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Amazon rainforest

The Belo Monte dam.

Lula vows to end illegal mining in the Amazon. But legal mining is more complicated.

Environment

Brazilian President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva made a promise to roll back illegal mining in the Amazon. But he has a more complicated relationship with legal mining. Indigenous activists continue to battle over a new gold mine project managed by a Canadian firm.

cows

Lula promises sustainable development for the Amazon

Environment
Children play in a flooded area of Leticia, Colombia, Feb. 14, 2017, located by the Amazon River, on the border with Brazil and Peru.

Brazil’s neighbors wary of environmental impact of a Bolsonaro victory

Environment
banner with people in front of it

Brazilians mourn deaths of journalist and anthropologist whose remains were recovered in the Amazon 

Justice
Ecologist Tom Lovejoy is being remembered for his decades of research and bringing people together to protect the Amazon rainforest and other ecosystems on the planet.

Remembering Tom Lovejoy, champion of biodiversity and the Amazon

Environment
Smoke rises from a processing mill at a palm oil plantation in Sumatra, Indonesia

The world’s tropical forests can help us limit climate change — if we let them

Climate Change

Tropical forests are a treasure trove of biodiversity and contain vast stores of carbon that, if released through deforestation, threaten the stability of Earth’s climate system.

Cattle graze on land recently burned and deforested by cattle farmers near Novo Progresso, Para state, Brazil.

World leaders pledged to end forest loss. What will it take?

Climate Change

At the climate talks in Glasgow last month, more than 130 countries representing 90% of the world’s forest cover pledged to end net-forest loss by 2030. Is this really achievable?

Gold sits in a pan moments after being torched to eliminate any mercury left, at an illegal mine the Amazon jungle, in the Itaituba area of Para state, Brazil, Friday, Aug. 21, 2020.

‘Mining kills’: A gold rush in Brazil threatens the Yanomami Indigenous people

Violence

Thousands of illegal miners have invaded Yanomami land in recent years, polluting rivers, destroying forests and putting Indigenous communities at risk. Now, those communities are fighting back.

Image of an illegally deforested area on Pirititi Indigenous lands.

The Amazon rainforest is likely adding to global warming, says a new study

Climate Change

The Amazon rainforest, known as the “lungs of the Earth,” was thought to limit the damage from climate change. A new study suggests it now may be contributing to it.

Firefighters work to extinguish a fire in a ranch amongst smoke in the Pantanal, the world's largest wetland, in Pocone, Mato Grosso state, Brazil, Aug. 28, 2020.  

Brazil’s wetlands ravaged by out-of-control wildfires

Environment

Over 7 million acres of the Pantanal has gone up in smoke — roughly 50% more than all of the land that has burned so far along the entire US West Coast.