘Man of the Hole’ burial reveals dispute over his land
- A court ruling ordered Brazil’s Indigenous agency Funai to bury the remains of the Indigenous Tanaru man, known as the “Man of the Hole,” three months after his death, following 26 years of solitude as the last member of his tribe.
- Critics accuse Funai’s president, Marcelo Xavier, of working in favor of local agribusiness interests by deliberately stalling the funeral to help farmers claim the rights to the land.
- The delay of his burial was partly due to a debate over what will happen to the land where the Indigenous man lived, which is covered in Amazon rainforest and is currently protected by a restriction of use ordinance until 2025.
- The Federal Public Ministry and Amazon activists call for the land to be permanently preserved, while local farmers claim they are the owners and demand the restrictions of use be revoked to allow for agricultural expansion.
Growing soy on cattle pasture can eliminate Amazon deforestation in Brazil
- Expanding soy cultivation into underutilized cattle pastureland would help prevent massive deforestation and carbon emissions compared to the current practice of clearing new forest for farmland, a new study says.
- Experts say that Brazil, the world’s No. 1 soy producer and beef exporter, has enough pastureland lying unused that would allow soy production to increase by more than a third without any further deforestation.
- Researchers warn that if Brazil continues with its current method of soy cultivation, it would end up clearing 5.7 million hectares (14 million acres) of Amazon rainforest and Cerrado savanna into cropland over the next 15 years.
- Environmentalists have welcomed intensifying agriculture as a solution to deforestation, but have raised concerns about the potential for increased pesticide use, biodiversity loss, and the expansion of cattle ranching into forested areas.
Bolsonaro loses election but finds big support in Amazon Arc of Deforestation
- In a close runoff, incumbent Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro was defeated in his reelection bid against former President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva.
- Bolsonaro, however, won in eight of the 10 Brazilian municipalities with the biggest deforestation rates in the Amazon forest last year.
- Bolsonaro won in the majority of the 256 municipalities in the Arc of Deforestation, which accounts for about 75% of the deforestation in the Amazon, as well as in Novo Progresso, in Pará, where ranchers, loggers and land-grabbers orchestrated a significant burning of deforested areas in 2019.
- Historical, economic, social and religious elements explain the preference for Bolsonaro in a swath of Brazilian territory where people have been encouraged to cut the forest down.
At the mouth of the Amazon, sustainable açaí leaves a sweet taste for communities
- Residents of the Bailique Archipelago, which lies at the mouth of the Amazon River, established a community protocol to promote their traditional açaí cultivation and strengthen their cultural identity.
- In 2016, the açaí collected by Amazonbai, the local cooperative composed of more than 2,000 people, became the world’s first and only açaí production chain to gain Forest Stewardship Council certification.
- A key challenge to this sustainable livelihood is the increasing saltwater intrusion into the islands’ water sources, the result of both climatic factors and human interference in the regional landscape.
Beef is still coming from protected areas in the Amazon, study shows
- According to a new study, 1.1 million cattle were bought directly from protected areas and another 2.2 million spent at least a portion of their lives grazing in protected areas and Indigenous territories.
- Researchers compiled public records on cattle transit, property boundaries and protected area boundaries between 2013 and 2018. The study period ended in 2018 because, “at the start of 2019, this critical information became less available,” the lead author said.
- Under Brazil’s current President Jair Bolsonaro, who was elected at the start of 2019, the country has seen policies weakening various environmental protections and monitoring agencies, and deforestation has reached its highest levels in 15 years.
- Around 70% of deforestation in the Amazon has been linked to cattle ranching. Meat producers have made commitments to stop sourcing from illegally deforested lands, but a lack of information about where cattle are grazing has allowed many companies to escape accountability.
Mongabay probe key as Brazil court rules on palm oil pesticide contamination
- Prosecutors in Brazil say the findings from a Mongabay investigation were key to obtaining a court decision this week to probe the environmental impacts of pesticides used by oil palm plantations on Indigenous communities and the environment in northern Pará state.
- On Oct. 4, the Federal Circuit Court for the First Region in Brasília approved a forensic investigation into pesticide contamination and the socioenvironmental and health impacts in the Turé-Mariquita Indigenous Territory and the production zone of the country’s largest palm oil operation in the Tomé-Açú region.
- The green light to carry out the expert report was finally issued eight years after the Federal Public Ministry (MPF) filed a lawsuit to hold palm oil company Biopalma — acquired by Brasil BioFuels S.A. (BBF) in late 2020 — accountable for environmental impacts.
- A 2017 University of Brasília study, contained in the Mongabay investigation, found traces of three pesticides (two of them typically listed among those used in oil palm cultivation) in the major streams and wells used by the Tembé people in Turé-Mariquita.
European bill passes to ban imports of deforestation-linked commodities
- Imports of 14 types of commodities into the European Union will soon have to be verified for possible association with deforestation in the countries in which they were produced.
- That’s the key provision in a bill passed on Sept. 13 by the European Parliament, which initially targeted soy, beef, palm oil, timber, cocoa, and coffee, but now also includes pork, lamb and goat meat, as well as poultry, corn, rubber, charcoal, and printed paper.
- The bill still needs the approval of the Council of the EU and the national parliaments of the 27 countries in the bloc, but is already considered a historic step against deforestation.
- In Brazil, experts have welcomed the bill as a means of tackling the demand-side pressures driving increasing levels of deforestation in the Amazon Rainforest, while the agribusiness lobby has denounced it as unfair.
Bolsonaro trails in polls, but his base in Congress looks likely to persist
- With Brazil’s presidential election scheduled for Oct. 2, environmental activists have expressed hope that a turning point in favor of nature could be just weeks away if Jair Bolsonaro loses.
- But two-thirds of the current lower house of Congress voted for anti-environmental bills, and experts predict that the profile of the lawmakers will remain right-wing and pro-agribusiness.
- Deforestation in the Amazon rose to its highest levels in 10 years under Bolsonaro, who vowed to open up the rainforest to agriculture and mining.
- However, experts say a greener agenda could be possible depending on who is appointed the next lower and upper house presidents, a decision that will be made early next year.
Crimes against the Amazon reverberate across Brazil, analysis shows
- Crimes associated with illegal logging, mining and other illicit activities in the Brazilian Amazon are being felt in 24 of Brazil’s 27 states, a new report shows.
- Records of more than 300 Federal Police operations between 2016 and 2021 show that crimes such as tax evasion, money laundering, corruption and wildlife trafficking are reverberating far beyond the rainforest.
- Deforestation is at the center of the criminal economy in the Amazon, driving four main illegal activities: logging, mining, occupation of public lands, and environmental violations associated with agriculture.
- Nearly half of the police operations investigated crimes that occurred in protected areas in the Amazon, including 37 Indigenous territories.
Venezuelan Amazon deforestation expands due to lawlessness, mining, fires: Reports
- Multiple recent reports show that deforestation has greatly increased in Venezuela’s Amazonian states of Bolívar and Amazonas, largely due to illegal mining, expanded agriculture and fires.
- Venezuelan protected areas have been especially hard hit, with illegal incursions and major deforestation occurring inside Caura, Canaima and Yapacana national parks.
- Soaring deforestation rates are blamed partly on Colombian guerrillas operating illegally within Venezuela’s borders, an invasion that one report alleges has been supported by the government of Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro.
- Forest loss has been well confirmed via satellite, while ground truthing has been obtained via firsthand accounts.
Commodity kings Cargill, Bunge buying soy from stolen Indigenous land, report says
- Commodity-trading giants Cargill and Bunge source some of the soy used in products like chicken feed and pet food to land where Indigenous communities have suffered violence and displacement, according to a new report from Earthsight, an organization investigating environmental and social injustices.
- The companies have ties to a 9,700-hectare (24,000-acre) soy farm in the state of Mato Grosso do Sul that operates on the ancestral land of the Guarani Kaiowá, an Indigenous group that has spent the last several decades fighting forced eviction.
- Earthsight has documented supply chain links between soy from the Brasília do Sul farm and chicken retailers like KFC, Sainsbury’s, Asda, Aldi and Iceland, as well as German supermarket chains like Rewe Markt, Netto Marken-Discount, Lidl, Aldi and Edeka.
- Earthsight said Cargill and Bunge need to take a firmer stance on Indigenous rights rather than passing off responsibility to intermediaries or deferring to legal loopholes.
Big banks fund the heavy machinery used for Amazon deforestation, report says
- A new report from investigative outlet Repórter Brasil describes how the demand for heavy machinery like bulldozers, excavators and tractors is accelerating deforestation in the Brazilian Amazon.
- Heavy machinery is present at most steps of the process of nearly every activity driving deforestation, including cattle ranching, industrial agriculture and mining, among others.
- A lack of oversight by the government, manufacturers and the banks providing loans for the purchase of the machinery means that almost anyone can acquire one for any purpose.
- The report suggests that GPS tracking technologies be implemented for all heavy machinery and that banks carry out more rigorous due diligence measures.
From agribusiness to oil to nuclear power and submarines: welcome to anti-environmental Putin-Bolsonaro alliance (commentary)
- Brazil’s dependence on Russian fertilizers has contributed to Jair Bolsonaro’s friendly relationship with Vladimir Putin as well as environmental impacts in the South American nation.
- In this editorial Nikolas Kozloff, an American academic, author and photojournalist, reviews some of the implications of the growing ties between the two leaders, including deforestation in the Amazon, extractive industries, and infrastructure projects.
- This article is a commentary. The views expressed are those of the author, not necessarily of Mongabay.
Foreign capital powers Brazil’s meatpackers and helps deforest the Amazon
- To conquer the world market, Brazil’s Big Three beef packers — JBS, Marfrig and Minerva — invited in foreign capital. Today, all three are transnationals, with the original Brazilian founders owning only minority shares in their own companies.
- Foreign investors, including asset management companies and pension funds, now own large stakes, which means that ordinary citizens in the United States and elsewhere are helping fund Amazon deforestation through their investments.
- The three Brazilian families behind the Big Three have remarkable rags-to-riches histories, though with the speed of their expansion and dominance greatly assisted by the Brazilian government, keen to produce “National Champions.”
- The companies expanded rapidly abroad, but their presence in the U.S. means they are now subject to greater scrutiny from authorities and NGOs. However, most small-scale investors, including working people, have no awareness they’re investing in the destruction of the Amazon, one of the world’s most crucial carbon sinks.
A new index measures the human impacts on Amazon waters
- Based on the best scientific data available, the unprecedented Amazon Water Impact Index draws together monitoring and research data to identify the most vulnerable areas of the Brazilian Amazon.
- According to the index, 20% of the 11,216 Brazilian Amazon micro basins have an impact considered high, very high or extreme; half of these watersheds are affected by hydroelectric plants.
- The same index points out that 323 of the 385 Indigenous Lands in the Brazilian Amazon face a medium to low impact, which demonstrates the fundamental role of these areas in protecting the aquatic ecosystems of the Amazon.
- The Amazon River Basin covers 7 million square kilometers (2.7 million square miles) and contains 20% of all freshwater on the Earth’s surface; still, little is known about the impacts of increased human activity on aquatic ecosystems.
Brazil bill seeks to redraw Amazon borders in favor of agribusiness
- A new bill before Brazil’s Congress proposes cutting out the state of Mato Grosso from the country’s legally defined Amazon region to allow greater deforestation there for agribusiness.
- Under the bill, known as PL 337, requirements to maintain Amazonian vegetation in the state at 80% of a rural property’s area, and 35% for Cerrado vegetation, would be slashed to just 20% for both.
- The approval of the bill would allow for an increase in deforestation of at least 10 million hectares (25 million acres) — an area the size of South Korea — and exempt farmers from having to restore degraded areas on their properties.
- Environmental law specialists warn that the departure of Mato Grosso from under the administrative umbrella of the Legal Amazon would set off a domino effect encouraging the eight other states in the region to push for similar bills.
‘Giving up’: Amazon is losing its resilience under human pressure, study shows
- The Amazon Rainforest is losing its ability to bounce back from repeated disturbances, according to a new study.
- Researchers found that three-quarters of the Amazon has lost some resilience, or ability to regain biomass after disturbance. This loss of resilience is especially high in regions close to human activity and with less rainfall.
- As the forest is slashed, burned and degraded, it’s left with less vegetation, which means less evapotranspiration, leading to less rain. And less rain leads to further droughts, fires, tree death and forest degradation — a feedback loop of destruction and loss of resilience.
- The lead author describes the findings as “depressing” but also says that “having an early warning of this gives us a chance to do something about it … Rather than focusing on the trajectory the Amazon is on, we can instead try and change it.”
2021 Amazon deforestation map shows devastating impact of ranching, agriculture
- Amazon Conservation’s Monitoring of the Andean Amazon Project (MAAP) found that around 1.9 million hectares (4.8 million acres) of the Amazon were lost last year, mostly in Brazil and Bolivia.
- The mapping data shine a light on the different causes of deforestation in each country, including agriculture, cattle ranching and road construction.
- The data also provide some positive takeaways, such as Peru’s successful crackdown on illegal mining, and a contiguous core section of Amazonian forest still acting as a carbon sink.
John Deere and Brazilian bank team up to equip farmers deforesting the Amazon
- Farmers whose properties have been embargoed by environmental authorities in Brazil for deforestation have still been able to access government-subsidized loans to buy John Deere tractors, an investigation has found.
- The five farmers identified in the investigation received a combined 28.6 million reais ($5.4 million) in loans under a program administered by the state-owned Brazilian Development Bank (BNDES) and underwritten by John Deere Bank, a wholly owned subsidiary of the U.S. farm equipment manufacturer.
- Under Central Bank rules, farms that have been embargoed for deforestation are barred from accessing credit, but a loophole allows the farm owners to apply on the basis of a different property; in some cases, lender oversight was so lax that the farmers didn’t need to resort to this subterfuge.
- In addition to being embargoed, some of the farmers also had outstanding fines for environmental violations; one of them still owed 18 million reais ($3.4 million), yet went on to receive 11 million reais ($2.1 million) in loans.
Cattle boom in Brazil’s Acre spells doom for Amazon rainforest, activists warn
- Government data show the number of cattle in Acre, a state in the Brazilian Amazon, increased by 8.3% in 2020, putting the state’s herd size at more than 3.8 million, or four times its human population.
- The cattle industry is a key driver of Acre’s economy, and aligns with the state’s aims of promoting and expanding agricultural development within the region.
- However, activists say they’re concerned the increase will lead to further environmental damage in the state, which this year recorded its highest deforestation rate in 18 years.
- Experts say Acre’s cattle growth is currently not sustainable and will lead to further deforestation in the Amazon unless sustainable solutions are encouraged and implemented.
Across Latin America, Mennonites seek out isolation at the expense of forests
- A conservative religious group called Low German Mennonites has been accused of ongoing deforestation in Central and South America and encroaching on Indigenous communities’ land.
- They started migrating to Latin America from Canada more than 100 years ago, after refusing to integrate into modernizing society.
- With a reputation for being successful farmers, the group was granted privileges by Latin American governments that have played a facilitating role in the continuous expansion into previously untouched forest landscapes.
Mongabay reporter sued in what appears to be a pattern of legal intimidation by Peruvian cacao company
- A Peruvian cacao company that sued a Mongabay Latam writer for reporting on its deforestation in the Amazon has also targeted others in what lawyers said appears to be a pattern of intimidation.
- Tamshi, formerly Cacao del Perú Norte SAC, had its lawsuit against Mongabay Latam’s Yvette Sierra Praeli thrown out by a court in November.
- A separate lawsuit against four environment ministry officials, including the one who led the prosecution of the company, has also been dropped, although it may still be appealed.
- In a third lawsuit, environmental activist Lucila Pautrat, who documented farmers’ allegations against Tamshi, was handed a two-year suspended sentence and fine, but is appealing the decision.
In Brazil, an agribusiness haven’s green pivot leaves many skeptical
- The Amacro project was conceived in early 2020 as an agribusiness hub in a heavily deforested part of the Brazilian Amazon, but a year later is being touted as a hub for sustainable business.
- Now renamed the Abunã-Madeira Sustainable Development Area (ZDS), it stretches across 32 municipalities in the states of Amazonas, Acre and Rondônia, which last year accounted for nearly a quarter of the total deforestation in the Brazilian Amazon.
- The ZDS project aims to attract investments into a wide range of sectors, from agroforestry and fish farming, to tourism and logistics, as well as the agribusiness, while promising to avoid deforestation through technology to help boost agricultural productivity.
- Despite these green claims, prosecutors and nonprofit researchers say the prospect of new investment is already boosting land grabbing and deforestation in the area, and argue the best way to halt deforestation is to create protected areas — something that’s not included in the ZDS project.
Brazil leads Amazon in forest loss this year, Indigenous and protected areas hold out
- Satellite imagery brings us a first look at this year’s deforestation hotspots, areas where forest cover was lost in high densities across the Amazon, amounting to more than 860,000 hectares (2.1 million acres).
- The majority of deforestation (76%) occurred in Brazil and was clustered around roads, according to a recent report from Amazon Conservation’s Monitoring of the Andean Amazon Project (MAAP); many of the areas deforested this year in Brazil have also burned.
- In Colombia, deforestation hotspots this year were in and around numerous protected areas, including Tinigua and Chiribiquete national parks, as well as Indigenous reserves, particularly Yari-Yaguara II and Nukak Maku; in Peru, rice farming and a new Mennonite colony drove recent deforestation.
- Of primary forests loss across the western Amazon between 2017 and 2020, three-quarters were outside protected areas and Indigenous territories, highlighting the importance of these key land use designations for safeguarding the remaining Amazon rainforest.
Amazon, meet Amazon: Tech giant rolls out rainforest carbon offset project
- Tech giant Amazon has announced a nature-based carbon removal project in the Brazilian Amazon Rainforest in partnership with The Nature Conservancy (TNC).
- The project will help small farmers produce sustainable agricultural produce through reforestation and regenerative agroforestry programs, in exchange for carbon credits that will go to the internet company.
- Called the Agroforestry and Restoration Accelerator, the initiative is expected to support 3,000 small farmers in Pará state and restore an area the size of Seattle in the first three years, and in the process remove up to 10 million metric tons of carbon dioxide from the atmosphere through 2050.
- In addition to addressing climate and social issues, the partners say the project intends to address the shortcomings of the carbon credit market by creating new standards for the industry.
Climate change threatens traditional extractive communities in the Amazon
- Traditional peoples in the Amazon are already experiencing the scientific community’s warnings that rising temperatures will impact those who depend on the forest for their livelihood.
- Brazil nuts, açaí berries, andiroba oil, copaíba oil, rubber, cacao and cupuaçu fruits are some of the products at risk of disappearance or reduced production in the next 30 years.
- In addition to climate change’s environmental impact on these resources, the social impact will likely bring worsening poverty and an exodus of traditional peoples to urban areas.
Grain production depends on ending deforestation, studies show
- Recent scientific studies confirm what Brazilian farmers already feel in practice: the uncontrolled production of agricultural commodities is destroying the productivity and profits of agribusiness itself, a cycle researchers are calling “agro-suicide.”
- Regions such as the southern Amazon and Matopiba (the borderland between the Brazilian states of Maranhão, Tocantins, Piauí and Bahia) in the Cerrado savanna are the most affected by lack of rain, prolonged rains and waves of extreme heat.
- Resulting financial losses are expected to reach at least $4.5 billion annually by 2050, according to a conservative estimate; if deforestation continues unchecked, damage could reach $9 billion per year.
- Though grim, the scenario can still be reversed; one recommendation from the study is to adopt a moratorium on soy in the Cerrado, inspired by the Amazon Soy Moratorium.
Brazil punching below its weight in getting forest products to the world
- Brazil may have given its name to the Brazil nut, but it exports less than 6% of the global export market of the nut, while Bolivia supplies 52%.
- That’s one of several key findings from new research that shows that Brazil, home to a third of all tropical forests, is punching well below its own weight when it comes to the value of its exports of forest-derived commodities.
- Experts highlight several key obstacles preventing production and export of these commodities from being scaled up, including logistics, lack of technical expertise and equipment, and costly certification requirements for breaking into markets like the EU.
- Proponents say ramping up production and exports of forest commodities could be the key to achieving economic and social development in the Brazilian Amazon, as well as a way of reviving vast swaths of degraded and abandoned areas.
Why we need the government to curb Amazon deforestation? (commentary)
- Deforestation is rising in the Brazilian Amazon, with last year’s forest loss reaching the high level since 2008.
- Brazilian lawyers Daniela Castro, the founder and CEO of Impacta Advocacy, and Silvia Gonçalves, head of projects at Impacta Advocacy, argue that combatting deforestation in Brazil requires government intervention.
- “Without government action, there won’t be better days for the rainforest,” write Castro and Gonçalves. “The fact is only the government has the resources, institutions and power on a scale capable of halting deforestation.”
- This post is a commentary. The views expressed are those of the author, not necessarily Mongabay.
More than 250 major fires detected in the Amazon this year, despite Brazil’s ban
- There have been 267 major fires detected in the Amazon this year, burning more than 105,000 hectares (260,000 acres) — an area roughly the size of Los Angeles, California.
- More than 75% of these fires blazed in the Brazilian Amazon, in areas where trees have been cut to make way for agriculture, despite a June 27 ban on unauthorized outdoor fires by the Brazilian government.
- The first forest fires of the season have also been detected, those that have escaped pastures and burned standing Amazon rainforest, where fires are not historically naturally occurring.
- A historic drought, rampant deforestation, and lax environmental regulations mean this year is likely to be a bad year for fires, experts say.
As blazes on embargoed Amazon land surge, links to meat industry emerge
- An analysis of fires on land sanctioned for illegal deforestation show the number of major fires has increased during Jair Bolsonaro’s administration.
- Brazil’s largest meatpackers have sourced hundreds of head of cattle from a farmer in Mato Grosso state linked to repeated cases of deforestation resulting in multiple embargoes and subsequent fires.
- Published in cooperation with the Bureau of Investigative Journalism, these findings raise serious questions about the effectiveness and enforcement of Brazil’s embargo system and undermine the “deforestation-free” claims of multinational meat companies and their international customers.
Lessons from Brazil’s São Paulo droughts (commentary)
- São Paulo is increasingly facing severe droughts, as is the case in 2021. In 2014 the city came close to having its reservoirs run dry. Brazil’s agriculture and hydropower also depend on reliable rains.
- Anthropogenic climate change is increasing the fluctuations in ocean surface water temperatures, and the frequency is increasing of the combination of warm water in the Atlantic and cold water in the Pacific off the coasts of South America, a combination that leads to droughts in São Paulo.
- The trends in ocean temperatures are expected to worsen these droughts, but what could make them truly catastrophic is the prospect of this variation being combined with the impact of deforestation depriving São Paulo of the water that is recycled by the Amazon forest and transported to southeastern Brazil by the “flying rivers.” The lessons are clear: control global warming and stop deforestation.
- This post is a commentary. The views expressed are those of the author, not necessarily Mongabay.
New index measuring rainforest vulnerability to sound alarm on tipping points
- The new Tropical Forest Vulnerability Index (TFVI) will use satellite data to assess the impact of growing threats such as land clearance and rising temperatures on forests.
- Backed by the National Geographic Society and Swiss watchmaker Rolex, TFVI aims to identify forests most at risk, to be prioritized for conservation efforts.
- Researchers combined 40 years of satellite measurements and forest observations covering tropical forests worldwide to come up with the standardized monitoring system.
- In recent years, multiple stressors have pushed forests to a tipping point, causing them to gradually lose their ecological functions, including their capacity to store carbon and recycle water, the study says.
Soy and cattle team up to drive deforestation in South America: Study
- Between 2000 and 2019, the production of soybean in South America has doubled, covering an area larger than the state of California.
- Soybean farms are typically planted in old cattle pastures, and as soy encroaches, pasture is forced into new frontiers, driving deforestation and fires.
- Although soy was found to be largely an indirect driver of deforestation, policies addressing deforestation have to consider multiple commodities at once, such as the relationship between beef and soy.
- Increased commitments by companies to source from “zero-deforestation” supply chains are a promising strategy, but in order to work, the market needs to be more transparent.
Fire season intensifies in the Brazilian Amazon, feeding off deforestation
- Twenty-four major fires have burned in the Brazilian Amazon so far this year, all of them set on land previously deforested in 2020, until this week when the first major blaze was set on land cleared in 2021.
- Experts are expecting this to be a bad year for fires, owing to a historic drought, high levels of deforestation, and a lack of funding for environmental law enforcement.
- President Jair Bolsonaro signed a decree on June 23 to send Brazilian soldiers into the Amazon to curb deforestation (which often precedes fires), but one expert calls this a “smokescreen” that would allow deforestation to continue.
- Deforestation rates have been higher under Bolsonaro than any past president: in 2020, Brazil lost a Central Park-sized area of forest every two hours, and on the day with the highest rate of deforestation, July 31, an estimated 2 million trees were cut down.
Farmers in the Amazon could earn 9 times more and prevent ecosystem collapse
- In this opinion piece, Jonah Wittkamper, Alexander Borges Rose, and Denis Minev argue that agroforestry in the Amazon “can replace cattle, generate new wealth, create jobs and develop new economic zones that insulate pristine forest from deforestation risk.”
- “The opportunity is huge and the needs are urgent,” they write. “If landowners switched from producing soy to a polyculture of fruit and horticultural products, their income would more than triple.”
- This article is a commentary. The views expressed are those of the author, not necessarily Mongabay.
Bigger is badder when it comes to climate impact of farms in the Amazon
- A 20-year analysis of satellite data shows significant temperature differences in agricultural lands in southern Amazonia, depending on farm size.
- Extensively deforested commercial farms are up to 3 °C (5.4 °F) warmer than adjacent forests, while on smaller farms this difference is 1.85 °C (3.3 °F).
- Management practices that try to balance productivity with the maintenance of essential ecosystem services, such as the water cycle, will be crucial to preserving the Amazon’s remaining forests, the study’s authors say.
Slash-and-burn clearing nears Indigenous park as Brazil’s fire season ignites
- Xingu Indigenous Park shields one of the last remaining large tracts of old growth rainforest in Brazil’s “arc of deforestation,” and is inhabited by dozens of Indigenous communities.
- The park experienced a jump in deforestation in 2020, quadrupling the amount of primary forest it lost in 2019.
- Most of this deforestation was caused by wildfires, which likely spread from slash-and-burn activity on nearby agricultural fields.
- Satellite data and imagery show agricultural fields and fires expanding towards the park in 2021 despite a prohibition on dry-season burning and a drought the likes of which haven’t been seen in nearly a century.
New areas of primary forest cleared in Brazil’s ‘lawless’ Lábrea
- Satellite imagery reveals several areas of primary rainforest were cleared alongside agricultural fields in Lábrea municipality in the Brazilian Amazon.
- The deforestation occurred in four areas and covers around 2,115 hectares (5,226 acres), all in close proximity to Indigenous and protected lands.
- Lábrea municipality has been called a “crime factory,” where its remote location and lack of law enforcement act as a catalyst for illegal deforestation and land grabbing.
- Forest destruction in the Brazilian Amazon hit a 14-year high for the month of May, amounting to 118,000 hectares (292,000 acres), an area roughly 20 times the size of Manhattan.
The Brazilian Amazon is burning, again
- In recent weeks, nine major fires have been burning in the Brazilian Amazon, heralding an unsettling start to another fire season—which experts say could be a bad one after a particularly dry year.
- The first major fire of the year occurred on May 19, near the border of Serra Ricardo Franco State Park in the state of Mato Grosso, Brazil, where all of the nine major fires have occurred averaging around 200 hectares (494 acres) each.
- All of the 2021 fires are on land deforested in 2020, emphasizing the connection between deforestation and fire in the Brazilian Amazon.
- Looking ahead, one expert says we can expect to see patterns similar to last year, with fires in deforested areas early in the season (June through August), with a possible shift to standing forests as the dry season intensifies.
Science refutes United Cacao’s claim it didn’t deforest Peruvian Amazon
- Years of satellite imagery and analysis reveals that United Cacao, a company once publicly traded on the London Stock Exchange, deforested nearly 2,000 hectares (about 5,000 acres) of primary forest in the Peruvian Amazon.
- The evidence refutes the company’s narrative that farmers had degraded the land before it arrived.
- The deforestation, as well as other legal violations, have led to sanctions against a successor to United Cacao’s Peruvian subsidiary, now called Tamshi SAC.
- But Tamshi is now claiming that Mongabay Latam improperly used the term “deforestation” and has sued for defamation.
Settlers invading, deforesting Colombian national parks ‘at an unstoppable speed’
- Colombia’s Tinigua National Natural Park is experiencing one of the highest levels of deforestation of any such protected area in the country, and has lost more than a quarter of its primary forest since 2002.
- Sources say this deforestation is happening due to settlers who are illegally invading and establishing roads, settlements and farms in protected forest – and clearing it in the process.
- Other national parks and Indigenous territories in the Colombian Amazon are also experiencing incursions.
- Sources say they are happening at such a scale that the government has been unable to effectively stop it.
Behind the scenes video unveils water contamination by ‘sustainable’ Amazon palm oil
- Brazil's official policy states that Amazon palm oil is green, but is that true? An 18-month investigation showed the opposite, with impacts including deforestation and water contamination, and it revealed 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.
- The Mongabay investigation will be used by federal prosecutors as evidence to hold a palm oil company accountable for water contamination in the Turé-Mariquita Indigenous Reserve.
- Federal prosecutors have pursued Brazil’s leading palm oil exporters in the courts for the past seven years, alleging the companies are contaminating water supplies, poisoning the soil, and harming the livelihoods and health of Indigenous and traditional peoples, charges the companies deny.
- In this behind-the-scenes video, Mongabay's Contributing Editor in Brazil, Karla Mendes, takes us on her reporting journey as her team tracks how the palm oil industry is changing this Amazonian landscape.
‘Zero illegal deforestation’ – One more Bolsonaro distortion (commentary)
- At U.S. President Joe Biden’s virtual climate summit on Earth Day, 22 April, Brazilian president Jair Bolsonaro promised “zero illegal deforestation by 2030.”
- “Zero illegal deforestation” can be achieved in two ways: by stopping deforestation, and by legalizing the deforestation that is taking place. The second path is in full swing.
- A series of laws facilitating “land grabbing” (which in Brazil means large-scale illegal appropriation of government land) is being fast-tracked in the National Congress with support from Bolsonaro.
- Once grabbed land is legalized, the deforestation on it can be “amnestied” and subsequent deforestation legally permitted. The end result is more deforestation. All deforestation, legal or not, causes climate change. This post is a commentary. The views expressed are those of the author, not necessarily Mongabay.
Criticizing Brazil over Amazon conservation will likely backfire (commentary)
- Although Brazilians share a concern for the Amazon, and even hosted the groundbreaking Earth Summit in 1992, polls show less consensus on who is responsible for Amazon deforestation, who is best addressing this problem, or the role of foreign actors.
- When activists or leaders from abroad single out Brazil and its president as bad actors on the environment, they risk potential backlash from Brazilians who often view such attacks as a double standard.
- The heavy-handed tone that the Biden Administration has adopted may create unfortunate roadblocks to the progress which is possible, argue two authors from the Amazon Environmental Research Institute and the University of São Paulo.
- This article is a commentary. The views expressed are those of the authors, not necessarily Mongabay.
Bolsonaro abandons enhanced Amazon commitment same day he makes it
- Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro offered up Amazon conservation promises during the April 22 virtual Climate Leaders Summit hosted by U.S. President Joe Biden and attended by heads of state from more than forty nations.
- That same day, Bolsonaro approved Brazil’s 2021 budget that includes a R$240 million ($44 million) annual reduction for the Ministry of the Environment. Conservationists say that the cuts will be utterly devastating for the nation’s deforestation monitoring program.
- The reductions will also impact the monitoring of pollution levels, pesticide contamination (Brazil under Bolsonaro is the biggest user of pesticides in the world), illegal mining, and wildlife trafficking. ICMbio, which oversees 334 of Brazil’s protected areas, also saw cuts.
- While environmentalists were enraged by the slashed ministry budget, the agricultural sector remains largely happy with Bolsonaro whose policies continue to benefit them. However, if Brazil continues along an anti-environmental path, it risks global boycotts of its commodities.
The political economy of the Pan-Amazon (book excerpt)
- Tim Killeen provides an update on the state of the Amazon in his new book “A Perfect Storm in the Amazon Wilderness – Success and Failure in the Fight to save an Ecosystem of Critical Importance to the Planet.”
- The book provides an overview of the topics most relevant to the conservation of the Amazon’s biodiversity, ecosystem services and Indigenous cultures, as well as a description of the conventional and sustainable development models vying for space within the regional economy.
- Mongabay will publish excerpts from the Killeen’s book, which will be released by The White Horse Press in serial format over the course of the next year. In this first installment, we provide a section from Chapter One: The State of The Amazon.
- This post is an except from a book. The views expressed are those of the author, not necessarily Mongabay.
Cattle-driven clearing continues in Brazil’s Triunfo do Xingu protected area
- Triunfo do Xingu Environmental Protection Area lies in the ecologically rich Xingu Basin in the Brazilian Amazon and spans some 1.7 million hectares (4.2 million acres) — an area more than half the size of Belgium.
- Despite its protected status, the area has been heavily deforested, losing 476,000 hectares (1.18 million acres) of humid primary forest between 2006 and 2020, according to satellite data from the University of Maryland (UMD), a 32% decrease in total forest cover.
- 2020 saw the highest amount of forest loss since the creation of the protected area, nearly 70,000 hectares (173,000 acres) — an area nearly the size of New York City; preliminary data show clearing of Triunfo do Xingu’s forests has continued into 2021, with “unusually high” levels of deforestation detected the week of March 15.
- Deforestation in the region is largely driven by cattle ranching, and sources say the invasions of Triunfo do Xingu are aided by its remoteness as well as lax enforcement of environmental regulations.
Intimidation of Brazil’s enviro scientists, academics, officials on upswing
- Increasingly, Brazilian environmental researchers, academics and officials appear to be coming under fire for their scientific work or views, sometimes from the Jair Bolsonaro government, but also from anonymous Bolsonaro supporters.
- Researchers and academics have come under attack for their scientific work on agrochemicals, deforestation and other topics, as well as for their socio-environmental views. Attacks have taken the form of anonymous insults and death threats, gag orders, equipment thefts, and even attempted kidnapping.
- A range of intimidation is being experienced by officials, including firings and threats of retaliation for institutional criticism at IBAMA, Brazil’s environment agency, ICMBio, the Chico Mendes Institute of Biodiversity Conservation overseeing Brazil’s national parks, and FUNAI, the Indigenous affairs agency.
- “Whose interests benefit from the denial of the data on deforestation… from criminalizing the action of NGOs and environmentalists? What we are witnessing is a coordinated action to make it easier for agribusiness to advance into Indigenous territories and standing forest,” says one critic.
Beef giant JBS vows to go deforestation-free — 14 years from now
- JBS, a giant company implicated in multiple cases of large-scale forest clearing in Brazil, recently made a commitment to achieve zero deforestation across its global supply chain by 2035. Environmentalists argue this pledge is grossly insufficient.
- In a new Soy and Cattle Deforestation Tracker, JBS scores just a single point out of 100. Its nearest competitors, Minerva and Marfrig, have scores of 46/100 and 40/100 respectively.
- Tagging and tracking systems to ensure transparency along the entire beef supply have long been proposed, but JBS has resisted disclosing its full list of suppliers.
- Under present conditions, Brazil is losing forest cover at the fastest rate in more than a decade, and this deforestation is driven largely by the meatpacking industry.
Can palm oil be grown sustainably? Agroforestry research suggests it can, and without chemicals
- Oil palms are typically grown in large monocultures worldwide, and aside from the deforestation these plantations are typically associated with, water pollution from heavy chemical application is another problem.
- But must oil palms be grown in monocultures with heavy chemical inputs to produce a profitable crop? Mongabay asked a researcher in Brazil about his group’s findings indicating that they do not.
- Using an ecologically friendly agroforestry system, the researchers have demonstrated higher yields on 18 demonstration farms: 180 kg of fresh fruit bunches per plant, compared with 139 kg per plant from monocultures.
- By growing oil palms in an agroforestry system among other useful and profitable crops–like açaí and passionfruit plus timber trees like mahogany and fertilizer trees plus annuals like cassava–farmers have more crops to eat and sell, enjoy greater resilience to palm oil price variations, and can make a competitive profit without using toxic and expensive chemicals.
Brazil prosecutors cite Mongabay probe in new legal battle against palm oil firms
- Prosecutors in Brazil say they will use findings from an investigation by Mongabay as evidence to hold a palm oil company accountable for water contamination in an Indigenous reserve in the Amazon.
- The move comes as prosecutors filed an appeal March 26 against a ruling blocking a forensic investigation into water contamination from pesticide use by Biopalma that has impacted the Tembé people of the Turé-Mariquita Indigenous Reserve in Pará state.
- Mongabay’s 18-month investigation, published March 12, revealed evidence of this pollution as well as similar cases involving two other top Brazilian palm oil companies, pointing to a potentially industry-wide pattern of disregard for Amazon conservation and for the rights of Indigenous people and traditional communities.
- The investigation also revealed the clearing of native forests for oil palm cultivation, as shown through satellite imagery, contradicting claims by the companies and the government that oil palm crops are planted only on already deforested land.
Palm oil plantations and their impacts have arrived in the Amazon
- On today's episode of the Mongabay Newscast, we speak with Mongabay's contributing editor for Brazil, Karla Mendes, who recently published an investigative report that found the palm oil industry's growth in the Brazilian Amazon is driving the same deforestation and community conflicts oil palm operations are responsible for in Southeast Asia.
- We also speak with Sandra Damiani, a researcher at the University of Brasília whose study found that both above-ground watercourses and groundwater in the Turé-Mariquita Indigenous Reserve in Brazil's Pará state were contaminated with pesticides and herbicides used on nearby palm oil plantations.
- Lastly, we speak with Felício Pontes Júnior, a federal prosecutor for the Amazon region who filed a lawsuit seven years against one of Brazil's biggest palm oil companies, but is still fighting to do the investigation needed to prove who's responsible for the pollution in the Turé-Mariquita Indigenous Reserve.
BlackRock must commit to Indigenous rights — not just climate change (commentary)
- BlackRock is an investment management firm reportedly with $8 trillion in assets. It is also well documented for its financing of large-scale mining, fossil fuel production and agribusiness projects across Latin America doing harm to Indigenous communities in Colombia, Ecuador, Guatemala, Brazil and elsewhere.
- The company has recently become outspoken about its position to vigorously combat climate change. But even though the United Nations recognizes Indigenous peoples as the best stewards of the environment, guardians of their lands and defenders against climate change, BlackRock remains virtually silent on Indigenous issues.
- If the company’s climate change commitment is to be taken seriously by the world, then BlackRock needs to step up now and adopt an explicit “Forest and Indigenous Rights Policy.”
- This post is a commentary. The views expressed are those of the author, not necessarily Mongabay.
Communities struggle against palm oil plantations spreading in Brazilian Amazon
- Palm oil, a crop synonymous with deforestation and conflict in Southeast Asia, is making inroads in the Brazilian Amazon, where the same issues are now playing out. Indigenous and traditional communities say the plantations in their midst are polluting their rivers and lands, and driving fish and game away.
- Federal prosecutors have pursued Brazil's leading palm oil exporters in the courts for the past seven years--alleging the companies are contaminating water supplies, poisoning the soil, and harming the livelihoods and health of Indigenous and traditional peoples--charges the companies deny.
- This video was produced as part of an 18-month investigation into the palm oil industry in the Brazilian state of Pará.
Brazil must do more to protect its people, forests, and the planet (commentary)
- Amid skyrocketing deforestation and destruction of Brazil’s natural environment, the Bolsonaro government is weakening climate commitments and rolling back domestic environmental protections, driving Brazil’s people and the planet ‘off a cliff.’
- This destruction threatens Indigenous communities, wildlife and the global climate, and it is also unpopular in Brazil, as it threatens the country’s economic standing, with reports emerging that rampant deforestation is blocking Brazil’s accession to the OECD.
- Urgent solutions to this existential threat for irreplaceable biomes include stronger climate targets, restoration of effective environmental legislation, and international pressure on the Bolsonaro government.
- This article is a commentary and the views expressed are those of the author, not necessarily Mongabay.
Déjà vu as palm oil industry brings deforestation, pollution to Amazon
- Palm oil, a crop synonymous with deforestation and community conflicts in Southeast Asia, is making inroads in the Brazilian Amazon, where the same issues are playing out.
- Indigenous and traditional communities say the plantations in their midst are polluting their water, poisoning their soil, and driving away fish and game.
- Scientists have found high levels of agrochemical residues in these communities — though still within Brazil’s legal limits — while prosecutors are pursuing legal cases against the companies for allegedly violating Indigenous and traditional communities’ rights and damaging the environment.
- Studies based on satellite imagery also disprove the companies’ claims that they only plant on already deforested land.
As Amazon forest-to-savanna tipping point looms, solutions remain elusive
- Leading scientists project that if an additional 3-8% of rainforest cover is lost in the Amazon, it may overshoot a forest-to-degraded-savanna tipping point. That shift could mean mega-drought, forest death, and release of great amounts of stored carbon to the atmosphere from southern, eastern and central Amazonia.
- Despite this warning, Brazilian Amazon deforestation hit an 11-year high in 2020. Government clampdowns on environmental crime greatly decreased deforestation in the past, but Brazil is now facing a political backlash led by President Jair Bolsonaro, resulting in agribusiness and mining expansion and deforestation.
- Market efforts to create incentives have been ineffective. A public-private plan to cut deforestation led by Mato Grosso state has not met its environmental targets, even as agricultural lands increased. Amazonas, Acre and Rondônia — Bolsonaro-aligned states — are pushing for the creation of a new agriculture frontier.
- Indigenous communities, because they’re the best land stewards, should be at the forefront of public policy to conserve the Amazon, say experts, but instead they face poverty and marginalization by the institutions responsible for securing their land rights. International response to the Amazon crisis has also lagged.
Big dream: NGO leads in creating 1,615-mile Amazon-Cerrado river greenbelt
- The Black Jaguar Foundation plans to reforest 1 million hectares (2.4 million acres) along Brazil’s Araguaia and Tocantins rivers in the Amazon and Cerrado biomes. The 2,600 kilometer (1,615 mile) long natural corridor will require the planting of around 1.7 billion trees. Tens-of-thousands have already been planted.
- This natural corridor will be established on private lands, and it will have dual ecological and economic goals, resulting in both land conservation and sustainable agroforestry production. It would cross six Brazilian states (Goiás, Mato Grosso, Mato Grosso do Sul, Tocantins, Pará and Maranhão).
- BJF is well funded and well organized, so the greatest barriers to accomplishing the NGO’s goals are many initially resistant rural property owners who need to be sold on the economic benefits of the green corridor. 24,000 privately owned lots are included in the planned green corridor.
- “Brazil has a huge liability in degraded areas, and the BJF [green corridor] initiative is a huge outdoor laboratory for ecosystem restoration in the center of the country, in the agricultural frontier region,” said one researcher.
European public roundly rejects Brazil trade deal unless Amazon protected
- The gigantic trade agreement between the European Union and the Mercosur South American bloc (Brazil, Argentina, Paraguay and Uruguay), if ratified, would be the biggest trade deal in history, totaling US $19 trillion.
- However, an extremely poor environmental record by the Mercosur nations, especially Brazil, has become a stumbling block to clinching the agreement. In new polling 75% of respondents in 12 European nations say the EU-Mercosur trade pact should not be ratified if Jair Bolsonaro’s Brazil doesn’t end Amazon deforestation.
- France, the Parliaments of the Netherlands, Austria and Belgium’s Walloon region, have announced they will not endorse the trade pact. The ratification also finds resistance by Ireland and Luxembourg. Portugal’s government appears ready to move forward with ratification without environmental safeguards put in place.
Investigation: Dutch, Japanese pension funds pay for Amazon deforestation
- Two pension funds in the Netherlands and one from Japan have invested a combined half a billion dollars in Brazil’s top three meatpackers.
- These investments in cattle ranching, an industry that’s the main driver of Amazon deforestation, contradict the environmental stances of the respective funds and their national governments.
- The fund managers and other experts say maintaining their stake is a more effective way of pushing for change in the companies than simply dumping the stock.
- But there’s also a growing realization that continued exposure to environmental risks over the long term will incur not just ethical and reputational harm for the funds, but even financial fallout.
Brazil guts agencies, ‘sabotaging environmental protection’ in Amazon: Report
- A new report documents draconian budget cuts to Brazilian environmental monitoring and firefighting of 9.8% in 2020, and 27.4% in 2021 — reductions, analysts say that were inflicted by the Bolsonaro administration in “a clear policy for dismantling national environmental policies.”
- Brazil’s environmental agencies under Bolsonaro have also been subjected to nearly 600 administrative and rules changes, invoked by presidential executive order and resulting in massive environmental deregulation.
- Under Bolsonaro, deforestation has soared, with an increase of 34% in the last two years, even as capacity to punish environmental criminals fell sharply due to funding shortages. Fines imposed for illegal deforestation, instead of rising during this Amazon environmental crime wave, fell by 42% from 2019 to 2020.
- Faced with Bolsonaro’s gutting of environmental agencies and protections, two Indigenous leaders — Kayapo Chief Raoni Metuktire, and Paiter Surui Chief Almir Narayamoga Surui — have asked the International Criminal Court (ICC) in the Hague to investigate President Bolsonaro for “crimes against humanity.”
Traditional and Indigenous peoples ‘denounce’ planned Amazon railway
- The Ferrovia Paraense (FEPASA) railway if fully completed would run 1,312 kilometers (815 miles) from Santana do Araguaia in southern Pará, along the state’s eastern border, to the port city of Barcarena on the Amazon River. It could carry 80 million tons of mining ores and agribusiness commodities annually.
- In 2019, Pará state signed a memorandum of understanding with the China Communication Construction Company for a R$7 billion (US$1.4 billion) investment to fund the building of 492 kilometers (305 miles) of the railway, from Marabá to Barcarena. Construction is currently expected to start in 2021.
- But that plan could be delayed by resistance from Indigenous and traditional communities who say they’ve yet to be consulted on the project, as required by international law. FEPASA and Ferrogrão (Grainrail) will integrate Pará into Brazil’s vast rail network, greatly aiding export of Amazon commodities to China.
- A letter from the Amazon communities to Pará’s government accused it and its allies of “forcing on us a development model that does not represent us, that is imposing railways,… expelling people from their lands, ending our food security, destroying our people, destroying our cultures,… and killing our forests.”
Soy moratorium averted New Jersey-size loss of Amazon rainforest: Study
- A new study sought to quantify the impact of the Amazon soy moratorium, signed in 2006 by companies accounting for around 90% of the soy sourced from the Brazilian Amazon.
- The companies agreed that they would not purchase soy grown on plots that were recently deforested.
- The research demonstrates that deforestation in the Brazilian Amazon between 2006 and 2016 was 35% lower than it would have been without the moratorium, likely keeping 18,000 square kilometers (6,950 square miles) of the Amazon standing.
- Despite the success, observers question whether the ban on soy from deforested areas of the Amazon will prevent the loss of rainforest over the long term.
Illegal mining sparks malaria outbreak in Indigenous territories in Brazil
- Authorities in the Brazilian municipality of Jacareacanga have requested assistance from the Ministry of Health to deal with an outbreak of malaria in Indigenous territories.
- The municipality is home to the Munduruku, Kayabi and Sai Cinza Indigenous territories, which are the targets of illegal gold miners.
- The Jacareacanga mayor’s office has blamed the outbreak on the illegal miners; this region of the Amazon is the only part of Pará state that has seen an increase in malaria cases since last year, according to state public health data.
- Satellite images and other data show that mining is both ongoing and planned inside Indigenous territories and national parks in Jacareacanga, despite Brazil’s Constitution banning all types of mining on Indigenous lands.
As Amazon deforestation hits 12 year high, France rejects Brazilian soy
- As Brazil continues deforesting and burning the Amazon at an alarming rate, France has announced plans to drastically reduce its dependency on Brazilian soy flour and “stop importing deforestation.”
- France currently is the EU’s largest importer of Brazilian soy flour, buying 1.9 million tons annually. “Our target today is [cutting] soybean imports coming from the American continent,” said the French Minister of Agriculture and Food this week.
- While the loss of its soy sales to France is of concern to Brazilian soy producers and commodities companies, agribusiness has expressed greater anxiety over whether Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro’s continued anti-environmental rhetoric and policies will provoke a largescale international boycott of Brazilian commodities.
- They especially fear the president’s hardline could risk ratification of the Mercosur trade agreement between the EU and South American nations, including Brazil. This week the EU ambassador to Brazil said that the agreement is now in standby, awaiting the country’s concrete actions to combat deforestation and Amazon fires.
French Guiana soy biofuel power plants risk massive Amazon deforestation
- The French government, with the support of President Emmanuel Macron, appears eager to approve legislation that would bypass French environmental law banning large scale deforestation to build several soy-fired biofuel power plants in French Guiana — a French overseas department on the northeast coast of South America.
- Currently, 98% of this region is still covered in Amazon rainforest and mangrove forest. The largest of the proposed biofuel plants — Larivot in Cayenne, the French Guiana capital — would require between 84,000 and 140,000 metric tons of soy per year to generate enough liquid biofuel to power the 120-megawatt plant.
- Growing that much soy would require a large amount of rainforest clearing, totaling between 536 square miles and 892 square miles (nearly three times larger than the land area of New York City). Environmentalists are very concerned over the loss in forest carbon sequestration and harm to French Guiana’s Amazon biodiversity.
- “The fact that France is pushing for policy deviations in French Guiana from European Union sustainability standards is incredibly alarming.… There will be an impact on forests if they change the laws and it could be pretty massive,” said Almuth Ernsting, a biomass researcher with Biofuelwatch, an environmental NGO.
Multiplying Amazon river ports open new Brazil-to-China commodities routes
- Nearly 100 major industrial river ports have been built on the Brazilian Amazon’s major rivers over the past two decades. Many of the projects have been internationally financed and built by commodities companies with little government oversight.
- These ports have transformed the region, opening it to agribusiness and the export of commodities, especially soy, to China and the rest of the world. However, this boom in port infrastructure often came at the expense of the environment and traditional riverine communities.
- Today, more than 40 additional major river ports are planned in the Amazon biome on the Tapajós, Tocantins, Madeira and other rivers, projects again being pursued largely without taking cumulative socioenvironmental impacts into account.
- “What resources do these soy men bring to our city?” asked Manoel Munduruku, an Indigenous leader. “They only bring destruction.”
Satellites, maps and the flow of cattle: Brazilian solutions for reducing deforestation are already in use
- Complete tracking of the cattle supply chain from calving to slaughter would guarantee that the beef produced in the Amazon is untainted by illegal deforestation.
- The largest meatpackers have been promising to track their indirect suppliers since 2009. Now, under pressure from investors, they have set a deadline of 2025.
- The tracing technology and data already exist. But a lack of integration between information systems, concerns over data confidentiality and resistance from the sector are slowing progress.
‘Digital land grab’ deprives traditional LatAm peoples of ancestral lands: Report
- South American nations, including Brazil and Colombia, are increasingly using georeferencing technology for registering land ownership.
- However, if this high-tech digital technique is not backed up by traditional ground truthing surveys, it can be used by landgrabbers and agribusiness companies to fraudulently obtain deeds depriving traditional communities of their collective ancestral lands, according to a new report.
- The georeferenced process is being partly funded by the World Bank, which has provided US $45.5 million for digital registration of private rural properties in Brazil. Georeferencing is allowing the international financial sector to play a key role in converting large tracts of rainforest and savanna into agribusiness lands.
- To prevent this form of land theft, prospective landowners’ claims need to be independently verified via a centralized governmental land registration system organized to resolve land conflicts and to detect and eliminate local and regional corruption.
In Bolivia, more than 25% of major fires this year burned in protected areas
- More than 120 major fires have been detected in Bolivia since March, more than a quarter of them in protected areas, including Noel Kempff Mercado National Park, a UNESCO World Heritage Site, and Copaibo Municipal Protected Area, where an area of forest half the size of New York City has burned this year.
- Most of this year’s major blazes, 54%, were detected in savanna in the department of Beni, while more than 38% burned in forests, both in the Amazon rainforest and the dry forests of Chiquitano, according to the nonprofit MAAP.
- This year, there have been more fires detected but they have burned less area compared to last year’s devastating blazes. Nevertheless, the fires have been severe enough for Bolivia’s interim president to declare a state of emergency in mid-September.
- “We have some weeks (maybe more) when more fires might occur and it is difficult to predict the final impact for this year,” researchers from Bolivian nonprofit ACEAA say.
The murky process of licensing Amazonian meat plants
- Decades of growth in cattle ranching have meant that Pará is now the state with the largest herd nationwide. At 20.6 million heads, it has 2.5 cattle for every human inhabitant.
- 14 of the 22 Brazilian meat plants approved to export to China since 2019 are in the Amazon.
Stock indices let Brazil meatpackers shed ties to deforestation, draw investors
- The prominent placement of Brazil’s three biggest meatpackers — JBS, Marfrig and Minerva — on the country’s stock exchange indices has seen them net $121 million in investments.
- These investments are made through funds that track the various stock exchange indices, whose makeup is ostensibly determined by a company’s performance and management.
- These meatpackers, whose operations are closely associated with deforestation and land grabbing in the Amazon, receive investments even through funds geared toward environmentally and socially responsible companies.
BlackRock’s $400m stake in Amazon meatpackers defies sustainability cred
- BlackRock, the world’s biggest asset manager, has $408 million invested, via various funds, in Brazil’s top three meatpackers operating in the Amazon.
- These holdings are at odds with BlackRock’s stated position of pursuing environmentally sustainable investments, given that the meatpackers — JBS, Marfrig and Minerva — are closely associated with deforestation in the Amazon.
- Experts say the sheer size of BlackRock’s stake in these companies could be decisive in forcing the meatpackers to adopt deforestation-free practices.
Amazon meatpacking plants, a COVID-19 hotspot, may be ground zero for next pandemic
- The COVID-19 pandemic has shown that slaughterhouses are among the outbreak hotspots for the disease because of the low temperatures and crowded production lines.
- But slaughterhouses are also ideal locations for the emergence of new viruses due to the contact between humans and the blood and entrails of cattle.
- Nearly a third of cases where diseases spread from animals to human beings occurred because their natural environments were invaded and destroyed, which puts Brazil’s beef industry, centered in the Amazon, at particularly high risk.
- Yet despite the economic fallout from the pandemic, the financial market keeps ignoring this risk and supporting the beef companies most exposed to deforestation in the Amazon.
Brazil green recovery plan could boost economy, add jobs, cut emissions: Report
- If Brazil shifts to a low carbon economy, carbon emissions would be cut by a third while also creating jobs, benefiting economic growth and infrastructure, according to a recent report by the World Resources Institute.
- Brazil’s post-COVID-19 economic recovery plan could provide an opportunity to implement long-term solutions across multiple sectors that could reduce carbon emissions and Amazon deforestation.
- Study authors hope that the economic benefits of the plan will push the current Jair Bolsonaro administration to adopt a green agenda, even if conservation is not a priority.
- “Climate denial is at a peak, but cost-benefit will be the leading decision-maker, whether or not it benefits the environment.… Due to post-COVID-19 economic recovery plans, we have a window of opportunity that will close in a year and a half or less.” — World Resources Institute Climate Policy Director Carolina Genin.
Bleak milestone: 500 major fires detected in Brazilian Amazon this year
- 516 major fires, most of them illegal, covering 376,416 hectares (912,863 acres) were detected between May 28 and August 25, 2020, with the Amazon fire season not even half over, and expected to run at least through September.
- Of those fires, 12% were within intact forests, while the rest were in recently deforested areas where the cut trees were allowed to dry out before being lit on fire to convert the former rainforest to cattle pasture and croplands.
- Most of these fires were illegal, being in direct defiance of a total Amazon fire ban issued by Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro on July 15, 2020.
- IBAMA, Brazil’s environmental agency, which annually fought Amazon fires in the past, has a greatly diminished role this year, having largely been defunded by the Bolsonaro administration. Fire suppression this year falls to the Brazilian Army, which has little experience controlling Amazon blazes.
Can we predict where Amazon fires will occur? And to what end?
- If it was possible to accurately forecast where Amazon fires were most likely to occur each year, it should theoretically be far easier to prevent and control those fires.
- Amazon fires are currently predicted in two ways: first, based on deforestation, much of it illegal, that occurs in the wet months before the annual fire season; it is these deforested areas that are most often set on fire in the dry months of July through September.
- Second, it’s also possible to predict the approximate severity and Amazon region in which fires may occur based on climate and drought forecasts for the biome, often based on ocean temperatures.
- But being able to predict where Amazon fires might occur is only a first step. A strong, proactive government response is also needed to prevent and control fires, and in order to apprehend and prosecute those who set them ablaze in the Amazon.
More than 260 major, mostly illegal Amazon fires detected since late May
- The Amazon fire season is building momentum, with 227 fires covering nearly 128,000 hectares, reported between May 28 and August 10. By today, that number rose to 266 fires.
- More than 220 of the May 28 to June 10 fires occurred in Brazil, with just six in Bolivia, and one in Peru. 95% of the Brazilian fires were illegal and in violation of the nation’s 120-day ban on fires. Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro has called the 2020 reports of deforestation and fires a “lie.”
- Most Amazon blazes are set, with land grabbers, ranchers and farmers using fire as a deforestation tool, and as a means of converting rainforest to pasture and croplands.
- Fourteen of the Brazilian fires were within protected areas. The most heavily impacted of these were Jamanxim and Altamira national forests in Pará state — areas long notorious for criminal land grabbing.
All talk, no walk: ‘Green’ financiers still support Amazon beef industry
- Regulatory initiatives to promote responsible investment are falling short, even in Europe, where the most rigid rules haven’t been able to prevent investors continuing to pump money into the Brazilian beef industry.
- In the U.S., similarly, financial giants like BlackRock tout their green investment credentials while still investing hundreds of millions of dollars in the top three meatpackers buying cattle from the Amazon.
- In Brazil, investment guides, manuals and recommendations by various market groups, along with rules issued by the central bank, have had little effect on the flow of investments into meatpackers JBS, Marfrig and Minerva.
Paper maze and lack of transparency cloak investment in companies involved in Amazon deforestation
- Lack of transparency prevents individual investors from knowing where their money is going to and allows majors investors to cloak their contributions to meatpackers who operate in the Amazon.
- Despite a Brazilian Central Bank law, brokers ignore environmental risk assessment when suggesting clients to invest in meatpackers.
- Meatpacking and retail companies use dozens of subsidiaries and even tax havens to hide the origins of their investments.
Deforestation in the Amazon is drying up the rest of Brazil: Report
- The center-west, south and part of the southeast regions of Brazil have seen rainfall well below average in recent years.
- Agriculture is the first sector to feel the effects of the drought, with drastic losses in production. Water supply and power generation have also been impacted.
- Agribusiness suffers the consequences of drought but also causes it: Deforestation of the Amazon to clear land for livestock, farming and logging affects the rainfall regime in Brazil and other Latin American countries.
- “South America is drying up as a result of the combined effects of deforestation and climate change”, says scientist Antonio Donato Nobre.
Scientists launch ambitious conservation project to save the Amazon
- The Science Panel for the Amazon (SPA), an ambitious cooperative project to bring together the existing scientific research on the Amazon biome, has been launched with the support of the United Nation’s Sustainable Development Solutions Network.
- Modeled on the authoritative UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change reports, the first Amazon report is planned for release in April 2021; that report will include an extensive section on Amazon conservation solutions and policy suggestions backed up by research findings.
- The Science Panel for the Amazon consists of 150 experts — including climate, ecological, and social scientists; economists; indigenous leaders and political strategists — primarily from the Amazon countries
- According to Carlos Nobre, one of the leading scientists on the project, the SPA’s reports will aim not only to curb deforestation, but to propose an ongoing economically feasible program to conserve the forest while advancing human development goals for the region, working in tandem with, and in support of, ecological systems.
A Brazilian forest community shows certified timber really does work
- In Pará, the Brazilian state with the highest deforestation rate, communities inside Tapajós National Forest have for the past 15 years run one of the most successful native timber management projects.
- Eighteen of the 24 communities in the conservation area are part of the project, which involves an average of 130 people. Forest management is their main source of income.
- In 2013, the communities earned FSC certification.
- Today, their products are sold around the world, thanks to partnerships with renowned designers to produce quality sustainable furniture and decorative objects.
Forest restoration, not just halting deforestation, vital to Amazon
- The Brazilian state of Maranhão has lost more than three-quarters of its original forest cover and the remaining old-growth forest is severely threatened, with the “Amazon forest [in the state’s west] on the edge of collapse,” say researchers. This threat heightens the importance of conserving secondary forest in the state.
- But new zoning of Legal Amazonia in Maranhão’s west passed in May will reduce the amount of standing forest farmers must preserve, which could lead to largescale legal deforestation of secondary forests and reward previous illegal deforestation.
- The State Forest Policy currently being debated for passage by the Maranhão parliament could implement safeguards to protect secondary forests (though likely won’t). Without those safeguards, warn researchers, these forests that provide important ecological services and economic benefits could further disappear.
- Scientists say that agroforestry and forest restoration should be prioritized by the Brazilian national and state governments in order to generate sustainable livelihoods and protect secondary forests, aiding in climate change mitigation, water and soil conservation, and providing sustainable livelihoods.
Where there’s cattle ranching and soybean farming, there’s fire, study finds
- Most of the fires in the Amazon rainforest last year were associated with industrial agriculture, according to a study cross-referencing NASA satellite data with corporate supply chains.
- Researchers transposed the satellite imagery of fire alerts with the locations of the largest meatpacking plants and soybean silos in the region.
- Of the 981,000 fire alerts that occurred in Brazil between July and October last year, half were in meatpackers JBS and Marfrig’s “potential buy zones” and in the areas surrounding Bunge and Cargill’s soybean silos.
- The study doesn’t aim to make a direct link between the companies and the fires, but rather to show the proximity of the fires within the regions in which they work.
International investors urge Brazil to take real action to stop deforestation
- Jan Erik Saugestad, executive vice president of Norway’s Storebrand Asset Management, who has led an international pressure campaign against deforestation in the Brazilian Amazon, says the government must back up its promises with action to reverse the rising trend.
- In an exclusive interview, he describes his recent meeting with Vice President Hamilton Mourão, where there were initial commitments made to reduce deforestation rates and respect the rights of Indigenous peoples and human rights.
- Saugestad says investors need evidence that the Brazilian government and companies, particularly in the beef industry, will follow up on these commitments with meaningful action.
- Saugestad also says climate change has already caused damage to some economic sectors, and adds that “we are only seeing the beginning of some of these risks.”
Only a few ‘rotten apples’ causing most illegal Brazil deforestation: Study
- It is well known that agribusiness — especially cattle and soy production — is the major driver of illegal deforestation in Brazil, which has seen soaring rates of forest destruction since the election of Jair Bolsonaro. Many of those agricultural commodities end up being exported to the European Union.
- But little has been done to curb the problem, partly due to lack of government will, and partly due to the fact that the precise amount of illegal deforestation linked to exported meat and soy has never been identified, while ranches and plantations and their owners mostly responsible are difficult to pinpoint.
- Now a new potentially game changing study finds that while around 20% of all agricultural exports from Brazil to the EU appear to come from illegally deforested areas in the Amazon rainforest and Cerrado savanna, only about 2% of producers are responsible for the majority of that illegal deforestation.
- The study methods have the potential to advance supply chain traceability, showing that it is now possible to trace agricultural products from illegal deforested areas all the way to foreign consumers, making it far easier for nations and companies to curb deforestation — if they have the will.
Brazilian meatpacker expands with World Bank funding but fails to reduce impacts in the Amazon
- In 2013, the World Bank’s private sector arm, the International Finance Corporation, injected $85 million into Minerva.
- The money was for expansion of the meatpacker’s operations in Brazil, Paraguay, Uruguay and Colombia, granted on the condition that an environmental and social action plan be implemented in all those countries.
- The IFC understood that Minerva’s activities represented environmental and social risks, including deforestation, child labor, forced labor and land conflicts.
- Seven years later, the company has become Latin America’s leading beef exporter, but continues to face criticism over the uncertain origin of its products.
Prosecutors target Brazil’s environment minister over dismantling of protections
- On June 6, federal prosecutors in Brazil filed a lawsuit seeking the dismissal of the environment minister, Ricardo Salles, alleging “countless initiatives that violate the duty to protect the environment.”
- Since he took office at the start of 2019 under President Jair Bolsonaro, Salles has worked to weaken the country’s main federal environmental agencies, IBAMA and ICMBio, including slashing the number of regional positions and offices and weakening control of protected areas.
- He has also appointed police officials to key roles in supervisory agencies, frustrating experts who say those positions should go to experts who understand the issues.
- Staff report that a gag order has been in force under Salles, and that they now work in a climate of persecution and threats, both open and veiled.
Brazil bows to pressure from business, decrees 120-day Amazon fire ban
- 38 transnational companies in the agricultural, industrial, mining and service sectors, along with four major business associations, sent a letter Monday to Brazil VP Hamilton Mourão, president of the Amazon Council, asking him to address “environmental irregularities and crime in the Amazon and other Brazilian biomes.”
- The letter — backed by Amaggi, Suzano, Vale, Bradesco, Alcoa, Bayer, Shell, Siemens, among others — comes just weeks before this year’s Amazon fire season begins, and as criticism of rapid Amazon deforestation under Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro intensifies in the European Union and threatens the EU-Mercusor trade agreement.
- The administration — long resistant to all efforts to redirect its Amazon development and environmental policies — responded today announcing a decree for a 120-day ban on fires in the Amazon. The Army has also been deployed to the region to guard against a replay of last year’s wildfires. Analysts say this is not near enough to curb rampant deforestation.
- The business letter came just weeks after 32 international financial institutions that manage US$4.5 trillion in assets told Brazil that if it didn’t curb deforestation they would stop investing in Brazil. The problem, say critics, is Bolsonaro has set new policies that greatly undermine past socio-environmental safeguards, policies which need to be reversed.
World’s biggest trade deal in trouble over EU anger at Brazil deforestation
- The trade agreement between the European Union and Mercosur (Brazil, Argentina, Paraguay and Uruguay), is the biggest trade treaty ever negotiated. Signed a year ago, the US$19 trillion deal’s ratification could fail due to Brazil’s refusal to respond.
- At the end of June, French President Emmanuel Macron declared that his nation will not make “any trade agreement with countries that do not respect the Paris [Climate] Agreement,” a direct reference to the administration of Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro who has pursued an aggressive policy to develop the Amazon.
- The Dutch parliament, Austria, Belgium, Ireland and Luxembourg, plus some EU parliamentarians, and NGOs are opposed to the deal, saying it brings unfair competition to EU farmers and accelerates Amazon deforestation. French and Brazilian business interests and diplomats meet this week to try and settle differences.
- Brazil’s Bolsonaro has so far been unmoved by all these objections. While the government plans to launch a PR campaign to convince the EU to ratify the trade agreement, it continues pressing forward with plans to allow industrial mining and agribusiness intrusion into Amazon indigenous reserves and conserved areas.
In the Amazon, a farmer practices the future of sustainable cattle ranching
- A cattle farmer in Tefé, Brazil, has turned his ranch into a new standard for ranching in the forest — one that’s more profitable and more productive, while using less land.
- This type of farming eliminates the need for clearing new areas of forest for new pasture, a practice that has made cattle ranching one of the major drivers of deforestation in Brazil.
- Under the rational grazing system, cattle are grazed in a fenced-off plot of pasture, then rotated to another plot to allow the soil and vegetation in the previous plot to recover.
- Using land that has already been degraded and abandoned is one solution recommended for raising cattle in the Amazon region; there are an estimated 50 million hectares (125 million acres) of such land in Brazil that could be used for this purposed.
Green alert: How indigenous people are experiencing climate change in the Amazon
- Late rainfall, intense drought, dry riverbeds, more forest fires, less food available — indigenous communities across the Brazilian Amazon suffer social transformations due to climate change.
- Indigenous people believe that climate change has even affected their physical health: previously controlled diseases like measles and yellow fever, they say, have inexplicably reappeared in the rainforest, and even indigenous women’s menstrual cycles are beginning at an earlier age.
- Indigenous people have found many ways to take action and lessen the harm. These approaches include selecting and growing seeds that are more resistant to drought and heat, investing in frontline firefighters and even a smartphone app that offers information about climatic variations.
Brazil minister advises using COVID-19 to distract from Amazon deregulation
- In a Brazilian cabinet meeting Environment Minister Ricardo Salles was caught on video declaring that the COVID-19 pandemic which has killed more than 23,000 of his fellow citizens offers a distraction during which the government can “run the cattle herd” through the Amazon, “changing all the rules and simplifying standards.”
- The Brazilian and international response was critical and swift, with one European Union parliamentarian recommending that the largest trade treaty every negotiated, between the South American nations of Mercusor and the EU, not be signed as punishment for Brazil’s radical anti-environmental policies.
- Salles statements were “the inconceivably blatant confirmation that the Bolsonaro government is dismantling, step-by-step, the protection regulations of the Amazon, while the world fights the Coronavirus,” the member of the EU Parliament said.
- The government’s environmental deregulation policies are yielding results. Today the MapBiomas Alert project released its first Annual Deforestation Report on all Brazilian biomes. It found that 99% of all deforestation in Brazil in 2019 was illegal — a total of 12,187 square kilometers (4,705 square miles) of native vegetation lost.
Brazilian taxpayers subsidizing Amazon-clearing cattle ranches, study shows
- A new study shows taxpayer money is helping to prop up the beef industry in Brazil, one of the primary drivers of deforestation in the country.
- For every dollar of tax revenue collected from the industry, only 20 cents effectively goes to society — the rest goes back to producers in the form of incentives, easy credit, and even debt forgiveness.
- The carbon footprint of beef production in Brazil’s nine Amazonian states is six times higher on average than other states in the nation when accounting for the impact of deforestation to clear land for pasture.
- The study also highlights integrated crop farming-cattle raising systems, where the land is used alternately for cropping and for pasture, as resulting in negative carbon emissions — but notes that only 4% of pastureland in the Amazon uses this integrated method.
Indigenous COVID-19 cases top 500, danger mapped in Brazil agricultural hub
- 537 COVID-19 cases and 102 deaths are being reported by 38 indigenous groups in Brazil. Most of the cases are in the remote Brazilian Amazon, where communities are located far from medical assistance. Experts, citing the vulnerability of indigenous peoples to outside disease, worry the pandemic could result in a many more deaths.
- In response to the pandemic, indigenous groups in Mato Grosso state have partnered with an NGO to produce a daily updated map monitoring COVID-19 outbreaks in urban areas near indigenous villages. The website is meant to keep indigenous people informed, and put pressure on national and international groups to respond.
- Amid the pandemic, indigenous land rights in Mato Grosso are increasingly threatened by federal and state government policy shifts that critics say would encourage and legitimize land grabbing, illegal logging and mining inside indigenous territories.
- Particularly impacted by the policy changes, should they go into effect, are isolated indigenous groups, including the Kawahiva and Piripkura peoples who roam as yet federally unrecognized indigenous reserves near the city of Colniza, Mato Grosso.
Soy made the Cerrado a breadbasket; climate change may end that
- The Brazilian Cerrado is a vast tropical savanna covering over 20% of the nation’s landmass. More than half the Cerrado’s native vegetation — much of it biodiverse dry forest — has been converted to agribusiness, turning it into a breadbasket for Brazil and a key source of soy for China, the EU and other international markets.
- Brazilian soy cultivation is set to expand by 12 million hectares between 2021 and 2050, with the vast majority of that expansion happening in the Cerrado and especially on its agricultural frontier — a four-state region known as Matopiba.
- However, the Matopiba region (consisting of Maranhão, Tocantins, Piauí and Bahia states) is more vulnerable to climate change than other parts of Brazil. Researchers say global warming on the savanna is also worsened by the conversion of native vegetation to croplands and pastures.
- Extensive conversion of native vegetation (which holds moisture in roots deep underground) into a soy monocrop (which stores little water) is becoming a major problem, as little Cerrado soy is currently irrigated. Scientists argue that the conservation of native vegetation must be actively pursued to save the Cerrado agricultural frontier.
As bioethanol demand rises, biodiversity will fall in Cerrado, study says
- An area half the size of Switzerland in Brazil’s savanna-like Cerrado biome could see its biodiversity plummet as sugarcane farms expand to meet global demand for bioethanol, a new study says.
- Researchers calculated that some parts of the Cerrado could see up to 100% loss of mammalian species richness; endangered animals like the maned wolf will be the most affected.
- The Atlantic Forest and the Pantanal wetlands will also be affected, largely a result of growers of other crops moving into those areas as sugarcane farms take over their current areas.
- The study authors say there’s still a chance to mitigate those impacts by increasing agricultural productivity, protecting natural areas, and developing second-generation bioethanol made from a mix of sugarcane and eucalyptus.
In famed Chico Mendes reserve, Brazil nut harvesters fight to save the forest
- The Chico Mendes Extractive Reserve was named in honor of the rubber tapper who was assassinated for pushing back against the deforestation of this part of Brazil’s Acre state for cattle pastures.
- Today, the reserve’s inhabitants continue the long tradition of sustainable forest use, albeit harvesting Brazil nuts rather than tapping rubber, in keeping up with changing market demands.
- However, the Brazil nut industry remains largely informal and unregulated, and is seasonal, which forces many extractivists to turn to cattle ranching during the rest of the year to supplement their income.
- Clearing forest for livestock pasture is the main driver of deforestation in the reserve, which so far this year has recorded the highest rate of forest loss of any protected area in Brazil.
Brazilian indigenous chiefs act to halt illegal logging in historical landmark area
- A valuable Atlantic Forest reserve and the historic setting of the discovery of Brazil, the land of the Pataxó is suffering from the illegal logging of fine woods used to produce handicrafts. Indigenous people are also allegedly involved in the crimes.
- The pieces include the gamelas, famous bowls that are sold to tourists throughout the south of Bahia and transported to Brazil’s big cities by truck. In Monte Pascoal National Park, two of the four trails used by visitors have been shut down out of fear of the presence of invaders.
- Cattle ranches, eucalyptus farms and coffee, papaya and black pepper crops are the targets of other complaints from the Pataxó. Their lands are suffering from the irregular spraying of pesticides and the damming of waterways.
- On the other hand, indigenous involvement in conserving and restoring the forest has grown in recent years. The Pataxó have also started trying out more sustainable economic activities, such as the production of native seedlings and the breeding of small animals.
Amazonian leader takes Indigenous pepper to the Brazilian market and teaches how to live a good life
- André Baniwa is an Indigenous leader in the Upper Rio Negro region of the state of Amazonas, and spoke with Mongabay about school education, generation of income, Indigenous people in public life and his people’s concept of “good living” based in interculturality.
- One of his victories is the large-scale production of the Jiquitaia Baniwa Pepper, used traditionally in his culture and which made it to supermarket shelves in São Paulo this year. It was the first Indigenous brand to be released in Brazil.
- André Baniwa has been Vice Mayor of São Gabriel da Cachoeira, the most Indigenous city in Brazil, and helped to create a community school that was recognized in 2016 as a standard for creativity and innovation by the Brazilian Ministry of Education. “To me, schooling is a weapon for battle. A way of defending yourself.”
Brazil sets record for highly hazardous pesticide consumption: Report
- An NGO report finds that Brazil is the largest annual buyer of Highly Hazardous Pesticides (HHPs), a technical designation by the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization. HHPs contain active ingredients with extremely acute toxicity and having chronic negative impacts on human health and the environment.
- The report also found that high HHP sales are not only seen in Brazil but also in other low and middle income nations, while sales to many high income nations, especially in Western Europe, are far lower. The trend is seen in sales by Croplife International trade association corporate members Bayer, BASF, Corteva, FMC, and Syngenta.
- A pesticide industry representative claims that this disparity in sales between high and low income nations is due to variability in “farming conditions” between nations and regions. However, environmentalists say that the disparity is due to far weaker pesticide regulations in low income nations as compared to high income nations.
- HHP use will likely continue rising in Brazil. In 2019, the Jair Bolsonaro administration approved 474 new pesticides for use — the highest number in 14 years. Pesticide imports to Brazil also broke an all-time record, with almost 335,000 tons of pesticides purchased in 2019, an increase of 16% compared to 2018.
Amazon Tipping Point puts Brazil’s agribusiness, energy sector at risk: Top scientists
- Scientists are sounding the alarm: the Brazilian Amazon is dangerously close to, or may already be hitting, a disastrous rainforest-to-savanna tipping point, with heightened drought driven by regional and global climate change, rapidly rising deforestation and more numerous and intense wild fires.
- Overshooting the tipping point would not only be cataclysmic to Amazon biodiversity and release massive amounts of forest carbon destabilizing the planet’s climate further, it could also devastate Brazil’s economy by depriving agribusiness and hydroelectric energy production of water.
- Signs of deepening drought are already evident, as are serious repercussions. The $9.5 billion Belo Monte mega-dam for example, is already seeing greatly reduced seasonal flows in the Xingu River, a trend expected to worsen, potentially making the dam economically unviable, while also threatening the proposed Belo Sun goldmine.
- Reduced rainfall and a shorter growing season are also putting Brazilian agribusiness at risk. Even as scientists rush to develop heat and drought-resistant crops, many doubt new cultivars will keep pace with a changing climate. The Bolsonaro government is ignoring the economic threat posed by the tipping point
Brazilian meat giant JBS expands its reach in China
- Brazilian meatpacker JBS has agreed to supply WH Group, a Hong Kong-based meat processor with access to retail outlets across China, with beef, pork and poultry products worth around $687 million a year beginning in 2020.
- Investigations have shown that JBS sources some of its beef from producers who have been fined for illegal deforestation in the Amazon.
- The push for cattle pasture drives most of the deforestation in the Amazon, while soybean plantations to supply pig and chicken feed have replaced large tracts of the wooded savannas of the Cerrado.
Making a thriller out of Belo Monte hydro dam: Q&A with filmmaker Sabrina McCormick
- The construction of the controversial Belo Monte hydroelectric dam in the Brazilian Amazon is the narrative engine that drives Sequestrada, the first full-length film by U.S. cinematographer and sociologist Sabrina McCormick.
- The film, which came out in December on various streaming platforms, tells the story of Kamudjara, an indigenous girl, amid the expectations about the profound social and environmental changes that the construction will bring.
- In this interview with Mongabay, the director speaks about her creative process, her experience filming in the Amazon and perceptions about the social and cultural aspects, as well as the indigenous people’s sense of belonging to the forest.
- A former climate and environmental adviser to the Obama administration, McCormick also stresses the importance of blocking the advance of power generation models based on projects like Belo Monte.
Bolsonaro sends Congress bill to open indigenous lands to mining, fossil fuels
- President Jair Bolsonaro has long pledged to open Brazil’s indigenous reserves in the Amazon and elsewhere to commercial mining, oil and gas exploration, cattle ranching and agribusiness, new hydroelectric dam projects, and tourism. This week he sent a bill to Congress that would do just that.
- And while the legislation would allow consultation with impacted indigenous populations, they would lack the power of veto, except in cases of “garimpo” or wildcat mining. Though the bancada ruralista agribusiness lobby is strong in Congress, it remains to be seen whether the bill will be approved.
- The legislation would also allow the use of GM, genetically modified, seeds in agricultural projects, a practice previously banned because of the danger of contaminating native seeds. Royalties would be paid to indigenous communities for the economic activities allowed in their reserves and communities.
- Bolsonaro called his project a “dream” but it has already met with withering criticism from indigenous organizations who see it as a nightmare. Apib, the Articulation of Indigenous Peoples, called it a ‘death project’ which would, under the mask of false good intentions, effectively authorize the invasion of their lands
Escalating firestorms could turn Amazon from carbon sink to source: Study
- A new study finds that the Brazilian Amazon could be moving from being a carbon storehouse to a carbon source — putting the regional and global climate at great risk. Intensifying wildfires could contribute to that shift happening by mid-century.
- Researchers used models to show that an increasingly hot, dry Amazon climate, coupled with deforestation, could trigger wildfires burning up to 16% of the rainforest in Brazil’s Southern Amazon by 2050, releasing up to 17 billion metric tons of carbon dioxide.
- The team’s models indicated that Amazon fires will likely continue intensifying before 2030, due to more frequent heat and drought conditions caused by global warming, and as rampant deforestation due to agribusiness expansion dries out the understory and creates more flammable forest edges.
- Of great concern, the study also found that over time, fires won’t just impact edge areas, but intact forest, deep inside indigenous reserves and other conserved areas. Reduced sources of fire ignition and fire suppression could decrease the likelihood of burning, especially if accompanied by a decrease in global carbon emissions.
Use it, don’t lose it: Q&A with Amazon eco scientist Marcelino Guedes
- In an exclusive interview with Mongabay, Marcelino Guedes, a researcher at Brazil’s Amapá Federal University, talks about how important the management of traditional knowledge is for strengthening the forest economy in Brazil to overcome the paradigm that sees standing forest as an enemy of development.
- “Human practices can be managed to become the basis for conservation in Amazonia,” he says. Countering the idea that forests must be maintained in their virgin state, he says the rational use of a forest’s resources is the best way to create an effective conservation dynamic, considering the many pressures the region is undergoing.
- Guedes cites the Intermediate Disturbance Hypothesis, which holds that small changes to the environment are crucial for increasing biodiversity. These disturbances can be natural, as in the case of a storm, or caused by humans, which is the case of the indigenous peoples of Amazonia, who have, over the last 5,000 years, been modifying and enriching the landscape through itinerant agriculture and dispersal of native species.
NGOs demand inquiry into Environment Minister aid to Amazon land grabbers
- 25 environmental and indigenous organizations have made an official complaint to the Brazilian Attorney General’s Office requesting an investigation for abuse of power and misconduct in office by Environment Minister Ricardo Salles and Chico Mendes Institute for Biodiversity Conservation (ICMBio) head, Homero Cerqueira.
- It is alleged that Salles and Cerqueira met with convicted criminals including known Amazon land grabbers, and that both officials pledged to end inspections inside the Chico Mendes Extractive Reserve (Resex), a protected area in Acre state under heavy pressure from illegal deforesters. ICMBio oversees Brazil’s parks.
- Last week President Jair Bolsonaro established the Amazon Council, putting the nation’s Vice President at its head, and subordinating Salles and the Environment Ministry to the new council. Some analysts speculate that Salles has fallen from favor due to his reckless speech and actions, though others disagree.
- Some speculate the new council is a merely a public relations maneuver meant to show international and national critics that Bolsonaro cares about the Amazon. Few expect the council to zealously press forward with conservation efforts, while others see it as a means of bypassing the Environment Ministry.
Impending Amazon tipping point puts biome and world at risk, scientists warn
- Climate models coupled with real world biome changes are causing prominent scientists to forecast that, unless action is taken immediately, 50 to 70% of the Amazon will be transformed from rainforest into savanna in less than 50 years.
- That ecological disaster would trigger a vast release of carbon stored in vegetation, likely leading to a regional and planetary climate catastrophe. The Amazon rainforest-to-savanna tipping point is being triggered by rapidly escalating deforestation, regional and global climate change, and increasing Amazon wildfires — all of which are making the region dryer.
- While models produced the first evidence of the tipping point, events on the ground are now adding to grave concern. The Amazon has grown hotter and dryer in recent decades, and rainforest that was once fireproof now readily burns. Plant species adapted to a wet climate are dying, as drought-resistant species flourish. Deforestation is escalating rapidly.
- Scientists say the tipping point could be reversed with strong environmental policies. However, Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro is moving in the opposite direction, with plans to develop the Amazon, including the opening of indigenous reserves to industrial mining and agribusiness, and the building of roads, dams and other infrastructure.
Brazil’s Bolsonaro creates Amazon Council and Environmental Police force
- Brazil has formed a new Amazon Council headed by Vice President Hamilton Mourão, a retired general and supporter of Amazon mining development. The council will oversee “the activities of all the ministries involved in the protection, defense and development and sustainable development of the Amazon.”
- A new Environmental Police force is also being created made up of military police from state forces, which will have the potential to put thousands of agents into the field for Amazon operations.
- Meanwhile, Bolsonaro slashed the budget for IBAMA, Brazil’s environmental enforcement agency, cutting it by 25% as compared to 2019. IBAMA has been recognized internationally for its key role in enforcing Brazil’s laws against illegal loggers and land grabbers, for reducing deforestation and fighting Amazon fires.
- Critics are concerned over Bolsonaro’s militarization of Amazon environmental, development, and security administration, seeing it as a throwback to the days of Brazil’s military dictatorship from 1964 to 1985, when new highways and other infrastructure projects greatly benefited land grabbers and wealthy landowners.
Catastrophic Amazon tipping point less than 30 years away: study
- The Amazon rainforest generates half its own rainfall, but deforestation threatens to disrupt this cycle, shifting large parts of this ancient forest to dry, savanna habitat. Passing such a “tipping point” would have disastrous knock-on effects for climate and weather patterns regionally and globally.
- A recent study modelling the impact of proposed roads, hydropower and mining developments in the Amazon basin suggests that 21-43 percent of the Amazon’s original extent will be lost by 2050, putting it close to, or beyond, the tipping point for a biome shift in large parts of the region.
- Although development is not currently proceeding at the rapid rate predicted under various ambitious government initiatives, experts say that, even with no new Amazon infrastructure, continued deforestation could drive the biome to the tipping point in the next 15–30 years.
- A quick transition to zero deforestation is the only way to avert catastrophic change to the Amazon, say experts. But conservationists fear the political will is lacking as the Bolsonaro administration continues to slash protections. Backing indigenous land stewards could offer a solution.
Belo Monte boondoggle: Brazil’s biggest, costliest dam may be unviable
- The controversial Belo Monte mega-dam in Pará state has done significant socio environmental harm to the Xingu River and the indigenous and traditional people living beside it. Now it appears the dam may not be able to produce the electricity totals promised by its builders — an eventuality critics had long warned about.
- Project designers appear to have seriously misestimated the Xingu River’s flow rates and fluctuations between wet and dry seasons, while also not accounting for reductions in flow due to deforestation caused by rapidly expanding cattle ranches and soy plantations far upriver in Mato Grosso state.
- Climate change-induced droughts are also decreasing Xingu River flows and generating capacity. In 2013, an important Brazilian Panel on Climate Change report warned that global warming could drop water levels all across the Amazon basin, putting hydropower in serious jeopardy.
- As deforestation due to agribusiness and mining spreads across the basin, now driven by the development-friendly policies of Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro, the future for Amazon hydroelectric dams, their generating capacity and investment potential looks increasingly bleak.
Conflict in the Chico Mendes Reserve threatens this pioneering Amazonian project
- Farmers and irregular occupants in the Chico Mendes Extractive Reserve in Acre are enjoying newfound political power and pressuring for the reduction of the first protected area of its kind in Brazil as it approaches its 30th anniversary in March.
- A bill in the Federal House of Representatives proposes that areas used for irregular cattle farming be removed from its perimeter, effectively legalizing the activity. Resident associations oppose the move.
- The reserve, or Resex, is a model of territorial occupation that aligns the work and income of traditional populations with keeping the forest intact. Environmentalists fear intervention will make room for changes in other areas.
- The conflict has revived the confrontation tactics from the era of the military dictatorship, when the rubber tappers emerged victorious but suffered the death of leaders like Chico Mendes, for whom the reserve is named.
Bolsonaro’s Brazil: 2019 brings death by 1,000 cuts to Amazon — part one
- While the media focused in 2019 on Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro’s incendiary remarks, or on the Amazon fires, he has quietly instituted new policies likely to aid land grabbers and do great harm to Amazon forests, indigenous and traditional peoples. “Death by 1,000 Cuts” parts 1 and 2 reviews those policies.
- Executive decree MP 910 issued December 11 legalizes large-scale land grabbing. The large-owner loophole built into the new decree allows land speculators to register large swathes of public lands that they grabbed before December 2018, using the illegal deforestation they accomplished as proof of their “occupation.”
- MP 910 could transfer 40-60 million hectares of public land to private owners who would then be authorized to legally deforest a fifth of that land, about 10 million hectares, experts say. MP 910 is likely to trigger high rates of conflict and deforestation. Congress must approve MP 910 in 120 days to make it permanent.
- The agriculture ministry also chose to make secret part of its ranching database, thwarting Visipec, an NGO-designed tool for tracking cattle raised on calving ranches where major deforestation occurs. Other administrative measures benefit big agribusiness over small family farms, and muzzle civil society voices.
Amazon’s Mura indigenous group demands input over giant mining project
- In 2013, Potássio do Brasil, a subsidiary of the Canadian merchant bank, Forbes & Manhattan, began drilling exploratory wells for a giant potassium mine — a highly profitable venture that would allow transport of potash along the Amazon and Madeira rivers. Potash is a vital fertilizer for Brazil’s rapidly growing soy agribusiness industry.
- One big problem: the company was reportedly drilling inside the Jauary Indigenous Reserve and directly adjacent to other indigenous reserves and communities. Indigenous people said that the ancestral lands being drilled, though sometimes not demarcated as being within their reserves, were vital for hunting and other livelihoods.
- The mine was licensed in 2015. However, legal irregularities resulted in the project stalling. Finally, a court settlement was reached in which the Mura communities would be given the legal right of consultation — a democratic process of self-determination guaranteed under international law rarely practiced in the remote Brazilian Amazon.
- How the Mura will vote — and whether that vote will be respected by municipal, state and federal governments; agribusiness; a transnational mining giant; and international investors — remains to be seen. However, analysts agree that the result could have far reaching consequences for rural traditional settlements across the Amazon.
Mega-mining project slated for Brazilian Amazon sparks controversy
- Potássio do Brasil, a mining company; Autazes municipal authorities; the federal and Amazonas state governments; and large-scale soy growers all want one thing: to open a potash mine in the town of Autazes that would supply soy producers with Brazilian fertilizer, so as not to buy and pay for imported potash. All stand to profit.
- There’s just one major roadblock: the potassium deposits are on indigenous land, and the mining company started off on the wrong foot in 2013 by digging exploratory wells in secret, without getting indigenous permission to dig on their land.
- Years of acrimonious conflict and legal battles followed. The municipality of Autazes includes 12,000 Mura Indians among its citizens, most of whom live in one of the 20 indigenous reserves that have been officially demarcated or are in the process of being demarcated. They fear the potash mine’s social and environmental repercussions.
- They have successfully stalled the US$2.5 billion mining project up to now. But under the government of Jair Bolsonaro, the possibility that the potash mine could go forward without indigenous consultation — as required by international law — is becoming a looming possibility.
Antonio Donato Nobre: “The forest is sick and losing its carbon-sequestration capacity”
- A researcher at the INPE Center of Land System Science, Antonio Donato Nobre, describes the state of degradation threatening the future of the Amazon rainforest in an exclusive interview with Mongabay.
- Nobre fears the forest is nearing what he describes as a “tipping point,” after which it will no longer be able to regenerate on its own, thus embarking on the path to desertification. “This is not about protecting the forest simply to please environmentalists. The living forest is essential for the survival of human civilization,” he says.
- In order to reverse the current state of destruction, Nobre proposes the development of a forest economy – capable, in his opinion, of generating nearly 20 times as much revenue as extensive cattle ranching. As an example, he cites the project Amazônia 4.0, which defends the use of technology for the sustainable exploration of biodiversity.
Brazil on the precipice: from environmental leader to despoiler (2010-2020)
- Brazil’s 21st century environmental record is most easily visualized via Amazon deforestation: poor regulation and lawlessness led to peak deforestation in 2004, with 27,772 square kilometers cleared. Better laws and enforcement, and a soy moratorium led to a dramatic decline to 4,571 square kilometers in 2012.
- Since then, first under Workers’ Party President Dilma Rousseff, then under Michel Temer, deforestation rates began to rise. The rate saw its biggest jump this year under President Jair Bolsonaro, with a loss of 9,762 square kilometers — the worst deforestation since 2008.
- From 2011-2016, the Amazon saw numerous hydroelectric project controversies, including the construction of the Belo Monte mega-dam, two huge hydroelectric projects on the Madeira River, plus multiple dams on the Teles Pires River. The Lava Jato corruption scandal and an economic downturn curbed dam building.
- Brazil’s ruralist agribusiness interests consolidated power, first under Temer, and more so under Bolsonaro, launching multiple attacks on indigenous and traditional land rights. Bolsonaro’s anti-environmental and anti-indigenous policies are a mark of his administration, a trend expected to continue in 2020.
‘The tipping point is here, it is now,’ top Amazon scientists warn
- In the past, climate modelling has indicated an approaching Amazon tipping point when global climate change, combined with increasing deforestation, could result in a rapid Amazon shift from rainforest to degraded savanna and shrubland, releasing massive amounts of carbon to the atmosphere when the world can least afford it.
- Now, scientists Carlos Nobre and Thomas Lovejoy report that researchers are seeing evidence in both the atmosphere and on the ground that this tipping point has been reached and will worsen if no action is taken immediately to reverse the situation.
- They reference a NASA satellite study revealing an increasingly dry Amazon over time, which space agency scientists say is one of “the first indications of positive climate feedback mechanisms.” A 2018 study found that Amazon tree species adapted to wet climates were dying at record rates while dry-adapted trees thrived.
- It is urgent, the scientists say, that Brazil move away from unsustainable agribusiness monocultures of cattle, soy, and sugarcane, while launching a major reforestation project on already degraded lands in the southern and eastern Amazon, actions that could help Brazil keep its Paris Climate Agreement commitment.
COP25: Brazil’s official presence diverges widely from its public persona
- Brazil’s government presence was much shrunken at COP25, as compared to past climate conferences, and its delegation even opted out of hosting a presentation space — this despite the country’s being South America’s biggest economy and among the world’s top ten greenhouse gas emitters.
- The administration of President Jair Bolsonaro is controversial for its anti-environmental and anti-indigenous stance. Its policies have prompted resistance by Amazon indigenous and traditional rural populations.
- Environment Minister Ricardo Salles represented one face of Brazil at COP25, speaking publicly twice at the summit, and focusing mostly on agribusiness and economic development opportunities in Amazonia.
- Indigenous peoples and other activists showed a very different face at COP25, emphasizing government failures to protect the environment as well as indigenous and traditional peoples living in the Amazon.
Brazil sugarcane growth can meet biofuel need and not drive deforestation: study
- Sugarcane crop production in Brazil may need to expand by up to 5 million hectares by 2030 to meet a rising demand for ethanol biofuels, according to computer models that compared the impact of different economic, social, and policy scenarios on increased ethanol production.
- The recent study found that sugarcane ethanol demand by 2030 would increase by between 17.5 and 34.4 million metric tonnes. This demand could be met without new deforestation by intensifying ranching practices and converting existing Brazilian cattle pastures to sugarcane.
- However, in a move that surprised many experts, President Jair Bolsonaro this month revoked a decree limiting sugarcane cultivation in the Amazon and Pantanal biomes, leaving the decision about how to meet rising ethanol demand in the hands of the sugarcane industry.
- Experts say that even with the end of state regulation, sugarcane expansion into the Amazon and Pantanal is unlikely due to poor agricultural conditions and lack of infrastructure there, along with the industry’s need to maintain its positive environmental reputation in international markets.
Sugarcane threatens Amazon forest and world climate; Brazilian ethanol is not clean (commentary)
- On November 6, 2019, Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro signed an administrative decree abolishing the environmental zoning of sugarcane which has until now restrained the advance of this crop — largely used to produce ethanol — into the Amazon rainforest and Pantanal wetlands.
- Sugarcane expansion into these two ecologically sensitive biomes will generate unprecedented impacts — including deforestation and carbon emissions adding to climate change — meaning that Brazilian biofuels can no longer be claimed to be environmentally “clean.”
- In 2018, the European Union imported more than 43 million liters of Brazilian cane ethanol. As with all commodities, importing countries need to assess the environmental impact that the production of these commodities have on the global climate via the destruction of Amazon and Pantanal native vegetation.
- This post is a commentary. The views expressed are those of the author, not necessarily Mongabay.
Deforestation preceded fires in ‘massive’ area of Amazon in 2019
- Deforestation watchdog Monitoring of the Andean Amazon Project found that 4,500 square kilometers (1,740 square miles) of the Brazilian Amazon was deforested between 2017 and 2019 and then burned.
- The team’s analysis revealed that 65 percent of that deforestation occurred in 2019 alone.
- The research points to the need for policymakers to address deforestation as well as fires.
In surprise move, Brazil has removed restrictions on Amazon sugarcane production
- Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro has signed a decree revoking a zoning regulation for the sugarcane industry, effectively allowing for cultivation of the crop in the Amazon and other areas of primary forest.
- The measure is controversial because it wasn’t requested by the industry, which, under the previous regulation, was permitted to expand onto degraded land and cattle pasture covering six times the area currently planted with sugarcane.
- The government has justified the move as necessary to boost the ethanol industry in Amazonian states, but experts warn the end of the zoning restriction could present an obstacle to ethanol exports to the European Union, damaging the biofuel sector.
- To date, the sugarcane industry has remained dissociated from the deforestation linked to the cattle and soy industries. Environmentalists say this new decree could end that exception, while also sending the message that the government sees no value in protecting standing forests.
Fires and greenhouse gases fuel drying of the Amazon
- New research reveals that fires in the Amazon rainforest, used primarily to clear land for agriculture and ranching, are contributing to drier conditions caused by the emissions of climate-warming gases into the atmosphere.
- Fires release “black carbon,” which absorbs energy and causes temperatures to rise, as well as blocking the formation of clouds, creating drier conditions.
- The researchers caution that the rising demand for water combined with scarcer supplies could threaten the forest’s survival.
Enforce Brazilian laws to curb criminal Amazon deforestation: study
- Recent research finds that a failure to track environmental infractions and to enforce environmental laws and regulations is aiding and abetting ever escalating rates of deforestation in the Brazilian Amazon and Cerrado.
- Researchers studied the failings of three environmental initiatives: the TAC da Carne, blocking cattle sales raised in deforestation embargoed areas; the Amazon Soy Moratorium, stopping sales of soy grown on deforested lands; and DOF timber permitting, which allows logging only in approved areas.
- The study found that timber, soy and cattle producers often subvert Brazil’s environmental laws by illegally “laundering” harvested logs, beef and soy to conceal illegal deforestation. These practices have been largely helped by the weak governance of the Jair Bolsonaro administration.
- The scientists recommend the closing of illegal soy, cattle and logging laundering loopholes via the strengthening of Brazilian environmental agencies, the improvement of monitoring technologies, better integration of policies and systems, and putting market pressure on producers.
China, EU are importing soybeans from unregistered Brazil farms: report
- Considered one of the main drivers of deforestation in the country, soybean is Brazil’s main commodity, with exports valued at more than $33 billion in 2018.
- Padding this figure, however, are soybean crops grown on unregistered farms skirting environmental regulations.
- Twelve percent of soybean farms in the Amazon rainforest and Cerrado savanna lack land registration, but two-thirds of crops from the municipalities with the most blind spots are exported, mostly to China (39 percent) and Europe (12 percent), with 33 percent going to the domestic market.
- U.S. commodities traders ADM, Bunge and Cargill are the biggest exporters of crops from these areas, along with Brazil’s Amaggi, the world’s biggest private soybean producer.
Indigenous communities ‘robbed’ as land grabbers lay waste to Brazilian rainforest
- Terra Indígena Ituna/Itatá in northern Brazil is home to several groups of uncontacted peoples who are dependent on the surrounding forest for survival.
- But outsiders have been increasingly moving in and clearing land for agriculture and mining. Brazilian authorities estimate that about 10 percent of the territory has been illegally invaded and destroyed this year alone, and satellite data show deforestation is still ramping up. Because of the scale of these incursions, Ituna/Itatá is now believed to be the most deforested indigenous territory in Brazil.
- While assaults on indigenous territories in Brazil have been happening for decades, activists say the sharp rise in deforestation and land-grabbing in Ituna/Itatá this year has been closely linked to the country’s controversial new president Jair Bolsonaro. Bolsonaro has also launched an open attack on Funai, the government agency tasked with protecting indigenous interests in Brazil. The president signed a decree curbing Funai’s powers earlier this year, dealing a further blow to an agency already weakened by the previous government’s move to slash its funding in half.
- Ibama, Brazil’s environment agency, has responded to the assault on Ituna/Itatá with at least five operations in the area in 2018 and 2019. Yet the long-term impact appears to be limited: just weeks after the latest crackdown, activists and local sources report that land-grabbers have gone back to clearing the forest.
As Bolsonaro meets with Xi, China silent on Brazil environmental crisis
- China is Brazil’s biggest trading partner, so it is uniquely positioned to influence the Brazilian agribusiness sector and to help limit the drastic reductions in environmental protections being carried out by the Jair Bolsonaro administration.
- However, when Brazil’s Bolsonaro visited with China General Secretary Xi Jinping last week, the environment appeared to hold no place in their high-level talks which centered on trade and commerce agreements.
- Bolsonaro has caused international concern over his anti-environmental policies with the EU and with international investors. Germany and Norway, in particular, have slashed their aid to Brazil for its deforestation programs.
- Some conservationists hope that China, which has recently become vocal on the topics of sustainability and climate change, will move to brake Bolsonaro’s anti-environmental policy excesses, but other analysts believe China will maintain its primary focus on Brazilian trade.
‘Witnessing extinction in the flames’ as the Amazon burns for agribusiness
- The vast and biodiverse Triunfo do Xingu protected area in the Brazilian Amazon lost 22 percent of its forest cover between 2007 and 2018, with figures this year indicating the rate of deforestation is accelerating.
- The surge in deforestation, driven largely by cattle ranching, is part of a wider trend of encroachment into protected areas across the Brazilian Amazon under the administration of President Jair Bolsonaro, according to conservationists.
- With the widespread clearing slicing up the larger protected area into smaller fragments of forest, human rights advocates worry that it will become increasingly difficult for forest-dependent indigenous communities to survive within it.
- The deforestation is likely to have a far-reaching impact on the biodiversity of the region, which is home to countless species of plants and animals not adapted to living in areas with higher temperatures and less vegetation.
Vatican calls landmark meeting to conserve Amazon, protect indigenous peoples
- From October 6-27 Catholic Church bishops from nine Amazon nations, indigenous leaders and environmental activists will convene in Rome at the Vatican to develop a unified strategy for preserving the Amazon rainforest and protecting the region’s indigenous peoples.
- The event is an outgrowth of Pope Francis’ 2015 teaching document known as Laudato Si: On Care for Our Common Home — an indictment of capitalism’s excesses, global extraction industries, industrial agribusiness, and our consumer society, which the pope mostly holds responsible for climate change, deforestation and endangerment of indigenous cultures.
- The Vatican meeting to discuss the Amazon is seen as a direct threat to national sovereignty by Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro, whose spokesperson earlier this year said of the Amazon synod that “it’s worrying and we want to neutralize it.”
- In a conference call this week, a few of those who will participate in the Amazon synod took a more positive view, saying that: “People are afraid that they’re going to have to change their own interests. But change has to come and the time is now.”
Brazil land reform head fired amid push to legalize cleared Amazon land
- Far-right President Jair Bolsonaro has fired army general João Carlos de Jesus Corrêa as the head of the National Institute of Colonization and Agrarian Reform (INCRA), a position he held since February of this year.
- Critics say the move yields to pressure from the powerful farm lobby to push legalization of cleared land in the Amazon, which could lead to increased deforestation in the region.
- According to news reports, Corrêa’s removal is tied to disagreements regarding the Bolsonaro administration’s plan to ease the process to regularize about 750,000 land deeds through the end of the year.
Brazilian beef industry plays outsized role in tropical carbon emissions: report
- Roughly 2.6 gigatons of carbon dioxide were released annually between 2010 and 2014 due to growth in tropical agriculture and tree plantations, say researchers; 40 percent of those deforestation-related emissions stem from Brazil and Indonesia, with oilseeds — especially palm oil and soy — accounting for most emissions in Indonesia.
- The research shows that cattle ranching in Brazil is the leading driver of deforestation emissions across Latin America. Brazilian meatpacking giant JBS presents the highest deforestation risk of the nation’s leading companies, followed by other major firms including Minerva and Marfrig. Most beef raised in Brazil is consumed domestically.
- The deforestation problem arises because monitoring linked to ranches is only done with the final slaughterhouse supplier, while most forest loss is taking place at the ranch where the animals originate, or at other ranches to which animals are sold, before being “laundered” at a last ranch.
- The solution: barcode tag animals from birth, so livestock can be traced from source, through multiple sales, to the slaughterhouse, tracking deforestation along the way. But political will has been lacking, say analysts, under past administration and especially under President Jair Bolsonaro.
Prompted by Amazon fires, 230 investors warn firms linked to deforestation
- Prompted by the Amazon fires in Brazil and Bolivia, 230 global investors with $16.2 trillion in assets have issued a strongly worded statement warning hundreds of unnamed companies to either meet their commodities supply chain deforestation commitments or risk economic consequences.
- The statement was published by Principles for Responsible Investment (PRI), an international network of investors and Ceres, a U.S. non-profit which works with investors to promote sustainability.
- Among the 230 signatories are CalPERS (the California Public Employees’ Retirement System), which manages the largest public pension fund in the United States, and some more unexpected firms, such as China Asset Management.
- Elsewhere, consumer pressure has led the VF Corporation, a US apparel and footwear firm which owns Timberland and The North Face brands, to announce it has stopped buying Brazilian leather. It remains to be seen whether a global Brazilian boycott linked to deforestation will develop.
World’s biggest meatpackers buying cattle from deforesters in Amazon
- JBS, Marfrig and Frigol, among the world’s biggest meat producers, have been buying cattle from ranches associated with illegal deforestation and slave labor, an investigation by Repórter Brasil has found.
- The ranches in question are located in southern Pará state, the epicenter of the fires currently ravaging the Amazon, providing further evidence of the link between deforestation for cattle pasture and forest fires.
- The three companies say the information that would have flagged the ranches as problematic were not publicly available at the time they made their purchase, and point to their commitments to not source from ranches linked to environmental crimes.
- But a lack of animal traceability allows ranchers to use legalized farms to conceal sales of cattle raised in illegal areas through false declarations of origin, in a practice known as “cattle washing.”
Expand or Intensify? Balancing biodiversity and rising food needs: study
- A recent study shows that for a given rise in food production, the impact of cropland expansion on biodiversity is many times greater than that for cropland intensification. This is because expansion can be expected to occur in those regions with the highest existing levels of biodiversity, mainly in Central and South America, a new study finds.
- Researchers estimated crop expansion and intensification potential for 17 major agricultural crops using socio-economic data as well as data on biophysical constraints. This information was overlaid with spatial data on biodiversity, specifically endemism richness to determine how each strategy would impact biodiversity in different locales.
- Worldwide, there is a major gap between the amount farms are producing and potential yields that could be achieved if plants were grown in an optimal way on minimal land. Closing this yield gap by 28 percent through land use intensification would increase production equal to expanding cropland area by 730 million hectares.
- In the future, we need to not only protect biodiversity on uncultivated wildlands, but also make the very most economically and ecologically of our existing croplands, encouraging biodiversity there as well, while maximizing food production.
Brazilian Amazon fires scientifically linked to 2019 deforestation: report
- A scientific report released today by the Monitoring of the Andean Amazon Project (MAAP) reveals critical overlap between deforestation and fire alerts. Mongabay had exclusive access to the report ahead of release.
- At least 125,000 hectares (310,000 acres) of the Brazilian Amazon — the equivalent to 172,000 soccer fields — were cleared through 2019 and then burned in August. The findings offer a base map overlapping 2019 deforestation and fire hotspots, and include 16 high-resolution time lapse videos unveiling newly cleared agricultural lands linked to fire occurrences.
- MAAP’s findings show that the dramatic photos that garnered worldwide attention of smoky fires sweeping the Brazilian Amazon in August do not correspond with burning rainforest, but instead coincide with areas intentionally deforested this year, with the cleared land then set ablaze to finish the agricultural conversion process.
- Although the report didn’t detect major forest fires in Brazil to date, the risk still exists, as the dry season deepens, given that many fire occurrences were detected on agriculture-forest boundaries. The study doesn’t say how much of the 125,000 hectares cleared in the first 8 months of 2019 were illegally deforested.
State governors support Bolsonaro’s Amazon mining, agribusiness plans
- In a meeting with nine Amazon state governors called by Jair Bolsonaro to discuss the region’s wildfires, the president pushed the states to back his policies which seek to bring major mining and agribusiness operations onto indigenous lands. Doing so would be a direct violation of the 1988 Constitution.
- Backing Bolsonaro were the governors of Acre, Roraima, Tocantins, Rondônia, Amazonas, Mato Grosso and Amapá states. Only the Pará and Maranhão governors opposed opening more forest areas to development and favored upholding current indigenous land use rights.
- Most of the state governors agreed with Bolsonaro that indigenous groups hold control over too much Brazilian land that could be mined or turned over to agribusiness, greatly profiting the nation, while also bringing indigenous people into mainstream Brazilian society.
- The federal Congress is presently crafting legislation that could open indigenous lands to mining and industrial agribusiness. It is also preparing to vote on a bill that seems likely to pass and would allocate R$ 1 billion (US$ 240 million) to combat deforestation and fires in the Amazon and carry out land regularization.
Giant Norway pension fund weighs Brazil divestment over Amazon deforestation
- KLP, Norway’s largest pension fund, with over US$80 billion in assets, is saying it may divest from transnational commodities traders operating in Brazil such as Archer Daniels Midland (ADM), Bunge and Cargill, if they work with producers who contribute to deforestation. KLP has $50 million in shares and loans with the firms.
- KLP is also reaching out to other investors to lobby them to use their financial influence to curb Amazon deforestation via supply chains. On August 28, Nordea, the largest asset management group in the Nordic region announced a temporary quarantine on Brazilian government bonds in response to this year’s Amazon fires.
- International investment firms play a pivotal role in preserving or deforesting the Amazon. A new report found that mega-investment house BlackRock ranks among the top three shareholders in 25 of the largest public “deforestation-risk” companies, firms dealing in soy, beef, palm oil, pulp and paper, rubber and timber.
- The Amazon deforestation process is complex. But it often proceeds by the following steps: land speculators invade the rainforest, illegally cut down and sell the most valuable timber, then set fire to the rest; they then can sell the land for 100-200 times its previous worth to cattle ranchers, who may eventually sell it to soy growers.
Misinformation and blame spread concerning sources of Amazon fires
- With the global spotlight on Brazil’s Amazon fires, those in and out of government are playing a blame game, pointing fingers and often using unsubstantiated claims to target those they say set the blazes.
- Pres. Jair Bolsonaro, without evidence, has blamed NGOs disgruntled at losing international Amazon funding. He also accused state governors for not fighting the fires. One ruralist even blamed ICMBio (Brazil’s national park service) for setting the blazes, though she has since been charged with setting fires in a protected area.
- Conservationists put the blame squarely on Bolsonaro and his deregulation and defunding of government institutions, including IBAMA, Brazil’s environmental enforcement agency, which used to regularly fight fires and arrest perpetrators.
- IBAMA claims that, though warned days in advance of “A Day of Fire” in Pará state, it received no law enforcement backup from federal or state authorities. This allowed ruralists (radical agricultural advocates) in Altamira and Novo Progresso to set hundreds of fires on August 10-11, with little fear of fines or prosecution.
Bolsonaro expresses ‘love’ for Amazon as it burns, offers no policy shift
- The number of fires in the Amazon biome topped 41,858 in 2019 as of August 24 (up from 22,000 this time last year). Scientists are especially concerned about wildfires raging inside protected areas, such as Jamanxim National Forest in Pará state and Mato Grosso’s Serra de Ricardo Franco Park.
- While the Bolsonaro government blames hot weather for the Amazon blazes, others disagree. They point to the link between fires and their use to illegally clear rainforest by land speculators, who — emboldened by Bolsonaro’s lax enforcement policies —sell cleared land for 100-200 times more money than it would sell for with trees covering it.
- Preliminary data shows deforestation rising under Bolsonaro. The rate in June 2019 was 88 percent higher than in June 2018; deforestation soared by 278 percent in July 2019 as compared with July 2018. The rise, analysts say, is due in part to the dismantling of IBAMA, Brazil’s environmental enforcement agency.
- Bolsonaro has pledged to bring in the army to fight the Amazon blazes and deployed the first units over the weekend, while on Monday the G7 nations promised an emergency $20 million in aid to help Amazon countries fight wildfires and launch a long-term global initiative to protect the rainforest.
Norway freezes support for Amazon Fund; EU/Brazil trade deal at risk?
- On Thursday, Norway announced a freeze on US$33.2 million, Amazon Fund donations slated for projects aimed at curbing deforestation in the Brazilian Amazon. The REDD+ Amazon Fund was launched in 2008, and was expected to continue indefinitely.
- However, the anti-environmental policies of Brazil President Jair Bolsonaro have put the Fund’s future in grave doubt. Norway’s freeze came as the direct result of the Bolsonaro administration’s unilateral action to drastically alter the rules for administering the fund, even as monthly deforestation rates shot up in Brazil.
- Bolsonaro seems not to care about the loss of funding. However, some analysts warn that Norway’s decision could lead to a refusal by the European Union to ratify the recently concluded EU/Mercosur Latin American trading bloc agreement. Brazil’s troubled economy badly needs the pact to be activated.
- Other Bolsonaro critics have raised the prospect that the Amazon Fund freeze could be a first step toward a global consumer boycott of Brazilian commodities. Meanwhile, state governments in Brazil are scrambling to step up and accept deforestation reduction funding from international donors.
Bolsonaro administration approves 290 new pesticide products for use
- In just seven months, the Bolsonaro government has approved 290 new pesticide products for use, at the rate of nearly 1.4 per day. Some of the approved chemicals are banned in the EU, US, and elsewhere. Brazil is one of the largest users of pesticides in the world, with utilization on its vast soy crop especially intensive.
- Most of the pesticides approved are not new individual chemicals, but toxic cocktails that combine a variety of pesticides blended for various uses. However, these combinations have rarely been tested to determine their interactions or impacts on human health or nature.
- In addition to the new products, a new regulatory framework to assess pesticide health risks was established in July that will reduce restrictiveness of toxicological classifications. Under Bolsonaro, 1,942 registered pesticides were quickly reevaluated, with the number considered extremely toxic dropped from 702 to just 43.
- Pesticide poisoning is common in Brazil, and on the rise. The full impacts of chemical toxins on wildlife, plants, waterways and ecosystems are not known. Agribusiness typically sprays from the air, a process that if not conducted properly can result in wind drift of toxins into natural areas and human communities.
Brazilian Amazon deforestation surge is real despite Bolsonaro’s denial (commentary)
- June 2019 saw an 88 percent increase in Amazon deforestation over the same month in 2018. In the first half of July 2019, deforestation was 68 percent above that for the entire month of July 2018, according to INPE, Brazil’s federal monitoring agency.
- However, far-right President Jair Bolsonaro, who took office in January, is denying the accuracy of his own government statistics, calling INPE’s data “lies.”
- Like US President Trump, Bolsonaro has a history of denying scientific data and facts when they conflict with his ideology and policies, including the need for action to combat the escalating climate crisis.
- The conservation outlook for the rest of Bolsonaro’s four-year term is grim; he has in just six months dismantled Brazil’s environmental agencies, deforestation program and environmental licensing system. This post is a commentary. The views expressed are those of the author, not necessarily Mongabay.
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