Category Archives: Amazon rainforest

Africa’s forests transformed from carbon sink to carbon source, study finds

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Alarming shift since 2010 means planet’s three main rainforest regions now contribute to climate breakdown

Africa’s forests have turned from a carbon sink into a carbon source, according to research that underscores the need for urgent action to save the world’s great natural climate stabilisers.

The alarming shift, which has happened since 2010, means all of the planet’s three main rainforest regions – the South American Amazon, south-east Asia and Africa – have gone from being allies in the fight against climate breakdown to being part of the problem.

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Planet’s first catastrophic climate tipping point reached, report says, with coral reefs facing ‘widespread dieback’

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Unless global heating is reduced to 1.2C ‘as fast as possible’, warm water coral reefs will not remain ‘at any meaningful scale’, a report by 160 scientists from 23 countries warns

The earth has reached its first catastrophic tipping point linked to greenhouse gas emissions, with warm water coral reefs now facing a long-term decline and risking the livelihoods of hundreds of millions of people, according to a new report.

The report from scientists and conservationists warns the world is also “on the brink” of reaching other tipping points, including the dieback of the Amazon, the collapse of major ocean currents and the loss of ice sheets.

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Illegal gold mining clears 140,000 hectares of Peruvian Amazon

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Armed criminal groups tear down precious rainforest to capitalise on record gold prices, report finds

An illegal gold rush has cleared 140,000 hectares of rainforest in the Peruvian Amazon and is accelerating as foreign, armed groups move into the region to profit from record gold prices, according to a report.

About 540 square miles of land have been cleared for mining in the South American country since 1984, and the environmental destruction is spreading rapidly across the country, Monitoring of the Andean Amazon Project (MAAP) and its Peruvian partner organisation, Conservación Amazónica, found.

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Big trees in Amazon more climate-resistant than previously believed

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Forest is ‘remarkably resilient to climate change’, but remains under threat from fires and deforestation

The biggest trees in the Amazon are growing larger and more numerous, according to a new study that shows how an intact rainforest can help draw carbon dioxide out of the atmosphere and sequester it in bark, trunk, branch and root.

Scientists said the paper, published in Nature Plants on Thursday, was welcome confirmation that big trees are proving more climate resilient than previously believed, and undisturbed tropical vegetation continues to act as an effective carbon sink despite rising temperatures and strong droughts.

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Uncontacted Peruvian tribe on deadly collision course with loggers, group says

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Survival International says Mashco Piro seen in nearby Amazon village in alarming sign group is under stress

Members of an Indigenous tribe who live deep in Peru’s Amazon rainforest and avoid contact with outsiders have been reported entering a neighboring village in what activists consider an alarming sign that the group is under stress from development.

The sightings of members of Mashco Piro tribe come as a logging company is building a bridge that could give outsiders easier access to the tribe’s territory, a move that could raise the risk of disease and conflict, according to Survival International, which advocates for Indigenous rights.

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Deforestation has killed half a million people in past 20 years, study finds

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Localised rises in temperature caused by land clearance cause 28,330 heat-related deaths a year, researchers find

Deforestation has killed more than half a million people in the tropics over the past two decades as a result of heat-related illness, a study has found.

Land clearance is raising the temperature in the rainforests of the Amazon, Congo and south-east Asia because it reduces shade, diminishes rainfall and increases the risk of fire, the authors of the paper found.

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Brazil to auction oil exploration rights months before hosting Cop30

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Sale covering 56,000 square miles set to go ahead despite opposition from Indigenous and environmental groups

The Brazilian government is preparing to stage an oil exploration auction months before it hosts the Cop30 UN climate summit, despite opposition from environmental campaigners and Indigenous communities worried about the environmental and climate impacts of the plans.

Brazil’s oil sector regulator, ANP, will auction the exploration rights to 172 oil and gas blocks spanning 56,000 square miles (146,000 sq km), an area more than twice the size of Scotland, most of it offshore.

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‘We carry on with the sadness’: new projects honor life and legacy of Dom Phillips and Bruno Pereira

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Friends and colleagues of Phillips, killed in the Amazon in 2022, completed his book, which coincides with launch of investigative Guardian podcast

Three years after the British journalist Dom Phillips and the Brazilian activist Bruno Pereira were murdered in the Amazon, two major new projects will celebrate their lives and work – and the Indigenous communities and rainforests both men sought to protect.

Friends of Phillips have completed the book he was writing at the time of his death – How to Save the Amazon – which will be published in the UK, the US and Brazil on 27 May.

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Green groups decry plan to list world’s biggest meatpacking company on NYSE

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Critics fear decision to list Brazil-based firm JBS, long linked to Amazon’s deforestation, will add to the climate crisis

Environmental groups are outraged that the world’s biggest meatpacking company, JBS, which has long been linked to Amazon’s deforestation, has received approval from US authorities to list on the New York Stock Exchange.

The decision, announced on Tuesday by the Securities Exchange Commission, follows reports that JBS subsidiary Pilgrim’s was the biggest donor to the inauguration committee of Donald Trump. Since taking power, Trump has reduced the independence of the SEC and other agencies, demanding their work be “controlled” by the president.

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Grassroots activists who took on corruption and corporate power share 2025 Goldman prize

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Seven winners of environmental prize include Amazonian river campaigner and Tunisian who fought against organised waste trafficking

Grassroots activists who helped jail corrupt officials and obtain personhood rights for a sacred Amazonian river are among this year’s winners of the world’s most prestigious environmental prize.

The community campaigns led by the seven 2025 Goldman prize winners underscore the courage and tenacity of local activists willing to confront the toxic mix of corporate power, regulatory failures and political corruption that is fuelling biodiversity collapse, water shortages, deadly air pollution and the climate emergency.

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Brazil fires consumed wilderness area larger than Italy in 2024 – report

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New report says more than 30m hectares burned, 79% more than in 2023, after country saw worst drought on record

After enduring its worst drought on record in 2024, Brazil closed the year with another alarming milestone: between January and December, 30.86m hectares of wilderness burned – an area larger than Italy.

The figure published in a new report is 79% higher than in 2023 and the largest recorded by Fire Monitor since its launch in 2019 by MapBiomas, an initiative by NGOs, universities and technology companies that monitors Brazil’s biomes.

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Protection deal for Amazon rainforest in peril as big business turns up heat

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Exclusive: With Brazil’s politicians, agribusiness organisations and global traders piling on the pressure, the highly successful 2006 Soy Moratorium is under threat

One of the cornerstones of Amazon rainforest protection – the Soy Moratorium – is under unprecedented pressure from Brazilian agribusiness organisations, politicians, and global trading companies, the Guardian has learned.

Soy is one of the most widely grown crops in Brazil, and posed a huge deforestation threat to the Amazon rainforest until stakeholders voluntarily agreed to impose a moratorium and no longer source it from the region in 2006.

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Severe drought puts nearly half a million children at risk in Amazon – report

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Warming climate has caused rivers used for transport to dry up, leaving children with little food, water or school access, says Unicef

Two years of severe drought in the Amazon rainforest have left nearly half a million children facing shortages of water and food or limited access to school, according to a UN report.

Scant rainfall and extreme heat driven by the climate crisis have caused rivers in what is usually the wettest region on Earth to retreat so much that they can no longer be traversed by boats, cutting off communities.

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Alleged mastermind in murders of Dom Phillips and Bruno Pereira formally charged

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Brazilian federal police announce end of two-year inquiry into killing of journalist and Indigenous expert in Amazon

Federal police in Brazil have formally charged the alleged mastermind of the murders of Dom Phillips and Bruno Pereira in the Amazon, accusing him of arming and funding the criminal group responsible for the crime as well as plotting to hide the victims’ bodies.

In a statement released on Monday morning, police in the Amazon city of Manaus announced they had concluded the two-year investigation into the shootings of the British journalist and the Brazilian Indigenous expert in June 2022.

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Lula and Petro have the chance of a lifetime to save the Amazon. Can they unite idealism and realpolitik to pull it off?

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The South American leaders are in the spotlight as they prepare to host this week’s Cop16 biodiversity summit, November’s G20 meeting and next year’s Cop30 climate summit

The rainforest nations of Brazil and Colombia have the best opportunity in a generation to drag the Amazon back from the abyss as they host three of the world’s most important environmental negotiations in the space of little more than a year.

In the process, their leaders – pacesetting Colombian president, Gustavo Petro, and the more cautious and contradictory Brazilian president, Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva – will offer up overlapping visions for the future of the Amazon, and the world’s path to net zero.

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Weather tracker: tail end of Hurricane Kirk to bring gusts and rain to Europe

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Hurricane activity is strong in Atlantic while months of below-average rainfall in South America leads to drought

Hurricane Kirk is heading towards Europe. At its peak strength in the mid-Atlantic, Kirk reached category 4 status with maximum wind speeds of 145mph. As Kirk tracks north-east towards Europe, leaving the warm seas behind, it is expected to be downgraded to a category 1 hurricane by Monday.

Over the next few days, Kirk will undergo extratropical transition, becoming an ex-hurricane by the time it reaches Europe’s shores on Tuesday or Wednesday. Although there remains some model differences in the exact path of extratropical cyclone Kirk, it is projected to track across northern Europe with France, Belgium, the Netherlands and then northern Germany having the strongest winds and heaviest rain. Southernmost parts of the UK may experience some heavy rainfall if the system tracks ever so slightly further north.

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‘It’s guerrilla warfare’: Brazil fire teams fight Amazon blazes – and the arsonists who start them

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Firefighters and police in Rondônia battle fires intensified by both the climate crisis and a criminal assault on the rainforest

The occupants of the vinyl-coated military tents at this remote jungle camp in Brazil’s wild west compare the hellscape surrounding them to catastrophes old and new: the extinction of the dinosaurs, the bombardment of Gaza, the obliteration of Hiroshima during the second world war.

“It’s as if a nuclear bomb has gone off. There’s no forest. There’s nothing. Everything’s burned. It’s chaos,” said Lt Col Victor Paulo Rodrigues de Souza as he gave a tour of the base on the frontline of Brazil’s fight against one of its worst burning seasons in years and a relentless assault on the greatest tropical rainforest on Earth.

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Dom Phillips and Bruno Pereira: murder charge dropped against one of three suspects

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Activists greet decision over killings of British journalist and Brazilian Indigenous expert with ‘indignation’

Appeal judges in Brazil yesterday upheld charges against only two of the three men accused of murdering Bruno Pereira and Dom Phillips, in a decision “received with indignation” by Indigenous activists.

The three judges ruled that there was “insufficient evidence of authorship or participation” by Oseney da Costa de Oliveira, a fisher, in the 2022 deaths of the Brazilian Indigenous expert and the British Guardian journalist.

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Brazilian president flies into Amazon amid alarm over droughts and wildfires

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Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva says Amazonia suffering its worst drought in more than 40 years

Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva has flown into the Amazon amid growing alarm over the droughts and wildfires sweeping the rainforest region and others parts of Brazil.

Speaking during a visit to a riverside community near the city of Tefé, the Brazilian president said Amazonia was suffering its worst drought in more than 40 years. He said he had come to discover “what is going on with these mighty rivers” that in some places now resemble deserts.

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Shock as police chief taken off Bruno Pereira and Dom Phillips murder case

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Activists and lawyers in Brazil say unexpected change is ‘a big step backwards’ in the investigation

Indigenous activists and lawyers in Brazil have voiced shock and dismay after the federal police chief leading the investigation into the murders of Bruno Pereira and Dom Phillips was unexpectedly removed from the case.

Francisco Badenes, an experienced investigator, had been running the inquiry into the 2022 deaths of the Brazilian Indigenous expert and the British journalist since the second half of that year.

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